Well, considering the Kansas City Chiefs 2011 opponents, I think the layout of their 2011 schedule is pretty good. The Chiefs' strength of schedule is tied for third toughest in the league so there's no doubt they have some work to do if they want to maintain the level of relevance that secured them three primetime games in 2011.
For me, the Chiefs 2011 schedule is divided into two parts -- Week 1-10 and Week 11-17.
The first 10 weeks of the season look much more desirable than the last seven weeks. The Chiefs have very winnable games against teams like the Bills, Lions and Vikings. Even one of the toughest games in this half of the schedule, against the Chargers, comes at home on Monday Night Football when the Arrowhead crowd will likely be jacked up.
The last seven weeks of the season are a little different. The headline to this story could have easily been, "Chiefs 2011 Schedule Allows For Late Collapse". As AP commenter jack.nowland put it, this is when s--t gets real.
Boy, this is an awfully tough stretch, starting in Week 11: at Patriots, Steelers, at Bears, at Jets and Packers. I can easily see the Chiefs playing well and still lose all five of those games.
That makes the early portion of the Chiefs schedule so critical. They have to come up with a few wins to allow for a margin of error in Weeks 11-15.
Ending the season against the Raiders and Broncos seems like a good thing because neither team participated in the playoffs last year. However, here's another way to look at it: the Chiefs were 1-3 against those teams last year.
Considering the difficulty of the Chiefs schedule, I think things turned out pretty well. They start off with a pair of very winnable games and end with a pair of winnable games. It's just that stretch in the middle that has me a little worried.