Given how the last half decade has gone, there was good reason to believe that the Houston Texans, or any other hopeful contender in the AFC for that matter, would have to go through the Kansas City Chiefs to earn that conference crown this season. For the Texans, going through Kansas City comes up earlier in the calendar than you'd expect, because in Sunday night's game at Arrowhead Stadium, two teams desperate to return to the postseason will take the field, and only one will emerge feeling good about their playoff chances.
This will be the third time that the Houston Texans and Kansas City Chiefs have faced each other in the last 13 months, and despite failing to come away with a win in either meeting, the Texans have put up enough of a fight that you could at least envision that a rivalry could develop between these two teams.
But as things stand right now, at least according to Houston Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans, there is no rivalry or hard feelings between these two franchises.
“No rivalry, no hard feelings. We lost a football game," Ryans said, acknowledging last season's playoff loss in Kansas City. "New season, we have a new team. About this team this year, how do we go out? How do we prepare this week to put ourselves in position to go out and play as best as we possibly can? We know the Chiefs are a really good team. It's our next opponent, so we're fired up for the matchup. Excited to go play a really good team.”
At this juncture of the 2025 season, it's anyone's guess as to whether the Chiefs are even as good as they are desperate. At 6-6 -- four games back of Denver in the AFC West and on the outside looking in for the Wild Card -- the Chiefs have officially run out of wiggle room.
Depending on how Sunday's games play out, a loss to the Texans could knock Kansas City to three games back of the 7-seed in the loss column, a borderline unthinkable twist in the standings for a team that has been an automatic 11 wins since Patrick Mahomes became the team's starting quarterback. And really, that's been true for Kansas City really since Andy Reid took over as the team's head coach in 2013, taking a 2-win team and turning them into an 11-win team just one season later.
Of the many noteworthy accomplishments in the Hall of Fame career of Andy Reid, this may actually be among the most impressive anecdote. For the majority of the 21st century, having Reid on your sideline meant you could pencil in 10 wins and a playoff apperance. More often than not, you're playing into at least the Divisional Round.
But what's interesting is, in his one year playing for Andy Reid -- back when Reid was still coaching in Philadelphia -- Ryans endured the worst season in Reid's coaching career, a 4-12 campaign that ended. Yet that small sample size was enough for Ryans to have a tremendous appreciation for the man who could go down as one of the two or three greatest coaches in pro football history.
"I had the pleasure of playing for him for one year. He's an outstanding coach, and he has a track record to prove that," Ryans said of Reid. "So, it's always a challenge going on with Andy, because whatever you've seen on tape, he's going to have some type of wrinkle. There's going to be some type of new play design that we can't prepare for because we haven't seen it, because he's very still cutting edge. Just a really smart coach, does a great job of positioning his players, making you have to adjust and think on the fly on defense as well. That's why he's one of the best to ever do it.”
Andy Reid better have one hell of a game plan put together for this game, because against Houston's league-best defense, nothing is going to come easy for Patrick Mahomes and co.