KSHB 41 reporter Tod Palmer covers sports business and eastern Jackson County. He also covers the Chiefs on game days as our digital reporter. Share your story idea with Tod.
He spent Thanksgiving like millions of others, watching the Chiefs lose to the Dallas Cowboys.
Tod has covered sports for nearly three decades and has extensive knowledge of pro football.

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Since taking over as starting quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs, the worst season of Patrick Mahomes’ career ended with a loss in overtime of the AFC Championship Game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.

It’s happened twice.

The other five seasons ended with Super Bowl appearances, but the Chiefs — once heavy favorites to return to a fourth straight Super Bowl and win it — are in serious danger of not even making the playoffs after a 31-28 loss on Thanksgiving at Dallas.

Kansas City (6-6) has five games left, but no margin for error.

“At the end of the day, you’ve just got to win every game now and hope that’s enough,” Mahomes said. “We’re going to play a lot of good football teams coming and, if we’re going to make the playoffs, we’re going to have to win them all. That’s got to be the mindset when we step into the building when we get back.”

The season has been careering toward this cliff since a season-opening loss against the Los Angeles Chargers in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

It was compounded by a second straight three-point loss in a Super Bowl LIX rematch with Philadelphia in Week 2, but the Chiefs postseason train didn’t really bump off the tracks until a Week 5 loss on Monday Night Football in Jacksonville.

Kansas City won three straight after that, including dominating performances against Detroit and Washington sandwiched around a shutout of rival Las Vegas, but losses in three of the last four games have put Mahomes and company in a precarious spot in the AFC standings.

“We’ll respond,” defensive tackle Chris Jones said.

After losses in Buffalo and Denver on either side of the Week 10 bye, beating Indianapolis last Sunday — rallying from an 11-point halftime hole to knock off the Colts in overtime — was supposed to signal a turning point.

Instead, the loss to the Cowboys, which dropped the Chiefs to 1-6 in one-score games, signaled more of the same.

“We’ve got to do better as coaches, we’ve got to do better as players, so you go back to the drawing board,” Kansas City coach Andy Reid said. “You keep working is what you do. We were close here, but we had too many opportunities that we gave away. Two good teams playing each other, you can’t have those things.”

The Chiefs played a great first quarter and Mahomes authored a heroic fourth quarter, but the Cowboys won the second and third quarters 13-0.

“Offense, defense, special teams — we’ve got to put it all together for four quarters in this league,” Mahomes, who went 23 of 34 for 261 yards with four touchdowns and no interceptions, said. “That’s something we’ve been great at in the past, but it’s not the past. Now, it’s the present and you have to be able to do that week in and week out. Even last week, we weren’t consistent when we won the game.”

Kansas City lost a game when Mahomes threw at least four touchdowns for the first time since Steve Spagnuolo took over as defensive coordinator in 2019.

“Our ceiling is playing in the Super Bowl,” Mahomes said. “… We can beat anybody, but we’ve shown that we can lose to anybody. We’ve got to be more consistent. It starts with me, being more consistent throughout the game and not in just big moments.”

Arguably, the Dallas game was the toughest the Chiefs had on their remaining schedule. It came on a short week, on the road, against the team that improved dramatically at the trade deadline, and one with a lava-hot passing attack.

Kansas City has three teams with winning records left, but the Texans (6-5, Dec. 7), Chargers (7-4, Dec. 14) and AFC West-leading Broncos (9-2, Dec. 25) all travel to Arrowhead, while the remaining road games are at Tennessee (1-10) and Las Vegas (2-9).

“These next five games are going to be very critical to us as a team,” Jones said. “We need to make sure we’re executing at a high level — offense, defense and special teams. … The good thing about it is we’ll be in KC.”

But there’s another reality the Chiefs, who have lost to all three teams currently in position for an AFC Wild Card berth, must face — winning out may not be enough.

Kansas City, which is 3-4 in conference and 1-2 in division games, won’t win many tiebreakers when the dust settles after Week 18 and 11-6 simply might not be good enough in 2025.

“We’ve got to continue to have faith and continue to believe in each other,” defensive end Mike Danna said.

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