The Kansas City Chiefs are peaking at just the right time

The suddenly surging Kansas City Chiefs win their fourth straight game on Sunday and could be the team no one wants to play in the playoffs.

On a frigid, snowy Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, the Kansas City Chiefs made their case to be among the hottest teams in the NFL.

The Chiefs won their fourth straight game, defeating the Denver Broncos 23-3 thanks to a stellar day from quarterback Patrick Mahomes and a history-making performance by tight end Travis Kelce.

Mahomes, showing no sign of the knee injury that sidelined him for two games earlier in the season, was nearly perfect against the Broncos, throwing for 340 yards and two touchdowns with just seven incompletions on 34 attempts. On the Chiefs opening drive, he connected with Tyreek Hill, who ran past two Broncos defenders, for a 41-yard touchdown to take an early 7-0 lead. His second touchdown to Hill came in the third quarter when he rolled out to his left and found Hill wide open at the goal line for a five-yard score.

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But Mahomes’ favorite target on this day was Kelce, who was targeted 13 times. The big tight end caught 11 of them for 142 yards, becoming the first tight end in NFL history with four straight 1,000-yard seasons.

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And then there was the defense, which allowed the Broncos offense to get inside the red zone on just two drives. The Chiefs defense was 24th in the league in points allowed through the first 10 weeks of the season, including wasting a 446-yard effort by Mahomes in his first game back from injury against Tennessee by giving up the winning touchdown with 29 seconds remaining.

Over the last four games, though, all Chiefs victories, the defense has limited opponents to 17 points or less, something they hadn’t done since 2015.

A sequence from the third quarter illustrates how opportunistic the Chiefs defense has been. With the Broncos facing a fourth down, quarterback Drew Lock threw an interception to Tyrann Mathieu. But the play was overturned by a holding penalty, giving the Broncos another chance. On the very next play, Juan Thornhill intercepted Lock in the end zone, and the Broncos last scoring opportunity quickly went away. The Chiefs have forced nine turnovers over their four-game winning streak, third in the NFL behind the Seahawks’ 13 and the Falcons’ 10.

The Chiefs improved to 10-4 with the win and have already clinched the AFC West for the fourth straight season. That’s not enough for this team, though, not after how their previous seasons ended. Last year only an offside call on Dee Ford in the AFC Championship game separated the Chiefs from a trip to the Super Bowl. A shirt worn by Frank Clark last week sums up what the Chiefs mentality is going forward: “The West is not enough.”

The Chiefs still have a shot at earning a bye in the AFC playoffs by virtue of holding the tiebreaker over the New England Patriots after a win in Foxborough last week. The defense in that game sacked Tom Brady three times and limited him to just 169 yards passing, just what they did to the rookie Lock on Sunday.

They are going to be a dangerous team come January, only this time it won’t just be Mahomes and the offense carrying the load.