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Adam Teicher, ESPN Staff WriterDec 9, 2024, 02:17 AM ET
- Covered Chiefs for 20 seasons for Kansas City Star
- Joined ESPN in 2013
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City Chiefs clinched their ninth straight AFC West championship Sunday night, but none of the first eight were quite like this one.
The 12-1 Chiefs had yet another game come down to the finish, and, as always so far in this most unusual of seasons, they made the play to win it. Third-string kicker Matthew Wright, a replacement for two injured players, made a 31-yard field goal as time ran out to allow the Chiefs to beat the Los Angeles Chargers 19-17.
Afterward, the Chiefs wore their AFC West championship hats and T-shirts, as they always do after clinching the division. Other than that, nothing about it felt familiar. The Chiefs may well see the Chargers or another division rival, the Denver Broncos, in the playoffs this time around.
“Our first goal every single year to win the AFC West, and it’s a great division,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said. “We’re in a lot of rivalries where everybody’s played each other tough and three teams are going to probably make the playoffs. That speaks to the division that we play in.
“It was an important game for us. We found a way to get a win, but now we got to keep building if we want to get to our ultimate goal.”
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The Chiefs’ next goal is to claim the AFC’s No. 1 playoff seed, which comes with a first-round playoff bye and home-field advantage in all of their postseason games before Super Bowl LIX, which will be played in New Orleans.
The Chiefs lead the Buffalo Bills and Pittsburgh Steelers, both 10-3, by two games.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid called the ninth straight division title “a great achievement.” The streak is the second longest in NFL history behind the 11 AFC East championships won by the New England Patriots from 2009 through 2019.
“It’s early in the year here, so we’ve still got [four] games left,” Reid said. “So when I say this, we’re not just putting the tent up right here and calling it a day. We’ve got to keep playing and playing aggressively.
“We’re playing some real good football teams that are trying to get themselves into the playoffs so they’re going to be hungry and attacking and so we’ve got to make sure we keep doing it.”
The win over the Chargers was the sixth for the Chiefs this season to be decided on the last play. Reid said that gave this year’s division championship a different feeling.
“Every year is a little bit different on how we’ve gotten there, but I’m proud of our guys who are just hanging in there,” Reid said. “We have so many tight games, more so than some of these other years. The guys keep hanging in there and feeling like good things are going to happen and they keep battling.”
Wright is the third Chiefs kicker to make a walk-off, game-winning field goal this season, joining Harrison Butker and Spencer Shrader. This kick was, like the game itself, not decided until the end.
Wright’s kick didn’t go down the middle but instead banged off the left upright before going through. Reid joked that he told Wright to keep his next kick more to the right, but then got serious and acknowledged how important Wright has been in his two games with the Chiefs.
He made four field goals in last week’s two-point win over the Las Vegas Raiders and again against the Chargers.
“My hat goes off to him for the field goals that he made and in tough situations,” Reid said. “That one at the end was great.”
