How the Chiefs got to the 2023 AFC Championship Game: Key moves, turning point, most crucial win, full season results

The Kansas City Chiefs find themselves in a familiar place: the AFC Championship. Andy Reid’s club reached the conference title game for the fifth straight year and is looking to qualify for the Super Bowl for the third time in that span. Standing in their way are the Cincinnati Bengals, who ousted them from the NFL playoffs at this point last year. Kansas City will seek to avenge that loss and attempt to win the second Super Bowl title during this era of Patrick Mahomes.

Before we dive headfirst into this game, let’s take a look back at how this team got here. Below, we’ll review Kansas City’s key acquisitions, most significant wins, and other notable moments throughout the 2022 season.

Notable departures

Kansas City went through a pretty big guard change in some key places on both sides of the ball this offseason. Instead of inking Tyreek Hill to a monster contract extension, the Chiefs left one of the mainstays on offense, sending him to the Miami Dolphins in exchange for a series of draft picks, including a first-round pick. round in 2022 and a second in 2022. round pickaxe. Hill had spent the first six years of his career at KC and proved to be one of the NFL’s deadliest weapons. During this span, Hill also moved into the top five on the franchise’s all-time receiving yards list, receptions list, and receiving touchdowns. With that in mind, it was a drastic departure from what the team needed to do offensively.

Meanwhile, the Chiefs also lost two key plays in the secondary in Tyrann Mathieu and Charvarius Ward. Ward signed a three-year, $42 million contract with the 49ers in free agency, but, as far as Mathieu is concerned, the Chiefs decided to leave one of their main faces on the defensive side of the ball. Instead of signing Mathieu to a deal, the club decided to sign Texans safety Justin Reid. Mathieu will say later that he would have accepted Reid’s deal if it had been offered to him.

Notable acquisitions

With Hill gone, the Chiefs revamped the wide receiver position a bit by signing JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling. Smith-Schuster ended up leading the position group in targets, receptions and receiving yards, while Valdes-Scantling served as a deep threat and averaged 16.4 yards per reception throughout the season. regular. KC also drafted rookie Skyy Moore in the second round and made an in-season trade for former Giants wide receiver Kadarius Toney to further strengthen the positional group.

Justin Reid has been the big defensive free agent acquisition, signing a three-year, $31 million deal with the club in mid-March. He replaced Tyrann Mathieu in the secondary at safety and started every game for KC throughout the season while finishing fourth on the team in tackles and tied for fifth in pass breakups.

While Day 3 of the NFL Draft is largely a guessing game, the Chiefs appear to have found some needles in the seventh-round haystack by taking cornerback Jaylen Watson and running back Isiah Pacheco. Watson started in six of his 16 games played during the regular season and got the nod in the Divisional Round victory over Jacksonville where he had a fourth-quarter interception against Trevor Lawrence that essentially froze the game . Meanwhile, Pacheco flourished in feature yardage in KC’s backfield, leading the team in rushing and averaging nearly five yards per carry.

Turning

Week 15 at the Texans: On paper, this game shouldn’t have been close at all. The Chiefs were a two-touchdown favorite against the Texans on the road, but Houston gave them their best. The Texans led at halftime and put KC on real alert by leading this game into overtime after Harrison Butker missed a 51-yard field goal with less than 10 seconds left in regulation time. Kansas City even won the toss but had to return the ball, meaning the Texans would have needed just one field goal to secure what would have been one of the biggest upsets of the season. However, Davis Mills fumbled the football, the Chiefs recovered, and the offense immediately secured victory on the next play. thanks to a 26-yard touchdown from Jerick McKinnon:

Besides simply avoiding the upset, this potential loss would have been one many people would have circled had Kansas City lost the No. 1 seed to the AFC. By then, the Chiefs had already surrendered the head-to-head tiebreakers to the Bills and Bengals, so any slippage in the stretch could have seen them dip in the standings.

key victory

Week 18 at Raiders: Following the cancellation of the Bengals vs. Bills game due to the Damar Hamlin incident, NFL owners made changes to how the AFC seed was to be determined with these two teams – which both had the head-to-head tiebreaker on KC – still within reach heading into that Week 17 game, but would now play one less game. From Kansas City’s perspective, he’s now entered a must-see Week 18 storyline against the Raiders in Las Vegas. Should the Chiefs emerge victorious, they would solidify the No. 1 seed and a first-round bye (with home ground yet to be determined). However, if they had lost and Buffalo had beaten New England (which they did the next day), the Chiefs would have fallen to the No. 2 seed.

Recognizing what was at stake, KC made quick work of a Raiders team that took the 49ers to the brink with Jarrett Stidham under center the previous week. Mahomes started the game 14 of 17 for 175 yards and a touchdown and took a 24-3 halftime lead that essentially left the Raiders in the dust and secured the conference’s top seed.

Now that Buffalo has been knocked out of the playoffs, that No. 1 seed also means the Chiefs will host the AFC Championship this weekend and not play at a neutral site.

Chiefs full 2022 season results

Will Kansas City return to the Super Bowl? We will know in a few days.