How the Kansas City Chiefs’ playoff path to the Super Bowl just got a lot tougher

The Chiefs won their regular-season finale Sunday without their All-Pro quarterback. Or their All-Pro tight end. Or more than a handful of starters on the best defense they’ve had in years.

They partied in the locker room after a win here in California that meant literally nothing to their playoff positioning, a celebration to acknowledge a profitable day for Chris Jones.

But just a few hours after a victory, their path to a return trip to the Super Bowl got more difficult.

A lot more difficult.

The Bills knocked off the Dolphins in the NFL’s final regular season game, a result more important for the Chiefs than the game they actually played. It sends the Dolphins — and, yes, Tyreek Hill — to Kansas City for the Wild Card Round of the playoffs, slated for Saturday night.

But while the difficulty of the path includes the Dolphins, who per every analytical model are a bigger first-round challenge than the Steelers would have been, it’s not only about them.

It’s about the entire path — merely starting with the Dolphins. The Chiefs are a 3 1/2-point favorite against Miami. That line would have been a full touchdown (or close to it) had they played the Steelers. Pittsburgh would have been headed to Kansas City if the Dolphins beat the Bills, a game that not only determined the No. 2 seed in the AFC but the Chiefs’ future opponents.

Plural. Again, this is about the big picture.

The Chiefs won’t look ahead. We can.

The Chiefs’ most likely route to the Super Bowl — not guaranteed, of course, but about 70% likely— would include the home date with the Dolphins, followed by trips to play the Bills and then the Ravens. And therefore it could include not one but two things Patrick Mahomes has never experienced before in the postseason.

A road game.

A game in which he’s an underdog.

And the Chiefs would probably have two of each.

Using implied odds in the betting markets, the Chiefs would have about an 81% chance to see the Bills in the Divisional Round, and about an 86% chance, if they win, to see the Ravens in the AFC Championship. Combined, that leaves that route, as a whole, as 70% likely.

If that seems high, well, the Bills-Dolphins result subtracted a low-seeded bracket-wrecker from the equation. Had the Bills lost, they would’ve fallen all the way to a 7 seed, which not only would have eased things for the Chiefs in their first game, but also could’ve cleared a higher-potential avenue toward the Chiefs actually hosting a sixth straight conference championship. That outcome would’ve required the Bills to win a couple of road games in Miami and Baltimore — and left the Chiefs facing the winner of the Texans-Browns in the Divisional Round.

Now, any potential of that hosting streak marching on will be dependent on the Steelers, Texans or Browns.

Enough about what could have been.

Here’s what is: the Chiefs’ toughest potential path to the Super Bowl in Mahomes’ tenure.

Some of that is a comment on where the Chiefs are this season relative to recent years past. Some of it too is a comment on the quality of opponents. And we can’t forget that the Chiefs are playing an additional game than they did as the No. 1 seed. There is no bye week.

The most likely route is tougher than it otherwise could have been, but it’s just as notable that it’s tougher than it has been. That’s not to say it’s been easy. Playoff games rarely are. It’s to say that, well, the Chiefs are on the verge of opening a best-of-five series facing a team with three aces on their pitching staff.

I mentioned earlier that the most likely route, per the Vegas odds, includes the Dolphins-Bills-Ravens trio. Consider this: All three are ranked among the best five teams in football, per FTN’s DVOA metric, an all-encompassing statistic that measures teams on every single play, adjusting for opponent and situation. That top five on the DVOA list: Ravens, 49ers, Bills, Chiefs and Dolphins.

So the Chiefs might have to beat — probably would have to beat — three of the other four best teams in football to return to the Super Bowl. And, heck, they might have to beat the other once they get there.

The DVOA is a percentage, and the Dolphins are at 19.0%, the Bills at 22.8% and the Ravens 48.5%. The Ravens, if it comes to that, would not only be the best team the Chiefs have faced in the postseason — they just completed the fifth best regular-season DVOA since 1981.

A year ago, to earn a trip to the Super Bowl, the Chiefs faced the Jaguars (2.9%) and Bengals (20.9%), the 12th and sixth-ranked teams by the same metric. A year earlier, in 2021, they were a full touchdown favorite or better against two of their three opponents.

They’ll need some help — some unlikely help — to have that kind of track to Las Vegas.

It isn’t pouring cold water on the idea of a repeat.

They’ll just have to beat some hot teams to do it.