Chiefs playoff hopes slim

The Chiefs are not making it easy.

After losing 20-12 at Pittsburgh on Sunday, Fallon’s Josh Mauga and his Kansas City teammates face a must-win situation in the regular-season finale this weekend when they host San Diego. But they’ll need some help, too, after the Chargers came back from 21 points down to nip San Francisco on Saturday.

A win over San Diego (9-6), though, must be assisted by a loss from Baltimore (9-6) and a loss or tie from Houston (8-7) in order for Kansas City (8-6) to make the playoffs for the second year in a row. Baltimore hosts Cleveland (7-8), while Houston hosts Jacksonville (3-12).

“You’re sitting here at the end of a long season with an opportunity. We need help now,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid told the team website. “Not only do we need to take care of business this weekend, but we need some other people to do the same thing for us to get in.”

The key, obviously, is to get into the playoffs because as the postseason has shown, anything can happen. Records are no longer relevant. It starts with a win over San Diego.

“We have to take care of business here first this week,” Reid added. “We have a good San Diego team coming in here, we have to prep ourselves and make sure we go through that whole process here so we’re ready to go.”

While Mauga, a linebacker who was second on the team with four tackles on Sunday, and the Chiefs’ defense were able to contain the Steelers’ offense for most of the game. It’s been the offense that has struggled immensely, especially in the red zone.

“The simple part is we weren’t efficient, we weren’t getting the things accomplished that we needed to for one reason or another,” said Reid, whose team had to settle for four field goals from Cairo Santos.

But facing the No. 1 offense in the league, Reid was happy with defensive coordinator Bob Sutton’s game plan. Ben Roethlisberger threw for one touchdown and Le’Veon Bell rushed for one as the Chiefs’ defense forced Pittsburgh to kick two field goals.

“They’ve got a good runner and we held that runner to minimum yards, they’ve got a good quarterback he was under 300 yards,” Reid said. “One receiver, he got going there a little bit towards the end there. The turnover thing, Bob would say something about that, he would say something about getting off the field maybe a little bit sooner but I thought that over all it was a pretty good game plan.”