The final weekend of the 2021 NFL season is here and starts with an AFC West battle. The Kansas City Chiefs will take on the Denver Broncos, and both teams will be going in different directions once the season ends. The game will kickoff today at 4:30 p.m. ET on ESPN and ABC. It will also stream on ESPN.com, ESPN APP, NFL.com, NFL App and Yahoo Sports App.
The Chiefs (11-5) have clinched a playoff spot but need a win to secure the No. 1 overall seed and a first-round bye. They will also need the Tennessee Titans to lose their game to be the top seed in the AFC as they have the tiebreaker over the Chiefs after beating them earlier this year. Last week, the Chiefs fell to the Cincinnati Bengals 34-31, which snapped their eight-game winning streak.
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“Between the big plays and the penalties, that’s what got us,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said this past week about the loss, per the team’s official website. “You learn from it – as coaches and players – that’s all you can do. The guys battled and played aggressive football, we just came up short against a good team. We’ll go back, we’ll study it and we’ll try to get better from it.”
The Broncos (7-9) have been eliminated from playoff contention, and it’s the sixth consecutive year they will not play in the postseason. The last time the Broncos made the playoffs was in 2015 when Peyton Manning was the quarterback and led the team to a Super Bowl win. In the last six years, the Broncos have not had a 10-win season and only had one winning season in that span, which was in 2016.
“There’s a certain barrier that I’ve noticed that we just haven’t gotten over,” Broncos safety Justin Simmons said, per the team’s official website. “… When it comes down to it, you’ve got to find ways to win close games. There’s going to be some games where things happen, the ball doesn’t roll your way, whatever. But when the games that we have a chance to win, the close ones, those are the ones that matter. Now, at the end of the year, there’s margin for a little bit of error, right? You put yourself in a corner like that and you don’t find ways to win the close games, that’s when things start getting out of hand. We’ve been in close games — obviously not today — but throughout most of the season. We just didn’t win ’em.
