Chiefs don’t hold share of AFC West lead for first time in Patrick Mahomes era

The Kansas City Chiefs have been pretty dang good with Patrick Mahomes at quarterback, boasting a special brand of dominance in the AFC West division.

Kansas City dropped a game to the Baltimore Ravens in Week 2, with their record for the 2021 NFL season falling to 1-1. The Denver Broncos and Las Vegas Raiders both won their matchups to advance to 2-0, which means that the Chiefs don’t currently hold a piece of the lead in the AFC West division. It’s still very early in the season, so there is no reason to sound the alarm, but losing this week revealed a pretty crazy streak that the team had going on.

Per ESPN’s Stats and Information page, this is the first time that the Chiefs haven’t held at least a share of the AFC West lead since Week 16 of 2016.

There are few remarkable things about this.

For starters that’s over four full years, 66 games in total, that the Chiefs held the AFC West division lead. And they only surrendered a share of it to any other team in the division during that span. The Chiefs, of course, have won the AFC West division for the past five consecutive seasons.

Second, Patrick Mahomes was drafted in 2017 and didn’t become a starter for Kansas City until 2018. Up until now, he has always had his team in the driver seat for the AFC West. It’s just another indicator of how freakishly good he’s been to start his career.

If there is one silver lining to the loss on Sunday, all of the Chiefs’ goals are still in front of them, including winning a sixth consecutive AFC West division title.

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