​Are you ready for some football? No, I’m not talking about preseason football. I’m talking about football with real, meaningful stakes attached to each and every play. The kind of football we haven’t seen from the Kansas City Chiefs for eight long months.It’s the longest Chiefs fans have gone without meaningful football we’ve seen in more than a decade. And I, for one, have not enjoyed it.Over this extended offseason, I’ve had plenty of time to ponder the good and bad of the roster. We all know the biggest questions with this team: Will quarterback Patrick Mahomes look like himself after his devastating knee injury? Will the right tackle situation get sorted out? Do the Chiefs have enough at defensive end to supply a quality pass rush for the defense? Can this group of receivers finally stay healthy and perform up to their draft pedigree?Those questions have been asked and answered time and time again. We’ll certainly continue to monitor them throughout the season, but today I want to explore some lesser-discussed factors that could meaningfully impact the 2026 Chiefs’ regular-season success.These are, in my opinion, the five biggest X-factors of the 2026 Chiefs campaign.5) Harrison ButkerI know this sounds small. But can Butker please get back to making extra points look automatic? Can a kickoff look less… difficult? These little things became big things for the Chiefs last season. Butker missed three extra points in his first six games. He also kicked the ball out of bounds in the fourth quarter of a tight game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, and he kicked it short of the landing zone in a one-score game against the Denver Broncos.Butker was viewed as an automatic for much of his career. He’s made 90 percent of his career postseason field goals, including an astonishing 6/7 on kicks of 50+ yards. Whenever the Chiefs get back to January, I trust him to make the big one. I just wish I still trusted him to make the easy one.Maybe it’s unfair. But it’s something I’ll be monitoring early in the season, especially his shaky performance against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, with a missed extra point and the miss on the potential game-winning field goal.4) Turnover DifferentialDo you know how hard it is to be a negative in the turnover differential with Patrick Mahomes as your starting quarterback? The 2025 Chiefs found a way to accomplish exactly that. No, these aren’t funny numbers. The Chiefs, through Week 15 last year with a healthy Mahomes, were -2 in turnover differential.It might have felt as though the Chiefs were committing turnovers left and right, but that wasn’t the case. The offense just found a way to commit the most back-breaking turnovers possible. Kansas City was actually tied for seventh in the NFL last year while Mahomes was healthy for fewest offensive turnovers in the league (13). Unfortunately, the defense forced just 11 turnovers over that same stretch. Only the New York Jets, Washington Commanders and