KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The record Chiefs coach Andy Reid has established following bye weeks is the kind of stuff that isn’t supposed to happen in the NFL, a league that prides itself on both parity and week-to-week unpredictability.
In fact, you could say his results following a week off have been quite predictable.
Reid went 13-1 during his days in Philadelphia, and he is 9-3 since his arrival in Kansas City, giving him a 22-4 mark overall.
The Chiefs desperately need that trend to continue.
Most of those years, the Chiefs went into an enjoyable week off secure in their knowledge that they would be playing in the postseason. The big question coming out of it was whether they could secure the No. 1 overall seed and home-field advantage.
That isn’t the case this season.
The Chiefs entered the bye after a 28-21 loss in Buffalo that left them 5-4 at the midway point in the season, and would’ve left them out of the playoffs entirely had it ended right there. They are third in the AFC West, a division they have won nine straight seasons. And ahead of them are Denver — their first opponent after the bye — and the Chargers, who already beat them once.
“We’ve got a lot of really good teams in our division that our playing good football,” Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said after the Bills loss. “We are down there in third place right now. We have to get out there and get ourselves right.”
It would help to get themselves whole.
The Chiefs played the first six games of the season without Rashee Rice, their top wide receiver, who was serving a six-game suspension for his role in a high-speed car crash in Dallas. Then they lost fellow wide receiver Xavier Worthy to a shoulder injury that he sustained in the season-opening loss to the Chargers. And along the way, running back Isiah Pacheco went down with another injury, and left tackle Josh Simmons had to step away from the team to deal with a family matter.
The disjointed nature of the roster may have a lot to do with the disjointed nature of the season.
Kansas City has played spectacularly at times, winning five out of six following an 0-2 start, a stretch highlighted by a 30-17 victory over the playoff-contending Lions and a 31-0 rout of the AFC West-rival Raiders. But the Chiefs also have had some head-scratching failures, including their inability to stop Jacksonville late in a 31-28 loss on the road.
But the Chiefs are optimistic that most of their missing pieces will be back after the bye.
Simmons has returned to the team and the first-round draft pick could be on the field as soon as Nov. 16, when they play the Broncos on the road. Pacheco is also expected to be back from his latest injury, while a series of bumps and bruises elsewhere on the roster that have robbed guys such as right guard Trey Smith of playing time should also have healed.
And while the Chiefs did not add anybody this week ahead of the NFL trade deadline, as some expected, they did bring back defensive tackle Mike Pennel before the break. The run-stuffer should not only help them overcome the loss to rookie Omarr Norman-Lott to a season-ending knee injury but provide some veteran experience on the defensive side of the ball.
So yes, there are reasons to be optimistic in Kansas City that another postseason run could happen this season.
First order of business is getting there.
“It’s going to be an uphill battle when we get back,” Mahomes said, “but I think our guys are up to it.”
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