A whirlwind regular season is in the books and things are only going to get more intense with the playoffs starting this weekend.
The Kansas City Chiefs earned a bye with the best record in the AFC, but there are no slouches in the playoff field. Everyone knows what the Bills and Bengals can do, the Chargers had a bit of a resurgence, and the Ravens and Dolphins could make some noise. Even the Jaguars are an up-and-coming division winner out of the AFC South.
Even with the stacked playoff field, the dominos may have fallen in the Chiefs’ favor.
Cody Tapp, Kayla Knierim, and Nick Schwerdt of the Audacy Original Podcast “It’s Always Gameday In Kansas City” talked about the AFC playoff field and how the Chiefs line up.
“If Lamar Jackson plays, that’s one of the deepest playoff fields I’ve ever seen,” Tapp said (1:22 in player above). “The six seed is going to be a former MVP. The five seed is going to be one of the guys we think is one of the five most-talented quarterbacks in the NFL right now. The four seed’s going to be Trevor Lawrence, the number one overall pick from two years ago. The three is the guy who beat you to go to the Super Bowl and was the number one overall pick in Burrow. Then you have just Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes left. That’s nuts. That’s a nutty field.”
There are a lot of talented players and teams in the playoffs this year, especially on the AFC side. The Chiefs will benefit from the first-round bye as they have one less step to get to the Super Bowl.
The rest of the playoff seeding could also benefit the Chiefs.
“The thing that stands out to me is considering how deep the AFC playoffs are, it can’t line up better for the Chiefs than it did now,” Tapp continued. “If Lamar Jackson shows up and does something big, banger, great, he knocks out Joe Burrow. Perfect scenario. You’re going to take on the Ravens, a team that you’re definitely better than? Cool, sounds good to me.
“And I would much rather – as much as Lawrence and Herbert can scare me – I would so much rather face one of those two quarterbacks versus Burrow or Allen. To me, the way it’s lining up you can’t ask for much better out of the AFC considering the field.”
While the Chiefs have the advantage of the first-round bye and the top seed, it doesn’t mean that it’ll be an easy road for Kansas City.
“There’s not one team in that bunch that I look at and say ‘They have no shot of advancing through the playoffs. They have no shot at upsetting one of these teams.’ It is as tough of a field as I can possibly imagine,” Schwerdt said. “Even though the Chiefs are sitting there as the one seed, even before the home-field advantage stuff and the amendment to playoff seeding, even before that I would’ve said this is going to be as tough of a year to be a one seed as any other year because I’m not sure how big the advantages really are with the amount of talent that you have in that conference.
“Now you take into account that even if you do get to the conference championship you’re in all likelihood not playing it at Arrowhead,” he continued. “The bye week’s great, but aside from that, I don’t see many advantages that come with being the one seed just because of how strong this field is.”
The Wild Card games in the AFC should be interesting this weekend with the Chargers facing off against the Jaguars on Saturday night, the Bills hosting the Dolphins as big favorites on Sunday, and an AFC North rematch in Cincinnati on Sunday Night Football.
Kansas City is going to be watching intently as they await the Chiefs’ opponent in the divisional round.
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