Chiefs Playoff History: How Has Kansas City Fared in the Postseason?

When it comes to the modern NFL landscape, it's hard to get any bigger than the Kansas City Chiefs. Patrick Mahomes has established himself as one of the game's top signal-callers; Travis Kelce was an elite tight end, even before Taylor Swift pushed him into the celebrity stratosphere. And part of that collective fame is postseason success. Each winter, it seems like the Chiefs are making another run.

It's tempting to think that this current squad is the entirety of K.C.'s postseason football history. The past several years, after all, would be a dream for just about every fan of the team.

But the Chiefs didn't enter the NFL scene when Mahomes stepped under center. He changed the game without a doubt, but he's only the latest chapter in K.C.'s legacy. With that in mind, let's explore the club's postseason history book.

Kansas City Is Just Over .500 in the Playoffs

Remember how we said the Chiefs have a postseason history independent of Mahomes? While that may be true, the earlier era was something of a mixed bag.

During the AFL era, Kansas City found plenty of postseason success. Some of that even bled into the NFL: The Chiefs appeared in Super Bowls I and IV, both of which we'll discuss later.

But after a 1971 campaign that ended in wild-card defeat, a drought began. K.C. wouldn't return to the postseason until 1986; a playoff victory didn't materialize until 1991. And although there were a few additional wins scattered through the early 1990s, culminating in a trip to the AFC title game, the club hadn't exactly turned a corner.

Appearances, however, didn't equate to wins. The AFC West club qualified for the postseason seven times between 1994 and 2015 and couldn't secure a win. Even when that streak ended in January 2016, a home playoff victory didn't arrive until the 2018 playoffs with, you guessed it, Mahomes.

And since No. 15 stepped under center, things have turned around. He's 13-3 in playoff games, and that's lifted the Chiefs' all-time postseason record (including a AFL Championship loss from the tail end of the Dallas Texans era) to 22-21.

Talk about turning a franchise around.

KC Has Won 3 AFC Championships, All in Recent Years

If you want further proof of Mahomes' impact on the franchise, consider overall AFC titles.

Back in the day, Kansas City won three AFL titles (we'll return to those shortly). And while you could argue that two of those were essentially AFC championships—they sent the Chiefs to the Super Bowl—they're in their own historical category.

That means that starting from the AFL-NFL merger, the club hadn't reached the top of the conference mountain until 2019. There were appearances at that stage of the postseason, like a loss to the Bills during the 1993 campaign, but the Chiefs couldn't get over the hump.

But that all changed with Mahomes under center. Since he took charge of the offense, K.C. has become a fixture in the AFC Championship game, appearing in every edition since 2018. And while the club has gone 3-2 in those appearances (pending the January 2024 date with the Baltimore Ravens), being one game above .500 is nothing to sneeze at when a trip to the Big Game is on the line.

How Many Times Have the Chiefs Won the Super Bowl?

While the Chiefs Super Bowl history didn't start with Mahomes, finding a trip to the top of the metaphorical mountain without him does take a trip back in time.

In January 1967, Kansas City represented the AFL in the AFL-NFL World Championship Game, which later became known as Super Bowl I. While the result ended in Green Bay's favor, the Chiefs would return to the Big Game in 1970. They cruised to a 23-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV, producing some iconic soundbites—head coach Hank Stram was famously mic'd up for the game, marking the first time an NFL coach's in-game commentary was recorded. (The NFL Films account on X, formerly Twitter, erroneously wrote that Stram was mic'd up in 1967.)

And that was it. The Chiefs, who stood tall at the end of the AFL era, wouldn't reach another championship until the end of the 2019 season. And on that fateful night in Miami, Mahomes, head coach Andy Reid, Kelce and company entered Kansas City history with another title.

There were, of course, some bumps in the road, like an ugly Super Bowl defeat the following season and a painful AFC Championship loss to Joe Burrow and the Bengals in early 2022, but another Lombardi Trophy did arrive. In Super Bowl LVII, the Chiefs outlasted the Eagles to secure a third Super Bowl crown.

And although the franchise also claimed three AFL titles (1962, plus 1966 and 1969 that resulted in trips to Super Bowl I and IV) those three Super Bowl victories are the crown jewels of Chiefs Kingdom.