Since he became the Kansas City Chiefs’ starting quarterback in 2018, Patrick Mahomes has essentially become the “Final Boss” of the AFC.

Mahomes and the Chiefs have been in the AFC championship game in each of his seven seasons as a starter, hosting the game six times. The Chiefs have made the Super Bowl five times in Mahomes’s career, including in each of the last three years.

But after a 22-19 loss to the Denver Broncos on Sunday, Kansas City is not only in danger of being unable to host the conference title game — it is facing an uphill climb to simply make the playoffs.

The Chiefs are 5-5 after the loss to the Broncos, good for ninth place in the AFC. The five losses are tied for the most in a single season for Mahomes, and are also the most defeats he has ever had through 10 games.

To add insult to injury, all five of Kansas City’s losses have come in one-score games — a season after it finished 10-0 in such contests.

“It sucks,” Mahomes said in his postgame press conference about the struggles in close games. “Don’t get me wrong. You got to feel that, but you got to be able to kind of use that energy to push it into the next week, into the rest of the season, and all you can focus on is the next game.”

He added: “We’ve been losing these close games recently, but we’ve played some good football in spurts. It’s just about being more consistent, and until we go out there and do it, all you can do is just keep saying, keep practicing and getting better and better and push yourself to go out there and do it on game day.”

The Chiefs need to get better quickly.

Their 5-5 record is tied with the Houston Texans and Baltimore Ravens in the AFC, with the Texans currently ahead of Kansas City in the standings due to their better conference record.

Also complicating matters for the Chiefs: Three of the teams ahead of them in the standings — the Buffalo Bills, Los Angeles Chargers and Jacksonville Jaguars — already have head-to-head wins against Kansas City. While the Chargers and Chiefs still have one matchup remaining, the Bills and Jaguars have clinched a tiebreaker, which means Kansas City has to finish with a better record to finish ahead of them.

Sunday’s loss also put the Chiefs three games back of the Broncos in the loss column — the first time in Mahomes’s career he’s been over three games behind the division leader, per NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” broadcast. Kansas City has dominated the AFC West under Mahomes, winning the division in seven straight seasons (and nine straight times dating back to 2016).

The Chiefs currently have the league’s 12th-toughest remaining schedule, per Tankathon. Kansas City will play the third-place Indianapolis Colts next week, and also has home games remaining against Denver and Los Angeles.

Mahomes is good enough, and the Chiefs are battle-tested enough, that it would be foolish to write them off. Still, Kansas City’s struggles so far this season are a shocking turn of events for a team that’s seemingly always penciled in to host the AFC title game.

Was Sunday a changing of the guard in the AFC West? Or the start of an underdog narrative for the Chiefs as the season heads into its homestretch? The next eight weeks will provide all the answers, but for now, Mahomes and Kansas City are in trouble unlike any they’ve experienced since the star quarterback entered the league.