[membership level=”0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8″]The Kansas City Chiefs are the two-time reigning Super Bowl champions with their eyes on history. They have an unblemished start to their 2024 season and are the favorites to win the Lombardi Trophy across the betting market.
But should they be? Are they as good as their record suggests, or is the play on the field lacking at such a level that the results are destined to regress with time? I deep dive our PFN Wins Above Replacement metric (xWins+) to shed some light on the topic.
Kansas City Chiefs: A Lucky 4-0
Let’s call it what it is: the Chiefs are very fortunate to have gotten out of September without a loss.
- Week 1: Baltimore Ravens were a toenail away from having a chance to win
- Week 2: Cincinnati Bengals had a first down, up two, with 4.5 minutes remaining
- Week 3: Atlanta Falcons had a 4th-and-1 on Kansas City’s 13-yard line with a minute to go
- Week 4: Los Angeles Chargers had a first down, down seven, on the 46-yard line with five minutes to go
Yes, we know that if you’re going to beat the Chiefs, you need to play all 60 minutes, but with every game coming down to the wire, it’s fair to wonder if Kansas City is cutting things too close this year. — if, as the season wears on, the coin lands on the other side at the worst possible time and dents this dynasty,
At PFN, we evaluate win expectations based on historical trends. We run every box score through a formula that is armed with historic win rates in four metrics that have proven predictive over time.
- Point spread
- Turnover differential
- Time of possession differential
- Yards per play differential
Over the past five years, at varying levels, those four numbers have been directly tied to success league-wide. Simply winning the turnover battle or being favored is a good place to start, but we wanted to add a layer of detail, and thus we segmented each of those categories into buckets.
In doing so, we have the outright win rates for things like a three-point favorite with a +2 turnover differential and every other box within those metrics you could ask for. In running Kansas City’s profile through that gauntlet, here are how often we would expect a team to win.
- Week 1 vs. Ravens: 35.6% win expectation
- Week 2 vs. Bengals: 37.3%
- Week 3 at Falcons: 37.5%
- Week 4 at Chargers: 49.8%
Add up those win probabilities and we are looking at under two expected wins for the 4-0 Chiefs. Are they lucky? Have their opponents simply missed their chance to put the champs on the canvas? Are they uniquely built to overcome results like this?
Let’s take a look.
BUTKER FOR THE WIN FROM 51 YARDS. #CINvsKC pic.twitter.com/KQU8cdT0Cr
— NFL (@NFL)
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2024 Kansas City Chiefs vs. 2023 Philadelphia Eagles
These days, when we are discussing luck and potential regression, the 2023 Philadelphia Eagles come to mind. Jalen Hurts and company opened last season with a 10-1 record, but all of the underlying numbers suggested that they were fortunate to be considered the class of the NFC.
And they were.
The Eagles lost five of six games to close the regular season and, as a 3.5-point road favorite against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, they trailed for every single one of their offensive snaps (23-point loss).
Through four weeks last season, Philadelphia was 4-0 (2-1-1 ATS) just like Kansas City is this season. They had three one-score wins and were doing just enough. If we run their first-month profile through the PFN win calculator like what we did for the Chiefs earlier …
- Week 1 at Patriots: 60.2% win expectation
- Week 2 vs. Vikings: 35.3%
- Week 3 at Buccaneers: 41.8%
- Week 4 vs. Commanders: 56.4%
That’s right. Kansas City’s 4-0 start this season was actually more unlikely than what Philadelphia did last year – a season that ended with a crushing collapse.
Is there trouble in paradise?
Kansas City Chiefs: Not Your Ordinary Team
If games were played on a spreadsheet, yes, #ChiefsKingdom would be on letdown alert. I stand by the idea that Kansas City fans should be concerned, but we’d be doing research a disservice if we didn’t take into account that this Andy Reid/Patrick Mahomes combination might be more powerful than simple regression math.
Need proof?
- 2023 Wild Card vs. Miami Dolphins: 58.7% win expectation
- 2023 Divisional Round at Buffalo Bills: 48.6%
- 2023 AFC Championship Game at Baltimore Ravens: 56.6%
- 2023 Super Bowl vs. San Francisco 49ers: 49.8%
Yep, that’s the Chiefs’ path to being crowned the champions of last season. Against four of the best teams in the league, this team overcome all of the math (2.1 expected wins) to rattle off four straight wins.
You could flip a coin and get heads four times in a row. It happens. But we now have a second straight four-game stretch where the Chiefs are overachieving at difficult-to-understand levels.
When do we flip our labeling of this team from lucky to a historic outlier to never count out?
We might be there already. That said, these win metrics have been back tested for over 1,000 games and carry predictive power. I ran the numbers for Philadelphia during its 10-1 start last season, and their PFN profile suggested that a 5.2-5.8 record was what historic trends would have forecasted given their game-by-game profiles.
It wouldn’t have been popular to dismiss the 2023 Eagles as a Super Bowl threat at Thanksgiving last season, but by Christmas, a first-round exit was widely more accepted than running through the NFC.
Will the clock hit midnight on the Chiefs? Our historic numbers say that it’s likely – but the Chiefs have defied logic before. What say you? Are you still buying the Chiefs as the favorites?
All stats are from TruMedia unless otherwise stated.
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