The hardest part of the race is always the end, especially when you’ve worked so hard just to be within eyeshot of the finish line, and in the Chiefs’ case the last kick is even more difficult chasing down teams with better quarterbacks.
Alex Smith is a good quarterback, which gave the Chiefs’ rise from 2-14 three years ago some solid footing. But he is not a great quarterback, which means that yanking the AFC away from Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger and (to a lesser degree) Peyton Manning is a significant challenge.
The Chiefs, then, find themselves in a tremendously important point in their history.