The Kansas City Chiefs collapse — so far — is indeed historic. The website Five Thirty Eight has done the calculations on their stat they call Elo Rating, which is basically how good a team is throughout their history.
Some context to how much the Chiefs have dropped off: only the Packers (without Aaron Rodgers) and the Broncos (with no quarterback) have dropped off more this season.
The Chiefs have recorded just a single win (over the Broncos) in their past six games and now sport a 6-5 record, and they have undergone the league’s third-biggest drop in Elo ratings in that time — only the Aaron Rodgers-less Packers and quarterback-less Broncos have dropped further. Fans in KC will be wondering how far their team’s performance might fall, and for good reason: This kind of collapse is essentially unprecedented. Among teams that had an Elo rating of at least 17001 after Week 5 of the season, Kansas City’s decline is the largest through Week 12 in NFL history.
Go read the story for more context on the Chiefs collapse.
The thing I keep coming back to, which is perhaps some blind optimism, is they can’t be this bad. Andy Reid and Alex Smith have been here for four-plus years and nothing suggests they’re this bad. This has to be a bad streak, not a definition of who this team actually is.
That’s all I have to fall back on right now. They can’t be this bad ... right?