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Top 50 Kansas City Chiefs

The story of the Kansas City Chiefs begins in Dallas where they were a charter member of the American Football League as the Dallas Texans and in their third year of existence, they won the title, which coincided as being their final year in Dallas.

Relocating to Kansas City and redubbed the Chiefs they would win the AFL title again in 1966 and that was the year of Super Bowl I, where they would represent the league against the Green Bay Packers.  They didn’t win, but they would win the final AFL Title in 1969 and this time they would beat their NFL counterpart, the Minnesota Vikings to win Super Bowl IV, though that would be their last title for decades. 

After 1971, it would be 15 years before they would return to the playoffs and by the 1990’s they would do well making the playoffs seven times that decade, although they never went deep into the postseason.  The 2000s would see more of the same with multiple trips to the playoffs, but it felt like they were perpetually slotted in the second tier.  This would all change with the arrival of Quarterback, Patrick Mahomes.

The electric QB led the Chiefs to a win in Super Bowl LIV, and they appeared in the big game the following season, though they lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  In the 2022 Season, the Chiefs would win their third Super Bowl, on the strength of the Patrick Mahomes/Travis Kelce combo.

This list is up to the end of the 2022 regular season.

Note: Football lists are based on an amalgamation of tenure, traditional statistics, advanced statistics, playoff statistics and post-season accolades.

There are a lot of strange stories to get to a sporting Hall of Fame but there are few that were as unlikely as that of Jan Stenerud.
Playing his first eight seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs, Justin Houston was an upper-echelon Outside Linebacker for a four-year stretch (2012-15).
The overall Kansas City Chief resume of Larry Johnson is an inconsistent one.  A 2003 First Round Draft Pick from Penn State, Johnson was not someone who Head Coach Dick Vermeil particularly wanted and their relationship was off to a rocky start.  Johnson saw very little playing time and it took an injury to the incumbent Priest Holmes in Johnson’s…
Dave Szott was drafted in the 7th Round out of Penn State and he took the teaching from legendary coach Joe Paterno to carve out a fourteen season career in the NFL, the first eleven of which were with the Kansas City Chiefs.  Szott started 136 of his 142 Games in KC and the Left Guard would be named a…
Alex Smith was a former number one pick from the University of Utah and yet it always felt as if he was the red-headed stepchild of the National Football League. 
Dale Carter was a First Round Draft Pick (20th Overall) out of the University of Tennessee and it did not take long for the young Cornerback to prove himself as one of the better players at his position.  Named the Defensive Rookie of the Year in 1992, from 1994 to 1997 he was a Pro Bowl Selection and was also…
Kevin Ross was not tall (5’ 9”) and it could be argued that the Kansas City Chiefs took a chance on him even though it was a late round pick.  Ross would make the team and while the Cornerback struggled early in his career he would improve and by the 1989 Season he was named to the Pro Bowl, a…
Mitchell Schwartz played his first four seasons with the Cleveland Browns, and while he did well, he was not in that upper tier of Right Tackles.  This would change when he signed with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2016 and would have one of the best four-year stretches of any Offensive Tackle in franchise history, although you would not know it…
If our list of Top 50 Kansas City Chiefs were to be based on the excitement they brought onto the field then Dwayne Bowe would be in the top five, but as such, this is a pretty solid ranking for the dynamic Wide Receiver.
A Super Bowl Champion in his rookie season (although he did not do that much), Ed Podolak would work his way to become a dependable cog of the Kansas City offense.  Podolak was a dual-threat Running Back who would rush for 4,451 Yards and catch another 288 passes for 2,456 Yards contributing 40 Touchdowns in total in his career, which…
The Kansas City Chiefs made Eric Fisher the First Overall Pick in the 2013 Draft, and the Offensive Lineman made history as the first player from the Mid-American Conference to earn that honor. Fisher was inserted as the starting Left Tackle, and while he did not achieve the heights that would be expected from a player of that draft stock,…
An original Dallas Texan, Chris Burford would lead the American Football League in Touchdown catches in 1962, the final season that the Chiefs played in Texas and it was also a championship year.  Burford would actually finish in the top ten in the American Football League in Receptions seven out of his eight seasons and was also in the top…