Chiefs Must Take Care of Business in Action-Packed Close to 2024-25 Schedule

The Kansas City Chiefs continue winning, but they are about to hit a truly grueling part of their schedule over the next two weeks.

Dec 8, 2024; Kansas City, Missouri, USA; Kansas City Chiefs place kicker Matthew Wright (49) watches a game winning field goal as time expires against the Los Angeles Chargers at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images / Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images

The Kansas City Chiefs continued their winning ways with another close victory, this time over the Los Angeles Chargers. It took a last-second field goal, including a doink off the left upright, to finish the job on "Sunday Night Football." No matter how crazy these games continue to be, the results have largely remained the same and the Chiefs are now 12-1 on the season and are pacing to be the No. 1 seed in the AFC. 

This next three-game stretch for the Chiefs has been circled on the calendar since the schedule was released. They will play three games in an 11-day span: on the road against the Cleveland Browns, home against the Houston Texans and on the road against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Playing three games that close together would not be comfortable at any time during the season, let alone on the back end of it. The second two games in this stretch are also against teams leading their division who will almost certainly be playoff teams. It's going to be tough. 

Chiefs head coach Andy Reid and offensive and defensive captains Patrick Mahomes and Chris Jones have spoken out about this difficult part of the season. 

"It’s a unique situation, you just have to manage it," Reid said. "It is what it is, so you make the best of it. The thing is you get your guys ready for the game, give them a chance to get ready for the game. They’re going to do whatever you present to them, so try to help them out with that. Right now, we’ve got a normal week right here, so we’ve got to take care of business for sure.”

A win against the Browns would certainly help how the Chiefs could play out the next few games. Fans will also be keeping an eye on the game happening in Detroit where the Lions are hosting the Buffalo Bills. Another game to monitor will be the Steelers traveling to Philadelphia to take on the Eagles. Both of those games are kicking off at 3:25 p.m. CT, so the Chiefs' game should be over before kickoff in Detroit and Philly. A Chiefs win, coupled with Bills and Steelers losses, would mean Kansas City would need just one more win this season to clinch home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. 

Mahomes had a similar mindset to Reid.

"I mean, all you can do is focus on the game [and] the practice that you have that day,” Mahomes said. “I try to prepare my body all year long for this stretch. That’s tailoring my workouts, that’s tailoring how you practice and you prepare. The coaches do a great job of taking care of us on the practice field. I mean, we practice [as] hard as anybody, but they know how to kind of dial it back when we need it, and I think Coach Reid has a great plan going into it, so I’ll follow that. Focused on this opponent and then as we go into another short week into next week and the one after that, I’ll focus on those opponents then.”

When Mahomes saw the schedule come out, he wasn’t thrilled about this upcoming stretch.

“It’s not a good feeling," Mahomes said. "I’m excited to play on Christmas to hopefully get back from what we did last year. You never want to play this many games in this short of time. It’s just not great for your body but at the end of the day, it’s your job. You’re a professional [and] you have to come to work and do it.”

Jones is a proponent of a late-season bye for teams that played in the Super Bowl in previous seasons and then get hit with a three-game stretch like the Chiefs have in front of them. 

“One thing I’m going to do this offseason is go to the NFLPA,” Jones said. “Having three games in a 10-day span, it should be mandatory to have a late-season bye week. We don’t need a Week 4 bye. We need a bye in Week 8 or Week 10.”

#Chiefs Chris Jones on the extra rest they will have now after playing on Black Friday. He plans on going to the NFLPA meeting in the offseason for a mandatory bye week late in the season:#ChiefsKingdom pic.twitter.com/re9lfXvNjY

— Vince Lovergine (@Vince_Lovergine) November 30, 2024

What Jones is saying makes a lot of sense. While fan bases around the country seem to say the NFL does everything to help the Chiefs succeed, the opposite may in fact be true. The hope for the Kingdom is the Chiefs will be able to clinch the one-seed sooner rather than later and get the bye. 

If the one-seed is decided before Christmas, it would set up an interesting scenario for a Chiefs team that will be very tired and nearing the end of an injury-riddled season. Reid can choose to rest certain players on either the Christmas Day game against the Steelers or the season finale against the Denver Broncos. Maybe he will look at those games as preseason-type games where the starters play for a series or two. 

This will be a challenging slate of games, and the Chiefs must keep winning to get that much-needed bye in the playoffs. It all starts this week in Cleveland against the Browns.

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