KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The two Super Bowl participants were a combined 27-41 over the past two seasons, the Seahawks and Patriots falling short of qualifying for the playoffs in either year.

They’re the final teams standing now.

Crazy? Not exactly. This is how the NFL is supposed to work — with a draft order, salary cap and weighted schedule designed to level the playing field.

The Chiefs’ run over the last decade was akin to moving a boulder uphill. It’s hard. There’s a reason they were the first team in 20 years to repeat as Super Bowl champions.

That’s all necessary context for what follows, because they really shouldn’t be playing in a fourth straight Super Bowl in a league intended to give other teams a spin at the wheel.

But they didn’t simply fall shy of the Super Bowl. They fell far shy of the dance altogether. So we’re still going to examine why they aren’t playing Sunday, or at all in these playoffs. It could be a pretty lengthy list.

But I’ll offer a top five:

1. Fourth-quarter flops

As I said, the list could grow long.

But let’s start with the story of the Chiefs’ season.

For seven years, their magic had been turning early deficits into late wins.

This year? Poof.

The magic was gone. In the 14 games Patrick Mahomes started, the Chiefs had at least a 50% win probability in the fourth quarter in 12 of them. Yet they were 6-8 and gone from the playoff picture by early December. They couldn’t close out a win. They couldn’t come back from a deficit.

“It just flipped on us,” head coach Andy Reid said of one-score games.

There’s some luck involved with that, but there’s far more to it than misfortune. The Chiefs were 27th in the NFL in yards per play in the fourth quarter. Mahomes ranked 36th out of 38 qualifying quarterbacks in fourth-quarter completion percentage.

It’s inexplicable, given their experience.

Or is it?

A few weeks ago, I delved into the possibility of the Chiefs becoming predictable offensively — after Mahomes hinted at teams being prepared for their go-to plays. And when do you bust out the go-to plays? When the game is on the line in the fourth quarter.

This deserves serious study among Reid and the Chiefs’ coaches this offseason. Their most successful plays are on film. They have to find some new ways to achieve the same results.

2. They didn’t add backfield talent

The Chiefs’ passing game has been the object of criticism for the offensive numbers.

Placing the responsibility there is missing the fuller context.

The 2025 Chiefs faced the most difficult passing conditions of any team in the NFL. What do I mean by that? Well, they played against the most light boxes — defenses designed to defend the pass. And they couldn’t get defenses to bite on play-action because, frankly, they didn’t care if the Chiefs ran the ball.

That all stems from the same problem: The Chiefs thought they had enough talent in their backfield going into the season.

They didn’t.

Their running backs operated with all sorts of space, yet they were 25th in yards before contact, 25th in yards after contact, dead last in yards generated from explosive rushes and dead last in avoided tackles. (All those stats come from FTN Fantasy’s data.)

Kareem Hunt offered real value on short-yardage plays. But the Chiefs desperately need to find a true lead back this offseason — someone who can either force defenses to respect the run or can punish those who don’t.

Unlike the top item on the list, this problem was foreseeable. The Chiefs flopped in free agency and didn’t act quickly enough in a draft that had running back depth.

3. Third-down offense

If you wanted to define the Chiefs’ dynasty by a statistic rather than a player or coach, you could start here:

Third-down offense.

Here’s where they rank in third-down conversion percentage since Mahomes took over as the starting quarterback:

— 2018: 2nd

— 2019: 1st

— 2020: 3rd

— 2021: 1st

— 2022: 2nd

— 2023: 6th

— 2024: 2nd

— 2025: 22nd

See the outlier? This could derive from the same issue as Kansas City’s fourth-quarter woes. Did the Chiefs rely on the same third-down tricks that prompted all of their past success?

It’s not as though following the trends of past results would’ve been ill-advised. Those trends were long-lasting.

But it’s out there now. It’s part of the necessary adjustments.

4. The easy button

The Chiefs were one of only four teams that didn’t have a defensive or specials teams touchdown. When you look at points per game, consider that everything in Kansas City came from the offense.

But the offense made it difficult, too.

The Chiefs finished 32nd in explosive rushing yards. They were 14th in explosive passing plays. Mahomes finished 27th in the NFL in completion percentage on downfield throws.

The Chiefs led the AFC in plays per drive (6.61), because they had no other way to score. Scoring was hard.

They didn’t have what the best teams in football have: the easy button.

5. Pass rush

This was the other foreseeable issue.

Going into the season, if we’d have ranked the Chiefs’ biggest needs, here’s the two atop that list: Pass rushers and running backs.

They’re both on this end-of-year list, too.

The Chiefs were 19th in quarterback pressure rate and 19th in sack rate.

That’s not terrible, until you consider this context: They blitzed at the third-highest rate in the league.

Therein lies the problem. For years, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo has been a wizard at designing blitzes that fool quarterbacks.

The blitzes didn’t get home often enough in 2025. When blitzing, the Chiefs’ sack rate was only 5.6%, 27th in the league.

They were ninth in that same statistic in 2024, 15th in 2023 and fourth in 2022.

Which sums up the season: In the spots where the Chiefs have been best for the last five, six or seven years, they plummeted to the back of the pack this season.

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