KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- There’s no telling whether having running back Jamaal Charles available for the playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers would have made a difference and turned a loss into a victory for the Kansas City Chiefs.

But the Chiefs, who struggled most of the game on offense, could have used the kind of boost a healthy Charles might have been capable of providing.

Running back Jamaal Charles hasn't returned to the form he displayed before suffering a torn ACL in October 2015. Jason Hanna/Getty Images

The question was whether Charles, who had arthroscopic surgery more than two months ago to repair a torn meniscus in one knee and to clean some debris from the other, was in any position to help. Per coach Andy Reid, he wasn’t.

Reid indicated late in the regular season that Charles wasn’t quite ready to return. On Monday, a day after the Chiefs lost 18-16 to the Steelers to end their season, Reid said he was confident they made the right decision to make linebacker Justin March-Lillard the one player they brought back from the injured reserve list rather than Charles.

Charles didn’t say whether he could have returned to help the Chiefs in a recent post to his blog.

As it turns out, March-Lillard was of little help against the Steelers. He got in for only one play, on special teams. That being the case, it might have been worthwhile for the Chiefs to activate Charles. If he wasn’t healthy enough to help even on a handful of plays against the Steelers, the Chiefs could have deactivated Charles for the game and lost nothing except the one special-teams play March was involved in.

Charles is 30, and other than some part-time duty in three games in 2016, hasn’t played in a season and a half. There's no telling whether Charles will ever be the player he was before suffering a torn ACL in October 2015.

“That's way too hard to predict," Reid said. “Right now it’s just a matter of keeping the swelling out of that thing and him being able to work at that same level that he was able to do before, and he’s here doing that. He wants it. Normally with the great athletes like he is, the Hall of Fame athlete that he is, given that if at all possible physically he’d be able to do it again."