Chiefs are in a rare position of playing for pride down the stretch. Losing would have its benefits

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Kansas City Chiefs insist that they are playing to win over the final three weeks of the season.

That's their competitive nature.

It wouldn't be the worst thing to lose.

The Chiefs already are assured of having their decade-long string of postseason appearances end, along with a streak of nine AFC West titles, seven conference championship games and three Super Bowl appearances. Patrick Mahomes had surgery Monday on two torn ligaments in his left knee, and Kansas City is dealing with a multitude of other injuries on both sides of the ball.

In other words, the Chiefs have little to play for but pride beginning with Sunday's trip to Tennessee.

“We owe it to the players. We owe it to the coaches. We owe it to the city,” Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said this week.

Which is fine. But pride won't help the Chiefs going forward as much as draft positioning.

They haven't picked inside the top 10 since 2013, when they took Eric Fisher first overall in their first draft after hiring Andy Reid as coach. In fact, their success over the past decade has meant more drafts without a first-round pick at all (four) than ones with a top-20 selection — one, which was Mahomes, whom they traded up to take 10th overall in the 2017 draft.

Yet the biggest silver lining to their 6-8 record this season is that they should be in far better position come April to pick impact players near the top of each round. Exactly how close to the top depends on how they fare over the next three weeks:

__ Last year, the Giants and Titans went 6-11 and picked sixth and seventh, respectively, while the five 9-8 teams began at No. 14.

__ This year, the 49ers picked 11th with their 6-11 record, while the Bengals chose six spots later after their 9-8 finish.

So, the difference between three wins and three losses for Kansas City is about a half-dozen spots in the draft.

Not just in the first round. In every round.

It's an opportunity for Kansas City to truly supplement a talented but aging core of players for the first time since Mahomes became the starting quarterback following the 2017 season. General manager Brett Veach has only picked in the first round seven times in the past decade, and five of those were within the final five picks of the round, a welcomed byproduct of all those winning years.

Throw Round 2 into the equation and the Chiefs have had nine top-50 picks total over the last 10 years.

Now, some of those early picks were traded away, allowing the Chiefs to trade up for Mahomes and land players such as Frank Clark and Orlando Brown Jr. from other teams. But it doesn't change the fact that it made the most cost-effective way to build out a roster — through the draft — a far more daunting challenge for them.

As it stands, the Chiefs do not have sixth- or seventh-round picks in April, but they have an extra fifth-rounder to go with picks in each of the first four rounds. That means plenty of chances to fill their many pressing needs, such as an impact running back — they haven't had one since Jamaal Charles a decade ago — along with help at defensive end, linebacker and in the secondary.

It all sounds good in theory: lose and get better draft picks.

But human nature is involved. The Chiefs haven't had a losing season since Reid became the coach, and that means something to the guys in the locker room. So does the name on their jerseys and the emblem on the side of their helmets.

Suck for Luck? Tank for Tua?

The Chiefs would rather "Win for Self-Worth."

"It's something that's important to us," Chiefs linebacker coach Brendan Daly said. “We understand as coaches, as players, what we do out there is our walking, talking, breathing resume, and you want that to be what you'd like that to be.”

Chris Jones was a rookie in 2016, which means the three-time All-Pro defensive tackle has never before missed the playoffs. And given that the 31-year-old may have only a few seasons left, Jones doesn't sound like someone willing to tank for anybody.

“Things didn't go as planned within the season, but you still have a name on the back of your jersey that you have to play for,” he said. “There's still opportunities, man. Still opportunities to finish strong as an individual and together as a team.”

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Los Angeles Chargers running back Omarion Hampton (8) is stopped by Kansas City Chiefs' Nohl Williams (20), Chamarri Conner (27) and Drue Tranquill (23) during the first half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid watches from the sidelines during the first half of an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Chargers Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Ed Zurga)

Los Angeles Chargers linebacker Daiyan Henley (0) intercepts a pass intended for Kansas City Chiefs running back Kareem Hunt during the second half of an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Ed Zurga)

Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce heads off the field following an NFL football game against the Los Angeles Chargers Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Ed Zurga)

FILE - Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers players take a knee after Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (15) was injured during an NFL football game Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo. (AP Photo/Peter Aiken, File)

A frantic search for the suspect in last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University ended at a New Hampshire storage facility where authorities discovered the man dead inside and then revealed he also was suspected of killing a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor.

Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead Thursday night from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief.

