KANSAS CITY, Mo. — As with most Kansas City Chiefs games in this abruptly disillusioning season, any number of self-inflicted issues played into their 16-13 loss to the visiting Los Angeles Chargers Sunday. Perfectly apt, under the circumstances.

A fourth quarter book-ended by ill-considered interceptions loomed largest among many issues that epitomized a season on the brink — and one that finally tumbled into the abyss.

In more ways than one.

Start with the sickening sight of seeing Patrick Mahomes crumpled on the field late in the game with a knee injury that the Chiefs later announced was a torn ACL.

That acute sense of impending loss became entwined with a defeat that sunk the Chiefs to a 6-8 record and eliminated them from playoff contention for the first time since 2014.

Most to the point, it officially snuffed out one of the most captivating runs in NFL history: seven straight AFC Championship Game appearances — every season since Mahomes became QB1 — with five Super Bowl berths and three triumphs.

A week after a loss to the Texans put them in deep jeopardy and evoked as somber a locker room as you’d ever see, this time around it felt more numb than anything else.

Or maybe it was some form of denial.

When I asked defensive lineman Chris Jones how he was processing the reality of missing the playoffs, he began speaking of a few elements of the game and how there was always a fighting chance before the question seemed to sink in.

“Are we out of the playoffs?” he asked.

In many ways, this was a long time coming.

What the Chiefs have been doing has been largely preposterous and unsustainable in the modern NFL, which is entirely designed to prevent dynasties and cultivate parity.

Drafting late every … single … year and playing more games than anybody else and the cumulative stress of compressed offseasons and getting everyone else’s best and playing the hardest schedules turns out to have a cost.

And yet here they were for the better part of a decade ... and even now only a year removed from playing in a third straight Super Bowl with a chance to be the first team ever to win three in a row.

It’s worth taking a moment to savor that, especially for a franchise that had gone a half-century between Super Bowls, and for fans who’d endured the most shattering of postseason heartbreaks along the way.

Also since this is an inflection point.

Because it’s the last dance as we’ve known it, anyway, and the end of this leg of their own eras tour — a term that particularly comes to mind as we’re left to wonder if we just saw Travis Kelce play in the final meaningful game of his storied career.

But if a curtain came down Sunday, it will be up to the Chiefs to make the sorts of bold and vital changes that render this an intermission instead of the end of the eminence.

Will this merely be Chiefs … interrupted, or a comeuppance that resets their trajectory altogether?

So much seems to have gone so wrong so suddenly this season, marred by debilitating penalty binges, a subpar running game (except in short-yardage situations), rashes of dropped passes, struggles to pressure opposing quarterbacks and often just looking a step slow.

And along with all that, a certain essential intangible — something they long considered part of a winning DNA — abandoned them. Or they it.

A team that over the last two seasons had won an NFL-record 17 straight one-score games is 1-7 in such games this season — and entered the fourth quarter against Houston last week tied 10-10 before losing 20-10.

Every situation is its own, especially across generations. But history, their own and what they’ve been chasing, holds some interesting precedents about the crossroads the Chiefs face.

The most recent example, of course, is the New England Patriots, who won six Super Bowls between the 2001 and 2018 seasons and whose legacy the Chiefs aspire to match or surpass.

You could make a persuasive case, though, that that Patriots’ run really was a fusion of two separate dynasties, largely only tethered together by coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady.

After the Patriots won in 2001, 2003 and 2004, it was a decade before they won again. In between, they got back twice and lost.

But the most relevant part is that roster churn for value and role players was instrumental in the equation.

With the transformative talent of Mahomes and the presence of Andy Reid, the fourth-winningest coach in NFL history, the Chiefs have certain parallel foundational elements in place.

But other than a burst of a few weeks this season, the offense has been mediocre at best for the Chiefs the last three seasons: They were 15th in scoring in both 2023 and 2024 and entered Sunday 11th before mustering just 13 points.

Yes, they’ve been hurt by injuries. Nowhere more than on the offensive line, where three starters were out for the game Sunday. Then they lost next-man-up Wanya Morris last week and Jaylon Moore along the way this week.

Brutal, but also part of life in the NFL.

And it would seem a copout, or at least a mistake, for the Chiefs to think that’s the fix for an offense that seems stale, can’t make defenses respect the run and is wildly inconsistent in the pass game because of drops, miscommunications and Mahomes’ own lapses.

The defense has to be refashioned to create more pressure and speed, and KC’s special teams need some sort of overhaul ... and kicker Harrison Butker some of kind of something.

All of this is worth a deeper audit in the weeks to come, something in which the Chiefs no doubt are engaging already.

But if the Chiefs are going to have a second act, if Mahomes’ overall career is to be the revelation it has been to date, it’s safe to say there will need to be a willingness to make some profound changes.

This isn’t something Reid can shrug off as just needing to clean up a few things and being oh-so-close. Because as sudden as this feels, it’s not hard to track the descent to living on the edge all of last season before getting jackhammered in the Super Bowl.

And here we turn to the cautionary tale of the Chiefs’ own history and their first iteration of a dynasty, when the franchise won three AFL titles between 1962 and 1969 and the ensuing Super Bowl IV.

NFL Films’ retrospective on the 1970 season was entitled “To Be Champions Again.” Instead, what it captured was the early elements of decay setting in on a would-be empire.

Those Chiefs missed the playoffs altogether, and then the 1971 team suffered a haunting first-round loss to Miami double-overtime. A franchise full of aging players and old ways to whom coach Hank Stram remained attached didn’t return to the postseason until 1986.

The parallels aren’t perfect, but they’re instructive.

“The leadership core of that team had gotten old,” Stram’s son, Dale, told me a few years ago. “And Dad was so sentimental.”

Reid has that in his makeup, too, though he’s also been amenable to such moves as firing defensive coordinator Bob Sutton to replace him with Steve Spagnuolo.

As much as anything else now, facing that revamping — and executing it well — is the key to what the sequel becomes.

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