Can Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs defy history to make the playoffs?

Each year after the second week of the NFL season, the long odds that teams face to make the playoffs after losing their first two games get bandied about. The odds have hovered at just under 12% ever since the NFL expanded the season to 16 games and added a second wild-card team in 1978, with little fluctuation when additional playoff teams were added in 1990 and 2020. None of those other teams have come off three straight Super Bowl appearances like Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. The oddsmakers at BetMGM Sportsbook have Kansas City as a favorite to make the postseason with an implied probability of about 65%, while some other projection models have it closer to a 50-50 proposition. Since the playoffs expanded in 2020, only five of the 43 teams (11.6%) that started 0-2 made the postseason, but 31 of those teams missed the postseason the previous year. Out of the 12 returning playoff teams that started 0-2, three made the playoffs, with the Los Angeles Rams and Baltimore doing it last season and Cincinnati in 2022. But the goals for the Chiefs are much loftier than getting into the postseason with the team seeking a fourth Super Bowl title in the Mahomes-Andy Reid era. Only three teams — Dallas in 1993, New England in 2001 and the New York Giants in 2007 — have won a Super Bowl following a 0-2 start and only 5% of the teams that have done it since the 1970 merger won their division. Kansas City has won nine straight division titles — two shy of New England's record set from 2009-19 — but now is two games behind the Los Angeles Chargers in the AFC West. That has flipped the odds in the division at BetMGM, with the Chargers favored and the Chiefs at plus-250 odds to win the division. This is the first time since a three-week stretch midway through 2021 that Kansas City hasn't been favored to win the AFC West by BetMGM, and the current odds are the longest for the Chiefs since they were plus-275 before the opener in 2018 when Mahomes began his first season as starter. The only other team that is 0-2 after making the playoffs in 2024 is the two-time defending AFC South champion Texans, with both Houston and Kansas City losing a pair of one-score games. There are 10 teams that have started the season 2-0, including four that missed the playoffs last season: Arizona, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and San Francisco. This is the second straight season four teams began the season 2-0 after missing the playoffs, with Minnesota and the Chargers making it to the postseason, while New Orleans and Seattle missed out. Jackson and Mahomes show off dual-threat abilities Lamar Jackson already had established himself as the NFL's best running quarterback ever when he passed Michael Vick as the career leading rusher at the position. Now he's the most efficient passer as well. After throwing four TD passes and no interceptions in a win over Cleveland on Sunday, Jackson improved his career passer rating to 102.65, narrowly moving ahead of Aaron Rodgers at 102.6 for the best rating ever among quarterbacks with at least 1,500 attempts. Mahomes ranks third on that list at 101.8 but has had to rely more than usual on his legs this season. He ran for 66 yards on Sunday — his most ever in the regular season — and has 123 yards on the ground through two games this season. Mahomes has accounted for 56.2% of the Chiefs' yards on the ground this season, the third-highest share for any quarterback through two games in the Super Bowl era. Jackson has the highest mark at 62.4% in 2022 for Baltimore, with Colin Kaepernick the only other QB higher than Mahomes at 57.4% for San Francisco in 2013. Aubrey's long range kicks Long field goals are becoming almost routine, with kickers making 75% of their tries from at least 55 yards so far this season. The 12 makes in 16 tries from at least 55 yards in two weeks equals the entire total from the 2013 season. Kickers made less than half (49.1%) of their tries from at least 55 yards as recently as 2020. No one is better at the long-range kicks than Dallas' Brandon Aubrey, who kicked his second career 64-yarder on the final play of regulation against the Giants on Sunday before winning it with a 46-yarder with no time left in overtime. Aubrey became the first player to convert a tying field goal with no time remaining in the fourth quarter and a winning field goal with no time remaining in overtime in the same game. Aubrey has half of the made field goals from at least 64 yards ever in the NFL, having also made a 65-yarder last season against Baltimore. Matt Prater was the first player to make a 64-yarder, doing so in 2013 at altitude in Denver, and Justin Tucker set the NFL record with a 66-yarder at Detroit in 2021. His four field goals from at least 60 yards are tied for the most ever with Brett Maher. Bumbling Bears The optimism in Chicago brought on by the hiring of Ben Johnson as coach has dissipated quickly after a rough start to his first season. The Bears blew an 11-point lead in the fourth quarter of the opener against Minnesota before falling 52-31 to the Detroit Lions on Sunday. Only two other teams in NFL history started a season by allowing at least 50 points in one of the first two games and blowing a double-digit lead in the other. The Jets did it in 1995 to start the Rich Kotite coaching era, losing their opener 52-14 to Miami and then squandering a 24-3 lead in Week 2 against Indianapolis before falling 27-24 in overtime. Kotite went 4-28 as Jets coach before getting fired. Kotite and Johnson are the only coaches ever to begin a tenure with a team by doing it, according to Sportradar. It happened one other time to start a season, with the Bears doing it in 1965 under Hall of Fame coach George Halas. Chicago lost the opener 52-24 to San Francisco and then blew a 19-point lead in Week 2 before losing 30-28 to the Rams. Chicago recovered to go 9-5 that season but missed the playoffs.