Chiefs' AFC West Dominance is Closer to Collapse Than NFL.com Thinks

The Denver Broncos are a team on the rise. However, despite winning 10 games and making the playoffs, the Broncos finished third place in the AFC West behind the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers.

The AFC West is viewed as the toughest division in the AFC and perhaps the NFL for a reason. Three teams won double-digit games last year and made the playoffs.

And yet, the Chiefs continued their reign of divisional dominance. But for how much longer can the Chiefs fend off teams like the Broncos and Chargers for AFC West supremacy?

NFL.com's Judy Battista ranked the Chiefs as the second least-vulnerable division champion from 2024, with the Buffalo Bills as the least likely to be knocked from the top. Cracks are beginning to show in Kansas City as the divisional competition improves by leaps and bounds.

"The Chiefs have won their division a staggering nine seasons in a row, and last year they won it by four games. So why are they not the least vulnerable? Well, bluntly, the other teams in the AFC West appear to be more of a challenge than the other teams in the AFC East. The Chargers and Broncos both made the playoffs last season as wild cards, Los Angeles after a significant first-year turnaround under coach Jim Harbaugh and Denver with a successful rookie season from quarterback Bo Nix," Battista wrote. "The Raiders, now with Pete Carroll and quarterback Geno Smith, should also be vastly improved. I can’t pick against a team that features Andy Reid, Steve Spagnuolo and Patrick Mahomes, though. Maybe the Chiefs will wind up with a few more losses than they had last season (two) because the division games should be much tougher. But four games is still a wide margin, and as long as Mahomes is upright, the Chiefs will cast a long shadow."

That's all fine and dandy, but how many one-score games did the Chiefs narrowly survive last season? 11. We're talking skin-of-the-teeth victories.

Some say that points to the excellence of the Chiefs, that ability to so consistently come out on top in one-score games, with next-level coaching and player execution. Others see those games as cracks in the facade — as if the Chiefs were barely holding it together — as Reid and Mahomes willed them to one improbable victory after another.

I wouldn't go quite that far, but as the Chiefs get older, their penchant for outlasting opponents in close games will steadily decline. The young guys who step in to replace the aging and too-expensive veterans won't have the same wellspring of experience, and the dominoes will begin to fall.

Mahomes is the greatest quarterback in the NFL currently, and the Chiefs have excellent coaching and experience, but as the nine-straight AFC West champs, they've had a massive bullseye on their back for a decade, and teams like the Broncos and Chargers have geared every roster move and coaching hire toward unseating them.

Since Sean Payton arrived as head coach in Denver, the Broncos are 2-2 vs. the Chiefs. Before Payton, the Broncos had lost a whopping 16 straight games to Kansas City.

Were it not for a freak blocked field goal at the end of regulation last year, the Broncos would have swept the Chiefs with a rookie quarterback, and Payton would hold a 3-1 record over Kansas City as Denver's head coach. So, while it's true that Kansas City won the division by four games, there are elements to that arithmetic that don't immediately jump out at first glance.

The Broncos believe they can beat the Chiefs in any given matchup, including Week 17's Christmas Day tilt at Arrowhead. Payton's record shows that, head-to-head, the Broncos have finally closed the gap on the Chiefs.

What still remains in question, though, is whether the Broncos will be able to stack wins against non-Chiefs opponents consistently, beat the teams they're supposed to (as Kansas City does), and come out on top in those single-score games so that, when these two AFC West rivals meet in Week 17, there are stakes beyond mere playoff seeding. The divisional crown could be on the table.

There's a reason that FOX Sports' Henry McKenna predicts the Broncos to not only win the AFC West but also vanquish the Chiefs in the playoffs. It's not just that the Chiefs are getting older or that the league is finally catching up to them; it's that the Broncos have become a force to be reckoned with.

It's time the Broncos wrest the AFC West crown away from the Chiefs and bring it back home to where it belongs in the Mile High City.