{"id":350021,"date":"2025-12-15T12:04:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T12:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/350021\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T12:04:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T12:04:09","slug":"seven-surprises-that-shaped-the-2025-playoff-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/350021\/","title":{"rendered":"Seven surprises that shaped the 2025 playoff race"},"content":{"rendered":"

2) The Chiefs are out of the playoffs for the first time since 2014 and that wasn’t even the worst thing that happened Sunday. As the Chiefs were driving for what might have been the game-winning score, Mahomes went down in pain, grabbing his left knee. Mahomes tore his ACL<\/a>, adding another layer to the Chiefs’ season from hell. Mahomes’ recovery will shadow the entire offseason, but the reality is the Chiefs never looked right this season. They didn’t have their full complement of receivers early, then their offensive line had absences, and they had no continuity. Still, it’s a shock that a team that had been to the last seven AFC Championship Games, had won the last nine division title in a row and has Mahomes is eliminated<\/a> with three games left to play. The Chargers, who have won six of their last seven, did the deed<\/a> on Sunday, but this was a season-long decline that led, finally, to a brutal crash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"2) The Chiefs are out of the playoffs for the first time since 2014 and that wasn’t even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[4687,1807,3687,1822,1826,3686,1806,1817,1236,6337,46828,1815,349,6257,1821,1239,23712,560,27557,8852,99,1824],"class_list":["post-350021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-analysis","tag-buffalo-bills","tag-carolina-panthers","tag-cincinnati-bengals","tag-drake-maye","tag-indianapolis-colts","tag-jalen-hurts","tag-josh-allen","tag-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-los-angeles-chargers","tag-mike-evans","tag-new-england-patriots","tag-nfl","tag-no-minute","tag-patrick-mahomes","tag-philadelphia-eagles","tag-philip-rivers","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-saquon-barkley","tag-seattle-seahawks","tag-sports","tag-tampa-bay-buccaneers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}