Kansas City Chiefs’ schedule rated as one of the most difficult — especially early

Pete Grathoff
·4 min read
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The Chiefs’ road to a third Super Bowl appearance won’t be easy.

That’s the way the NFL wants it. The league’s scheduling is set up to give division winners the most difficult opponents.

How tough are things for the Chiefs, whose schedule was revealed Wednesday? That’s where the experts don’t agree. Here’s what’s been written.

NFL.com

Marc Sessler of NFL.com writes that the Chiefs have one of the most difficult schedules in the league.

“Andy Reid’s bunch is no longer the loveable new face in the AFC: Everyone is angling to separate them into a thousand fragments en route to the throne,” he wrote.

Some good news from NFL.com: Cynthia Frelund, the NFL Network’s Analytics Expert, projected win totals for all 32 NFL teams and she is bullish on the Chiefs.

“Using the projected 53-man rosters as of today, I ran 50,000 simulations for all 272 regular-season games,” she wrote.

For the Chiefs, those simulations came up with an 11.9-win season, the best in the AFC.

“The first two weeks out of the gate (hosting the Browns in Week 1, then traveling to the Ravens in Week 2) will be a test for the Chiefs’ retooled offensive line,” Frelund wrote. “And the stretch from Week 5 to Week 7 (hosting the Bills, then traveling to Washington and Tennessee) will also present some challenges, But ... Patrick Mahomes.”

Sharp Football

Sharp Football Stats list the Chiefs as having the 12th-most difficult schedule based on forecast win totals. The site has a tool that allows users to pick a range of weeks to determine a specific period of the season’s strength of schedule.

For example, it determined that through the first nine weeks of the season only the Rams, Washington and Titans have a more difficult schedule than the Chiefs. Over the final nine weeks, the Chiefs’ schedule ranks as the seventh easiest.

Sharp Football Stats shows the Chiefs’ three opponents being among their first five toughest of the 2021 season: Browns (10.4 projected victories), Ravens (10.9) and Bills (10.9).

ESPN

ESPN’s Mike Clay listed the Chiefs as having the seventh-most difficult schedule based on “current rosters.”

Clay has the Chiefs’ projected win total at 10.2, which is sixth in the NFL and fourth in the AFC. That includes a win probability of less than 50% against the Chiefs’ first two opponents: Browns (49%) and Ravens (42%). Clay’s win projections for the rest of the Chiefs opponents are all above 50%.

Football Perspective

This is a different way to look at the schedules: which teams should be the most-rested based on when games are played. This also factors into when an opponent has less rest.

The Chiefs should be the sixth-most rested team, Football Perspective says.

Others

CBS Sports’ strength of schedule is based on the same formula as Bleacher Report’s: winning percentages from last season.