After starting the season 1-5, the Kansas City Chiefs are right smack dab in the middle of the AFC playoff race.
The Chiefs (5-5) have now won four straight games after they blew out the ready-to-get-out-of San Diego Chargers33-3 on Sunday. And now they're thinking about the playoffs.
"When we play like this, it doesn't matter who we play against -- we're unstoppable," defensive end Mike DeVito said, per The Kansas City Star. "With the way our schedule has been ... we've been in playoff mode for the last three or four weeks."
Playing in postseason mode currently has Kansas City seventh in the AFC -- one game out of the Wild Card with six weeks left.
"I'm going to tell you I'm proud of the guys for the character they have," Chiefs coach Andy Reid said of his team's resurgence. "Very easily, they could have gone the other way -- coach and players for that matter -- and they didn't do that."
We've seen teams mail it in and start thinking about offseason vacation plans after getting off to a poor regular season start, but Alex Smith is grateful that doesn't appear to be the case in Kansas City.
"(At 1-5) it's dark and things can turn easily," Smith said. "It's easy to look around, point fingers and make excuses ... credit to the character we have in the locker room and the leaders we have, not letting it go to that kind of place and being able to climb our way out."
Smith's words are accurate because the team could've packed it in after they lost their best player Jamaal Charles to a season-ending knee injury. However, the Chiefs have used good defense and timely offense to get out of the AFC West gutter.
Without Charles, Kansas City is playing some of the best football in the league and might just find their way into the playoffs after a disastrous start.
