2025 Chiefs: The Most Unclutch Team in NFL History?

From Dynasty to Disaster: Are the 2025 Chiefs the Most Unclutch Team Ever?

The Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes’s 5-5 record through 10 games has fans asking what’s happened to a team that has turned crunch time into a superpower. This isn’t merely a skid in the win column; it’s a pattern in the moments that decide games, and it comes at a moment when Kansas City’s overall numbers look better than last year’s champion rampage. For context, see Mike Sando’s recent note on how odd this feels compared with the 15-2 standard they set a year ago, even as certain metrics look healthier. What makes the Chiefs tick in crunch time.

Why This Feels Unlike Mahomes

The Patrick Mahomes has built a career on thriving when the clock starts blinking red. He’s led rallies from double-digit deficits in all three of his Super Bowl titles, and last season the Chiefs went 12-0 in one-score games, playoffs included. This year, the pattern is reversed.

• The Chiefs are 0-5 in one-score games this season, a stark shift from recent standards.
• TruMedia provides the late-game framework many teams live and die by:
• Score within 8 points, in or out
• Drives starting in the final five minutes
• Only non-kneeldown snaps
• Last season KC’s offense in those moments posted a 43% success rate (13th in the league) with a 57% completion rate. This year’s late sequence has flipped: in 11 such snaps, Mahomes has completed 2 of 10 passes for 29 yards and taken a sack. When you tack on a delay-of-a-game penalty, those 11 plays yield a net 13 yards.
• That stretch carried into the latest road defeat at Denver, where KC got the ball back with 4:05 remaining in a tie game and went three-and-out twice before punting with time dwindling. It’s a sharp contrast to Mahomes’ signature “13 seconds” drive against Buffalo, which remains a high-water mark for late-game heroics.

Even with caveats, the data paint a troubling picture: the offense’s late-clutch success rate (18% across 11 plays) is the lowest in eight seasons for teams with 10+ late snaps.

The contrast to last year’s late-game efficiency is jarring. The Chiefs didn’t just win; they did so with confidence when the clock was winding down. This year’s numbers suggest a team that’s pressing to find its rhythm in the final minutes, even as Mahomes still provides occasional late-game magic.

The Real Story Behind the Late-Game Stops

Defensively, Kansas City has faced its own late-game surge of urgency. Using the same late-game filters, the Chiefs’ defense has yielded a troubling series of outcomes in crunch time:

• Seven third- or fourth-down plays in late-game pressure: six opponent first downs on seven attempts
• 4-for-4 passing for 69 yards in those moments
• The sole reset stop came on a Bills run for 1 yard late in the third quarter, aided by game-management choices from Buffalo

Taken together, the defensive results in crunch time are among the worst in the 26-season TruMedia dataset: a 14% defensive success rate in late moments (1-for-7) and yards per play that are near the bottom of the decade. Last year’s unit looked far more capable in similar late sequences, turning a near-similar crunch-time template into the league’s best expected points per play in clutch moments.

What Comes Next

The core takeaway is simple: the Chiefs aren’t condemned to stay unclutch. There’s a clear path to rebounding if they can flip the switch in late-game decision-making on offense and generate more stops on defense when the outcome is on the line.

• The playoff line is still within reach in many models, with KC’s odds hovering in a plausible range if they regain late-game rhythm.
• The plan to turn it around hinges on tightening late-game execution, improving situational awareness, and converting opportunities into scores (on offense) and stops (on defense).