The Chiefs have not been this good according to the ESPN Elo metric since they won the Super Bowl with Len Dawson as their starting quarterback. If you are a child of the 80s, you know Lenny Dawson as the host of Inside The NFL where the music was perfect, he already looked old, and the games were broken down in perfect detail. Does this metric actually mean that the Chiefs can win the Super Bowl, or does it simply mean they have a fighting chance?
Len Dawson is a Hall of Famer
Is Alex Smith a Hall of Famer? I can answer that question for you. No, he is not.
I like Alex Smith, and I think he is having a fantastic season, but he is not nearly as good as Len Dawson. Len Dawson led that team to a title after they had already lost a Super Bowl previously. Alex Smith has not even sniffed a Super Bowl, and that means a lot when you are trying to predict who will win a title. I have thought that the Chiefs would have a decent chance of getting close, but I do not believe that they can magically win a title because of this metric.
The Chiefs are fairly young
The Chiefs are a fairly young team, and we cannot start saying that they have not been this good since they won a title and thought that means anything. The Chiefs were able to get into that Super Bowl so long ago because they were one of the preeminent franchises in all of the football.
Everyone respected Lamar Hunt, but hardly anyone knows his son Clark runs the team now, and the Chiefs are just a team we love to love. That does not make them great. The circumstances are so different this time around that we need to be much careful about this because the Chiefs have to contend with teams like the Patriots.
Your signature win cannot start the season
The Chiefs have a signature win so far this season, but they used that win to start the season. They would have to have a lot more signature wins, and they would need to prove over the course of the year that they are not falsely rising to the top of the Elo rankings. There are a lot of statistics that will not ring true just because they are not easy to sustain, and there are other times when the circumstances are just different.
Kareem Hunt would have to be perfect every game until the season ends, and Alex Smith would have to turn into Len Dawson. The Patriots would have to start falling apart, and the Chiefs would have to get an opponent in a Super Bowl that played right into their hands. We cannot say all those things will come together just because they beat the Patriots to start the season.
