The KC Chiefs crushed the Steelers once. Any reason to believe this will be different?

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger sat alone on the bench inside Heinz Field, absorbing his final moments at his home stadium. Only days earlier had he acknowledged what many had speculated: This would likely be the last season of his Hall of Fame career.

And thus the farewell tour could begin. It included something of a victory lap after that Week 17 outing, clapping hands with those sitting in the front row. And then he headed to Baltimore for one last stop.

Except it wasn’t one last stop.

The farewell tour has added an unexpected destination, and now its conclusion is to be determined. The Steelers made a last-ditch playoff effort fruitful, and they will travel to play the Chiefs in the AFC Wild Card Round on Sunday night — a Chiefs team that beat Big Ben by four touchdowns just three weeks ago before he publicized all this retirement talk.

And so now this is truly the end of the line, right? For real this time?

“We don’t have a chance,” Roethlisberger said, “so let’s just go in and play and have fun.”

In case you haven’t noticed, this is the theme in Pittsburgh this week — enjoy one more ride before it’s off into the sunset. It’s not uncommon in the playoffs for a team to embrace the role of an underdog. But the Steelers and their quarterback are leaning hard into it.

The Chiefs, of course, will not take part in the game. The Steelers are the Steelers, they say, and with that carries the reputation of a team that’s been a tough out in January under coach Mike Tomlin. Anything can happen in the postseason — particularly for a team that saw everything fall into place in the last week of the regular season just to get here.

“You’re dealing with a quarterback that really has all the experience in the world,” Chiefs safety Tyrann Mathieu said. “He’s won two championships. He’s been to the playoffs a bunch, and then he has some great talent around him as well.”

But player and coach’s speak aside, should this game really play out any differently than it did 21 days earlier?

It could, sure. But it would take a lot of the unexpected to go the Steelers’ way. The Chiefs are 12 1/2-point favorites Sunday, which is the largest spread in Las Vegas in Wild Card Round history, using data from Stathead.

The Chiefs aren’t favored because they won this matchup 36-10 three weeks ago — they won 36-10 three weeks ago because the better team played like the better team that afternoon. (That was even when short-handed, without Travis Kelce, by the way.)

Roethlisberger said this week that the Steelers are the 14th best playoff team among the 14 to secure a ticket. And, yes, there he goes again with the us-against-the-world mantra.

But is he wrong? The Steelers did not finish among the top-19 teams in points scored, yards gained, points allowed or yards allowed. No other team in the playoffs can say that. Using its DVOA metric, Football Outsiders rates the Steelers as the 24th-best team in the NFL this season — 25th in offense and 14th in defense — which is also the worst among the playoff field.

The Steelers averaged 3.85 yards per carry and 5.69 yards per pass attempt. Both were fourth-worst in the NFL this season. They allowed 4.99 yards per carry, dead last in the league. They fell middle of the pack in passing defense.

The Chiefs might not want to admit it publicly — nor should they — but when the Steelers cashed in on a 9% chance to reach the postseason, it provided them a break, too.

Well, it should.

What can wreck the party? In a word: Turnovers.

The Chiefs did catch some breaks in the meeting last month, when they won the turnover battle 3-0. Remember when Steelers wide receiver Diontae Johnson inexplicably fumbled away the ball to Mathieu, despite no defender being anywhere near him? Probably can’t bank on that again.

The turnover battle tends to drastically affect the outcome. And that can be reversed. The Steelers have players capable of providing game-changing plays by pressuring the quarterback, and throws under pressure have a greater opportunity of being intercepted.

So turnovers is one. The second? Adjustments. You can anticipate that after Patrick Mahomes shredded their defense last month, the Steelers will bring something different this time.

“Obviously they’re going to take away the stuff they did good against us and then they’re going to change stuff that they didn’t have as much success with,” Mahomes said. “They have a lot of really good coaches over there, they have a lot of really good players and they’ve played in playoff games.

So, sure, the Chiefs will have to be on alert, in accordance with the adage that anything can happen in the NFL. Nothing is certain in this league. But on paper, history of the franchises aside, there’s a reason the oddsmakers favor them so heavily.