If we do the same sort of analysis for the Chiefs, however, the results aren’t very interesting. There’s no one year that stands out for Kansas City; as you might suspect, the Chiefs have added a bunch of talent over the last three years, and were pretty good before then, too. Take a look at how much AV Kansas City added in each year to its 2018 roster, both via the draft (in black) and overall (in red):

What’s more interesting is how the Chiefs have built their roster, as opposed to when. Kansas City has just three homegrown first round picks that were starters this year: QB Patrick Mahomes, LT Eric Fisher, and edge rusher Dee Ford. Kansas City lost its 2018 first round pick in the trade up for Mahomes, traded down in the first round in 2016 (and landed star DT Chris Jones), while 2015 first round CB Marcus Peters) and 2012 first round DT Dontari Poe are no longer on the roster. So the last 7 years of first round picks have yielded just three players. In addition, Eric Berry (1st round, 2010) is still in Kansas City, but he played in just two games this season.

On the other hand, Kansas City’s offense is boosted by three high picks from other teams: two offensive linemen from the Browns (Cameron Erving and Mitchell Schwartz) and ex-Bills and Rams WR Sammy Watkins. The defense also added Reggie Ragland, the 41st overall pick by the Bills in 2016. And when it comes to second round picks, the only notable players are Jones and G Mitch Morse.

Meanwhile, the Chiefs have a ton of starters that came from outside of the first two rounds, whether homegrown or otherwise: Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, Andrew Wylie, Allen Bailey, Anthony Hitchens, Justin Houston, Steven Nelson, Derrick Nnadi, Chris Conley, and Kendall Fuller all started at least 10 games, and Eric Murray (a 2016 4th round pick) started 9 games.

In the backfield, the now-departed Kareem Hunt was a third round pick, while Spencer Ware, Damien Williams, and Anthony Sherman were all low cost additions found outside of the draft.

The graph below shows the amount of AV on the 2018 Chiefs that came from each round, with the black column showing players drafted by the Chiefs and the red column showing all other players.  ^[1]For both graphs, Hunt’s 11 points of AV have been removed.

Only 5 players on the Chiefs had at least 4 points of AV and were drafted in the first two rounds by Kansas City (Fisher, Mahomes, Ford, Jones, and Morse). Meanwhile, 18 players had at least 4 points of AV and were drafted by other teams, were undrafted, or were drafted by Kansas City outside of the top two rounds (with Kelce and Hill being the prime examples).

So when the game unfolds tomorrow, one man who should smile is Browns GM John Dorsey, who was the Chiefs GM from 2013 to 2016.

Reid looks up at the scoreboard and sees more points

Back then, I wrote about the best regular season matchups ever. And I’ve also written about the worst regular season matchups ever. And to be clear, there’s no right or wrong way to identify the best or worst matchup ever, even if you just base things on record.

You can’t use just winning percentage, because it’s hard to compare teams who have played a different number of games (is a matchup of two 3-0 teams better than a matchup of two 9-1 teams? I don’t think so, but winning percentage says otherwise). One solution is to add 11 games of .500 football to each team; in other words, add 5.5 wins and 5.5 losses to each team. For the Chiefs and Rams, that would make both teams 14.5-6.5, which translates to an adjusted winning percentage for both Kansas City and Los Angeles of 0.690. A game between two 3-0 teams would have an average adjusted winning percentage of only 0.607, which is one reason why I like this formula.

So where does Rams/Chiefs rank? With all due respect to the classic 49ers/Browns games from 1948, I’m limiting today’s post to games since 1950. And tonight’s matchup is the 20th best game during that period. The table below shows the best matchups in the NFL since 1950. Each game is listed from the perspective of the winner, and displays each team’s each team’s adjusted winning percentage and the average of the two adjusted records. Finally, I’ve included a linkable boxscore to each game.

Some other notes:

Is this the best Monday Night Football game ever? The 1990 Giants and 49ers were both 10-1 before their classic matchup); that’s the only game in MNF history with a better average adjusted winning percentage between the two teams. Only a few other games come close: Saints/Seahawks in 2013, Broncos/49ers in 1997, and Bears/Dolphins in 1985 stand out among the rest.

This is also just the 5th game since 1950 between two teams that have won 90% of their games or more and have both played at least 10 games, joining the Packers/Cowboys in 2007, the Giants/49ers in 1990, the Colts and Broncos in 1977, and the Rams/Vikings game from 1969.

Along with the Saints, this game features two of the best three offenses in the NFL, and two pretty uneven defenses. In other words, this game should be not just a classic, but a fun one for all viewers. In fact, it’s arguably more of an extreme game from a shootout perspective than from a powerhouse perspective: the game tonight has an Over/Under of 62.5 points, the second-largest in history behind a 63-point O/U between the Rams and 49ers.