Is AFC 'dominance' a total farce?

If Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid have no equals in the AFC, can we know how great they really are?

One of the reasons that the NFL is the most successful sports league in America (the average audience of Thursday Night Football on Prime is roughly the same as the audience for a championship-deciding NBA Finals game) is that most fans seem to know about every team, not just their own.

A two-second clip of Liam Coen saying “Duuuuval” — the least-famous head coach for the least-popular franchise — made the rounds on Monday because most of us are plugged into all 32 teams to some degree.

I can’t tell you what your fandom is like for the NFL or other leagues, but when 5-6x more people tune into a Titans-Texans game on Amazon than a Yankees-Red Sox game on ESPN, that suggests to me that we’re on the same page.

With that universal NFL fandom being established — and because no team can win the Super Bowl without comparison to other teams — I want to talk about Kansas City’s run of seven straight AFC Championship appearances and winning the conference in five of those years:

Either Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid are the greatest pairing in NFL history (maybe they are) or we are overrating the rest of the AFC.

The Chiefs winning this many times, while the other great quarterbacks and head coaches in the “stacked” conference are once again left with as many Super Bowls as you and I, makes me question if the AFC is as good as we claim it to be right now.

Magic Johnson had Larry Bird.

Ali had Frazier.

Barbie had Oppenheimer.

When is even ONE team in the AFC other than the Chiefs going to prove that they’re more than just the regular season champs? Watching Reid out-coach Sean McDermott in the playoffs for the fourth time in the last five years, Kansas City’s run is starting to feel a little less like dominance…

And a lot more like competence.

Bills - Josh Allen, Sean McDermott

I don’t blame Allen. Here are his career playoff numbers:

65.7%, 25 TD, 4 INT, 668 rushing yards, 7 TD

Stats can be misleading, but coaching incompetence has clearly been an issue at the end of at least half of Buffalo’s playoff losses to the Chiefs.

The Bills are the closest thing to a formidable opponent in the AFC and yet they’ve only even made two AFC Championships (0-2) during Allen’s seven years on the team.

Ravens - Lamar Jackson, John Harbaugh

A Super Bowl-winning head coach and a two (three?)-time MVP. Unlike Allen, Lamar’s numbers plummet in the postseason:

60.6%, 10 TD, 7 INT, 641 rushing yards, 3 TD, 7 fumbles

And though Harbaugh has a Super Bowl win (which means, so does Joe Flacco), that was 12 years ago! Since starting off with a 9-4 playoff record in his first five seasons as a head coach, Harbaugh is 4-7 in the last 12 years and the Ravens haven’t won multiple games in a postseason since 2012.

There’s been a lot of discussion on Mike Tomlin not winning a playoff game since 2016 (rightfully so), but am I supposed to be more impressed that Harbaugh has won four wild card games (2 over the Steelers, 1 each against the Titans and Texans) and zero divisional round games in the last 12 years?

Because I’m not.

Bengals - Joe Burrow, Zac Taylor

If Allen is the closest thing to an AFC QB who challenges for Super Bowls, then Burrow is the closest thing to an almost-MVP. Burrow led the NFL in yards, touchdowns, and he gives you that “Dan Marino feeling” a little bit because he went to the Super Bowl in year two.

Also because he hasn’t come that close to winning a Super Bowl in any other year.

The Bengals have MISSED the playoffs in three of Burrow’s five seasons with the team. A “Joe Burrow team” won fewer games in 2024 than a Geno Smith team. A “Jor Burrow team”, like Geno’s team, went 2-7 against playoff teams, with their wins coming against the Broncos in OT and the Steelers by two points.

For all the noise I make about Geno needing to throw more touchdowns, I come off looking silly when Burrow throws 43 and Ja’Marr Chase wins the reciever triple crown for a team that went 9-8.

(I was going to mention the Bengals this week when I talked about the NFL’s coordinator problem because Cincinnati went to the college ranks to replace their defensive coordinator, but there was no need to talk about defense.)

These are the three main AFC teams — QB/HC — that are supposed to make us more impressed that the Chiefs keep going to the Super Bowl. And yet aside from the Bengals beating the Chiefs 27-24 in OT in the 2021 AFC Championship (then blowing it the next year), these three teams haven’t beaten Kansas City in the playoffs.

That’s a combined 1-6 record. All they really do is beat bad AFC playoff teams, trade blows with each other, then lose to the Chiefs.

As mentioned earlier, the Steelers also don’t do anything in the playoffs (0-5 in the last eight years), while “up and comers” might be on the way, but they’re definitely not UP:

• Justin Herbert, 0-2 playoff record

• C.J. Stroud, wild card wins over Browns/Chargers, double-digit playoff losses in the divisional round (34-10 Ravens, 23-14 Chiefs)

• Bo Nix, 31-7 loss to Bills in playoff debut

• Tua Tagovailoa, 26-7 wild card loss to K.C. in only playoff game

• Trevor Lawrence, the comeback win over Herbert, and a 27-20 loss to the Chiefs

The rest of the AFC being “stacked” at quarterback was a complete illusion, a farce, like the addition of Aaron Rodgers to the Jets, the transition of Deshaun Watson from the Texans to the Browns, and the draft pick of Anthony Richardson to the Colts.

Mahomes and Reid winning the AFC again should feel like they went through another test of legendary heavyweights because there are so many “NAMES” in the conference, but what they really did is skip the wild card (which to their credit, is the most important goal for every team every year), beat the Texans, and survive McDermott and offensive coordinator Joe Brady’s poor end-of-game management.

Instead of getting Joe Frazier, it seems like we got Leslie.

The Chiefs are the best team in the AFC and they have been since Mahomes became the starter seven years ago. I used to think that was because they were just the most dominant team, but now they simply look like the only competent one.

Seaside Joe 2157