KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 Kenneth Walker attempted to turn the corner on fourth down, still literally two yards behind the scrimmage, still literally two yards from the Chiefs turning the ball over on their own half of the field, when quarterback Patrick Mahomes raised his arms in the air.<\/p>\n
He knew.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s seen it.<\/p>\n
But this team hadn\u2019t seen a play like it in years.<\/p>\n
And the organization hadn\u2019t seen a win like this in at least three decades. Really.<\/p>\n
The Chiefs destroyed the Broncos, a team that fell just a couple of snaps shy of playing in the Super Bowl, 31-10 in their season opener on \u201cMonday Night Football.\u201d<\/p>\n
You could say it looked like the Chiefs are back, but you better be more specific, because the formula they invoked in front of a prime-time audience hasn\u2019t been available to them for a long time now. You know, the formula in which Patrick Mahomes is merely a spectator holding his arms in the air, along for the ride just like the 75,000 inside the home stadium.<\/p>\n
Mahomes started 2 for 12 through the air against the Broncos. In data that tracks back to 1999, the Chiefs had never won a game in which their quarterback started 2 for 12. In the last 25 years, it\u2019s only happened six times in the entire league. Yet the Chiefs never trailed.<\/p>\n
At long last, they have another path.<\/p>\n
Walker.<\/p>\n
He did turn the corner on that fourth-down play, and some 60 yards later, he had a touchdown. The Chiefs have turned a corner of their own.<\/p>\n
The story of a 6-11 year without the playoffs became what surrounded Mahomes \u2014 or the lack thereof. That reality was made all the more obvious by the unwatchable football in the final three games without him.<\/p>\n
The story of an opening-night win, the first installment of a retooling, is what surrounded Mahomes.<\/p>\n
Same title. Much different plot.<\/p>\n
The pass rush has returned. The defense came with it. The Chiefs held the Broncos to 176 yards. They pressured quarterback Bo Nix at the second-highest rate he\u2019s faced in his career.<\/p>\n
But the real supporting cast operated as the main character. Walker had the 60-yard touchdown, yet even without it, he still would have cleared 100 yards. He finished with 173 yards on 23 carries, and he also caught a touchdown on a goal-line trick play, of sorts.<\/p>\n
He generated 88 yards on explosive rushes alone (carries of 10-plus yards). A year ago, the Chiefs totaled 362. They found 24.3% of last year\u2019s total all in one night.<\/p>\n
He broke tackles. He made people miss in the open field. His \u201ccontact balance,\u201d as Chiefs head coach Andy Reid refers to it, is \u201cridiculous.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Broncos missed 28 tackles in the game, per Next Gen Stats. Walker was responsible for 14 of those misses. <\/p>\n
To put that into context, Isiah Pacheco forced 13 missed tackles all year.<\/p>\n
Rashee Rice, Xavier Worthy, Tyquan Thornton, Cyrus Allen and Jalen Royals combined for 37 yards.<\/p>\n
On most nights for the Mahomes Era, that\u2019s all we\u2019d be covering here.<\/p>\n
The return of Mahomes after offseason knee surgery is triumphant. But it is also quite apparently going to take a little bit before it looks familiar.<\/p>\n
The 2 for 12 was every bit as ugly as it reads. <\/p>\n
He was over-striding, he said. He rushed some of his reads, though his third-down blitz read to fire a quick throw to Travis Kelce felt vintage. It\u2019s all part of the process, he said after the game.<\/p>\n
The Chiefs could afford, at least for an opener against a team that won the AFC West last season, to be patient and wait on that process. <\/p>\n
Think of that: The Chiefs could not only scrape by while the best quarterback in football tries to find himself but could turn the game into a laugher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KANSAS CITY, Mo. \u2014 Kenneth Walker attempted to turn the corner on fourth down, still literally two yards…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1002279,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2063],"tags":[346,7,118,110,2438,2437,6],"class_list":["post-1002278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-chiefs","tag-football","tag-kansas-city","tag-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-kansascity","tag-kansascitychiefs","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117280211185117757","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1002279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}