Sports

The unbeaten Chiefs visit the 3-3 champs in Seattle

Kansas City is 5-0 and the defending champion Seahawks have lost two straight, yet Seattle is favored for Sunday night’s game at Lumen Field.

Published

1 day ago

October 21, 2026

Massih Shahbazi

The Seattle skyline at night with Mount Rainier behind it, in black and white, beside the headline 5-0 meets the champs

The defending Super Bowl champions are 3-3 and coming off two straight losses. The team that’s supposed to be fading is unbeaten. On Sunday night in Seattle, those two stories meet.

The Kansas City Chiefs visit the Seattle Seahawks on Sunday Night Football on Oct. 25 at Lumen Field, with kickoff at 8:20 p.m. Eastern on NBC, according to NBC Bay Area. The Chiefs come in 5-0 and the Seahawks 3-3, according to Sports Illustrated’s preview.

Champions under pressure

Seattle won the last Super Bowl, and the Seahawks are learning how hard it is to defend a title. Back-to-back losses have left them at .500, according to SI, and a team that started the season with a target on its back now has something to prove at home.

KCTV5 framed the game from Kansas City’s side as a road test against the defending champions. For the Chiefs, it’s a chance to show their unbeaten start is real against the best team on paper they’ve faced so far.

The oddsmakers disagree with the records

Despite the records, Seattle opened as a slight favorite. FanDuel Sportsbook made the Seahawks 1.5-point favorites, according to Arrowhead Pride and Yahoo Sports.

That’s partly home-field advantage, which in Seattle is no small thing. Lumen Field is famous for crowd noise that disrupts visiting offenses. A 1.5-point line essentially says the teams are even, with the edge going to the home crowd.

What the Chiefs proved last week

Kansas City’s latest win came against the Los Angeles Chargers, a 22-6 victory that dropped the Chargers to 0-6, as AIME 360 reported. The Chiefs’ defense held an offense led by Justin Herbert to two field goals. Against Seattle, the question is whether that defense can do the same against a champion that knows how to score.

Unbeaten records in October can be misleading. Schedules are uneven, and a team that’s 5-0 might have played weaker opponents. A road game against the defending champions on national television is the kind of test that tells you whether a hot start is a trend.

A dynasty and a new champion

There’s a passing-of-the-torch subplot here. Kansas City spent the first half of the decade as the league’s standard, winning three Super Bowls in five seasons. Seattle is the new champion. A Chiefs win on the road would be a statement that the old order isn’t finished. A Seahawks win would say the title wasn’t a fluke and the champs are just finding their footing.

Games like this rarely decide a season in October. They do shape how teams see themselves, and how opponents see them, for the rest of the year. An unbeaten team that wins in Seattle starts to believe it’s the best team in football. A champion that loses three straight starts hearing doubts.

The price of a ticket

Fans who want to be there will pay for it. Tickets for the game start at $350, Yahoo Sports reported. That’s a steep entry price for a regular-season game, and a reminder of how much prime-time football has become a premium product.

For a family of four, the cost of getting in the door before parking, food and drinks can easily run past $1,400. Most fans will watch from home on NBC or Peacock, which is exactly what the league and its broadcast partners are counting on.

Prime time stakes

Sunday Night Football is the NFL’s marquee weekly broadcast, and the league schedules its most attractive matchups there. A champion against an unbeaten team is exactly what NBC wants: two big fan bases, national storylines and a game that could swing either way.

The broadcast also comes the same day as the NFL’s first regular-season game in Paris, between the Saints and Steelers. The league will have played in Europe in the morning and in Seattle at night, a snapshot of how far its ambitions now reach.

What to watch

For Seattle, the question is whether two losses were a blip or a warning. Champions often start slowly as opponents treat every game against them as a big one. For Kansas City, the question is whether its offense can handle the noise and its defense can keep a strong opponent off the scoreboard.

Injury reports later in the week, which SI’s preview tracks, could change the picture. Lines move when key players are ruled out.

On paper, it’s 5-0 against 3-3. In the betting market, it’s a coin flip with a home-field tilt. On Sunday night, one of those stories will look wrong.