KC Chiefs Ranked Eighth in NFL.com Post Draft Power Rankings

Kansas City Chiefs. Mandatory Credit: Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports
Kansas City Chiefs. Mandatory Credit: Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports /
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The KC Chiefs are coming off an exciting draft for the fan base. NFL.com still thinks highly of them heading into 2017, ranking them as the eighth best team in the league.

You know something? I really like Elliot Harrison over at NFL.com. He always thinks highly of the Kansas City Chiefs and his power rankings usually display that. It’s a nice change of pace considering almost all other outlets ignore Kansas City sports all together. Recently, Harrison put the Chiefs at number eight on his post-draft power rankings.

The seven teams ranked ahead of Kansas City are the Patriots (duh), Falcons (29-28), Raiders (swept the last two years), Steelers (okay, you win here), Packers (yeah), Cowboys (yeah), and Giants (maybe). While the Raiders are going to be everyone’s pick to win the AFC West this season, the Chiefs have had their number since the 2015 season, sweeping them over the past two years.

Here’s what Harrison wrote about the KC Chiefs and why they’re ranked eighth on his list,

"Andy Reid and Co. valued Patrick Mahomes‘ talent enough to pay a future first-round pick to get him. If the best time to look for a quarterback is when you don’t need one, then Kansas City was right to go after the rubber-band-armed Mahomes."

It appears that Harrison liked the move of the Chiefs grabbing Patrick Mahomes and thinks the team is in good position to contend moving forward. He did continue though,

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"On the other hand, that saying presupposes that a talented quarterback falls to a team, not that the team will move up (and pay a pretty penny) to acquire him. In essence, what the Chiefs did was no different than what the Bears did to take Mitchell Trubisky, or what the Texans did to obtain Deshaun Watson. Bad move? Nope. A little strange, given that K.C. is a Super Bowl contender with a decent quarterback already? Hmm."

So, in other words, Elliot Harrison thinks what everyone thinks right now. If Mahomes pans out, the Kansas City Chiefs are geniuses. If he flops, they’re a bunch of idiots. Hard to argue with that logic.

I will say that the Chiefs should be a good team in 2017, but they didn’t add much to their team to push any further on in the playoffs this season. That’s the thing that concerns. Oakland added defensive guys who will surely push the Raiders past being a one and done in the postseason, and I’m not sure that Kansas City did that with their draft this year. A lot of the guys are going to be projects.

As for where the rest of the AFC West was ranked, Denver came in at number 14 and Los Angeles was 24th. This division has been the toughest in football over the years and that showed with three teams posting winning records last year and two teams going 12-4.

While I expect the Raiders to win the crown in 2017, the Chiefs aren’t going to just hand it to them and the Broncos certainly will want to get right back in the thick of things. It should be a fun year for football fans!