The Kansas City Chiefs are ranked No. 10 overall in the ESPN power rankings, further confirming the Chiefs are one of the top teams in the AFC. The Patriots are ranked No. 1 while Nos. 6-8 are the Steelers, Bengals and Broncos.
Are we good with calling the Chiefs the fifth best team in the AFC? I think those four behind New England are jumbled together and you can put them in any order. Can you make the case the Chiefs are better than the Bengals? Or that the Bengals are better than the Chiefs? Not really. I do think you could argue the Steelers, at their best, are right behind the Patriots in the AFC elite.
ESPN's writeup on the Chiefs section was good:
"Kansas City may be a baseball town now, but Andy Reid's crew is as good a bet as any to end Denver's streak of five straight division titles."
Indeed, this is the year the Chiefs have to overtake Denver. If they go through this quarterback change and still win the AFC West, it will be a very difficult pill to swallow. In the rest of the AFC West, the Raiders are No. 13 while the Chargers are No. 28. That's too low for San Diego. They're not that bad.
I would look for where the Texans and Eric Fisher's little brother JJ Watt are ranked but I didn't scroll down that far.