American Football
Meet the new Kansas City Chiefs, same as the old Chiefs
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For 11 weeks, the 2025 Kansas City Chiefs have looked like a cover band performing the hits without quite nailing the rhythm. The names are familiar, the structure recognisable, but the spark – that unnerving certainty that they would find a way – has too often been missing.
Their season-saving overtime win over the Indianapolis Colts on 23 November didn’t fix their flaws, and it didn’t magically restore their fearsome 2024 aura. But for the first time all year, Kansas City looked like the team they used to be: opportunistic, decisive, and utterly ruthless when the game hung by a thread.
Here, I break down how the Chiefs may have just rediscovered their rhythm.
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The contrast with last season has been unavoidable. In 2024, the Chiefs went 15-2 largely by thriving in chaos, winning tight games with a calmness that bordered on arrogance. One-score margins were where they lived and where others came to die.
Through 11 games in 2025, that edge had evaporated. Kansas City had repeatedly fumbled away close contests, stumbling to a middling 5-5 record and looking nothing like the side that stormed through the AFC a year earlier.
Against the Colts, however, the old habits returned. Down the stretch of the fourth quarter and deep into overtime, Kansas City rediscovered that ineffable rhythm – the understanding that if the game tightened, they would be the ones to make the final, crucial play.
Patrick Mahomes was not flawless, and the offense still sputtered at times, but when the Chiefs needed poise, they summoned it. When they needed execution, they found it. That alone felt like a throwback to 2024.
A major part of that resurgence came from a defense that, under Steve Spagnuolo, has long thrived on adrenaline and controlled mayhem. Spagnuolo’s unit has been curiously restrained this season, blitzing less frequently and generating far fewer game-wrecking moments.
That caution vanished vs Indianapolis. Kansas City brought pressure at every opportunity, hitting Daniel Jones, forcing hurried throws, and finally resembling the suffocating, shape-shifting group that smothered opponents last season.
At the centre of it all stood Chris Jones, a player whose 2025 campaign has often felt like a battle against double teams, frustration, and a lack of motivation.
On Sunday, he was unmistakably Chris Jones again. Four pressures only tell part of the story; his presence dictated protections, collapsed pockets at crucial moments, and set the tone for Spagnuolo’s aggression. When Jones looks like the best defensive tackle in football, the rest of this defense suddenly makes sense again.
The Chiefs still have a long road back to being considered the Super Bowl certainties of past years. A 6-5 record is hardly intimidating, and the inconsistencies that plagued their season haven’t disappeared simply because they emerged victorious this time.
The offense remains uneven, the turnover issues still linger, and their margin for error has shrunk considerably compared to their cruise-control 2024 run. But their overtime resilience against Indianapolis should make the rest of the league uneasy.
For three months, Kansas City have looked talented but erratic and strangely mortal. On Sunday, they looked like the old Chiefs again. And, as the AFC has learned repeatedly over the past half-decade, there are few more ominous sights than Kansas City finding their footing just as the playoff race tightens.