Investigators believe he is responsible for fatally shooting two students and wounding nine other people in a Brown lecture hall last Saturday, then killing MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro two days later at his home in the Boston suburbs, nearly 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Providence. Perez said as far as investigators know, Neves Valente acted alone.

Portugal’s top diplomat said Friday that the government was taken aback by revelations that a Portuguese man is the main suspect in the mass shooting at Brown and the killing of an MIT professor who was of the same nationality. Police said they were contacted by U.S. authorities Thursday once Neves Valente was named.

Foreign Minister Paulo Rangel said Portugal has provided “very broad cooperation” in the case. He said in comments to the national news agency Lusa that “the investigation is far from over.”

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled there as a graduate student studying physics from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001.

“He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.

Neves Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, U.S. attorney for Massachusetts Leah B. Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. The same year, Neves Valente was let go from his temporary student support and faculty liaison position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.

Neves Valente, who was born in Torres Novas, Portugal, about 75 miles (121 kilometers) north of Lisbon, had come to Brown on a student visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent resident status in September 2017, Foley said. It wasn't immediately clear where he was between taking a leave of absence from the school in 2001 and getting the visa in 2017. His last known residence was in Miami.

After officials revealed the suspect's identity, President Donald Trump suspended the green card lottery program that allowed Neves Valente to stay in the United States.

There are still “a lot of unknowns” in regard to motive, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “We don’t know why now, why Brown, why these students and why this classroom,” he said.

The FBI previously said it knew of no links between the Rhode Island and Massachusetts shootings.

Police credited a person who had several encounters with Neves Valente for providing a crucial tip that led authorities to him.

After police shared security video of a person of interest, the witness — known only as “John” in a Providence police affidavit — recognized him and posted his suspicions on the social media forum Reddit. Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did.

John said he encountered Neves Valente about two hours before the attack in a bathroom in the engineering building, which was where the shooting occurred, and noticed he was wearing inappropriate clothing for the weather, according to the affidavit. Still before the attack, he again bumped into Neves Valente a couple blocks away and saw him suddenly turn away from a Nissan sedan when he saw John.

“When you do crack it, you crack it. And that person led us to the car, which led us to the name,” Neronha said.

His tip pointed investigators to a Nissan Sentra with Florida plates. That enabled Providence police to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety. Those cameras track license plates and other vehicle details.

After leaving Rhode Island, Providence officials said Neves Valente stuck a Maine license plate over his rental car’s plate to help conceal his identity.

Investigators found footage of Neves Valente entering an apartment building near Loureiro's in a Boston suburb. About an hour later, Neves Valente was seen entering the Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility where he was found dead, Foley said. He had with him a satchel and two firearms, Neronha said.

Loureiro, a 47-year-old physicist and fusion scientist, joined MIT in 2016 and was named last year to lead the school’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center, one of its largest laboratories. The scientist from Viseu, Portugal, had been working to explain the physics behind astronomical phenomena such as solar flares.

In Lisbon, he was remembered as a highly regarded researcher and instructor for “all the contributions he gave and what he could still have given, all the equations left unwritten,” said Professor Bruno Gonçalves, head of the Institute for Plasmas and Nuclear Fusion at Instituto Superior Técnico.

Gonçalves added, “It is difficult to imagine in what context someone would want to harm someone that works in this field.”

The two Brown students killed during a study session for final exams were 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook and 18-year-old freshman MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. Cook was active in her Alabama church and served as vice president of the Brown College Republicans. Umurzokov’s family immigrated to the U.S. from Uzbekistan when he was a child, and he aspired to be a doctor.

As for the wounded, three had been discharged and six were in stable condition Thursday, officials said.

Although Brown officials say there are 1,200 cameras on campus, the attack happened in an older part of the engineering building that has few, if any, cameras. And investigators believe the shooter entered and left through a door that faces a residential street bordering campus, which might explain why the cameras Brown does have didn’t capture footage of the person.

Associated Press reporters Barry Hatton and Helena Alves in Lisbon, Portugal, Mark Scolforo in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu, Hallie Golden in Seattle and Matt O'Brien in Providence contributed.

A woman lights a candle at a memorial set up in front of the Barus and Holley engineering building at Brown University in Providence, RI, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/ Mark Stockwell)

Law enforcement officers search the area for the Brown University shooting suspect, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)

FILE - People hold candles during a vigil in Providence, R.I., for those injured or killed in the previous day's shooting on the campus of Brown University, Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

Law enforcement officers are seen outside a storage facility where a suspect in the shooting at Brown University was found dead, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025, in Salem, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)