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An NFL dynasty in crisis: Just how broken are the Kansas City Chiefs?
For nearly a decade, the Kansas City Chiefs have embodied sustained NFL excellence: AFC Championship game after AFC Championship game, three Super Bowl triumphs in six years, and a culture of winning built around Patrick Mahomes and the offensive brilliance of Andy Reid.
Now, after a dispiriting 20–10 loss to the Texans on 7 December that all but extinguished their playoff hopes, that once-unstoppable machine looks alarmingly fractured.
Where has it all gone wrong for the Chiefs? We break it all down here.
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At its core, the Chiefs’ malaise begins with an offense that has lost much of its multi-dimensional punch. Their running game has been noticeably ineffective. Isiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt combined for middling production while the backfield outside of Mahomes has failed to impose physicality or consistency, leaving Kansas City predictably one-dimensional.
Opposing defenses are content to rush the passer, knowing the Chiefs lack the reliable ground threat that once forced fronts to respect play-action and opened lanes for Mahomes to operate.
If the run game has faltered, so too has the receiver corps. Travis Kelce, at 36, remains a warrior and leader, but the sharpness that once made him an offensive anchor has faded.
In the Texans' defeat, Kelce was uncharacteristically plagued by multiple drops, including two critical ones late in the game. He publicly admitted he “just can’t find answers” this season, illustrating how deeply the frustration has permeated the locker room.
Beyond Kelce, the Chiefs have struggled to cultivate truly reliable downfield threats. Xavier Worthy, whose blazing speed once promised to stretch defences, has yet to consistently terrorise secondaries or turn his physical tools into sustained production.
Across the roster, receivers have also displayed a troubling inability to consistently get open against man coverage, contributing to stalled drives and an offense that looks far less explosive than its pedigree suggests.
Part of that decline has been Mahomes himself – especially when it comes to the deep ball. Once one of his hallmark strengths, his long-range accuracy and timing have slipped in 2025.
Mahomes has openly acknowledged issues connecting on throws that in previous seasons felt routine, pointing to both his own execution and the offense’s struggles to create natural separation. Whether this is a blip or a signal of wear is still debated, but there’s no denying the drop in precision has coincided with the Chiefs’ wider offensive woes.
Compounding these issues is a sense that the league has caught up to – if not surpassed – the ingenuity of Andy Reid’s scheme. What once felt like a chess match against a grand master for defensive coordinators now sometimes feels like an inability to adapt on Reid’s part.
The run game lacks creativity, play-action has been less effective and defenses seem far more comfortable containing Mahomes within structure rather than scrambling to react.
Star power elsewhere is muted. Defensive tackle Chris Jones still flashes dominance, but at 31, he’s no longer an every-snap terror, choosing games to bring his best, while the rest of the defensive roster lacks the true game-breakers the Chiefs have leaned on in the past.
That scarcity of impact talent flows back to draft position: success had the Chiefs picking late, making general manager Brett Veach’s job of replenishing elite talent inherently harder. And while Veach has been lauded in the past, this year’s roster construction looks less capable of maximising Mahomes’ talents.
Ultimately, after years of extraordinary success, the Chiefs may be further from the summit than many assumed. For a team this successful in recent years, it beggars belief that they should be languishing at No.21 in our latest power rankings.
With their once-fearsome offense sputtering, a dearth of reliable playmakers, and coaching that has yet to fully arrest the slide, this season feels less like a blip and more like a reckoning.
And as this proud franchise confronts a potentially rare absence from the playoffs, the question isn’t just how broken they are, but how deep the repair job must go to get back to the top.
