It’s hard to deny that the (5-0) Kansas City Chiefs had a favorable schedule to begin the 2026 regular season.
The best opponent so far has been the (4-2) Denver Broncos, who were clearly caught off guard by the Chiefs’ shift in offensive identity in the season-opening beatdown on “Monday Night Football.” It’s reasonable to believe Denver would have put together a more competitive game with even just one game of this year’s film to study.
The team’s other four opponents have a combined 5-18 record
going into Week 7.
The Chiefs have taken care of business on a light schedule, as shown by the second-best point differential in the NFL (+57). Only the (6-0) San Francisco 49ers (+67) are better at this point. That’s what elite teams do, but the schedule will get a lot harder from here.
The road trips
So far, the team has hit the road to play the winless Miami Dolphins and to play the Las Vegas Raiders at “Arrowhead West,” where Chiefs head coach Andy Reid is the venue’s winningest coach.
Starting in Week 7, the road trips get longer and more difficult.
The “Sunday Night Football” road game against the (3-3) Seattle Seahawkswill feature a defending Super Bowl champion and its roaring crowd, who could feel like they’re backed into a corner with a .500 record after six weeks. The Chiefs can expect an A-game from Seattle in every phase, including the drive to shut down the NFL’s leading rusher, Kenneth Walker. He was the Super Bowl MVP for the Seahawks less than a year ago, and has been the driving force for Kansas City’s success on offense this year.
After the primetime game on the West Coast, the Broncos will welcome the Chiefs to Mile High for a pivotal matchup. Let’s say Kansas City drops its first game of the season in Seattle while Denver takes care of the (2-4) Arizona Cardinals in Week 7. Suddenly, Week 8 could put the AFC West teams at the same level in the standings.
If the Chiefs emerge from the next two road games still unbeaten, they will have built up a lot of margin for error for the next significant stretch of away games: starting on Thanksgiving night in Week 12, Kansas City will play the (5-1) Buffalo Bills, (2-4) Los Angeles Rams — on “Thursday Night Football” — and (3-2) Cincinnati Bengals before finally returning to Arrowhead four days before Christmas.
Six of the team’s next eight games are on the road.
The strength of opponents
Going into the season, we knew the Chiefs’ schedule got a lot tougher starting in Week 7. From this point on, the team will face seven teams that made the postseason last year.
Between now and the Week 17 rematch with the Chargers, only four teams currently have losing records — and one of them is a sleeping giant in the Rams.
Kansas City still has to play the undefeated 49ers, the one-loss Bills and three other teams with only two losses in the AFC playoff race: the Broncos, Bengals and the New England Patriots. This all happens before the final two-game stretch against the Chargers and Raiders.
The bottom line
The Chiefs are clearly one of the best teams in the NFL this season, ranking top-10 in points and yards on both sides of the ball.
However, they’ve faced a much lighter schedule than Kansas City will face for the rest of the season, with no bye week to rest in the middle of a postseason run. The team has built up some margin for error with an undefeated start, but it will need to keep winning to earn the sole bye week in the AFC playoff bracket.
