The first week of the 2024 NFL season is upon us, so hope abounds among the league’s 32 franchises for what the fast-arriving 2024 season could be.
That being said, it’s a necessity to take a pragmatic approach to your team’s actual contention status, despite the potential for genuine surprise. The Houston Texans went from worst to first in the AFC South in the span of a year after drafting both the NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year (quarterback C.J. Stroud second overall) and the NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year (defensive end Will Anderson Jr. third overall) in 2023.
So which clubs rightly deserve the label of Super Bowl contender out of the AFC? Which ones are going to be looking ahead toward next April and the 2025 NFL Draft? Which ones are in between? Let’s take a closer look through the AFC’s 16 squads and where they fit in the conference’s six tiers.
Tier 1: In a league of their own (1)
Kansas City Chiefs
The two-time defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs are and aren’t competing with the other teams in the AFC. They are in the sense that they actually have to beat the other 15 teams in the conference consistently to return to a third Super Bowl in a row, but they’re really in hot pursuit of the ghosts in the NFL’s history books.
Kansas City is angling to become the first team ever to reach the Super Bowl after winning back-to-back Super Bowls as well as the only team to win three consecutive Super Bowls. Two squads have won three consecutive NFL titles, well one in two different runs: the 1929-1931 and the 1965-1967 Green Bay Packers. The last two championships of that second Packers run in the 1960s concluded with the first two Super Bowl games, so Green Bay nearly claimed this distinction over 50 years ago.
The Chiefs have won eight consecutive division titles (the second-longest streak of all time), made the playoffs nine times in a row (tied for the…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ranking-2024-afc-contenders-by-tiers-chiefs-in-a-class-of-their-own-with-these-three-teams-on-their-heels/
Author : Garrett Podell
Publish date : 2024-09-01 14:53:47
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