The Chiefs didn’t just open their season with a win Monday night. They looked like a team that had found a different gear entirely. Now they get another shot at Arrowhead in prime time, and the timing works out just fine for Kansas City, which hosts the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday night after a 31-10 rout of the Denver Broncos.
The Colts, meanwhile, come in searching for a reset after getting rolled at home by the Baltimore Ravens, 41-23. That puts these teams on opposite ends of the early-season spectrum, with the betting line reflecting it: Chiefs -6.5.
Kansas City’s opener was built around Kenneth Walker, the offseason addition who lived up to the billing right away. He ran for a career-high 173 yards and a touchdown, then added 18 receiving yards and another score on “Heisman,” a single-wing play apparently designed from grainy film from the 1930s. For a Chiefs offense long identified as pass-first and RPO-heavy, it was a sharp shift - and one that also helped ease Patrick Mahomes back into action.
Mahomes was playing his first game in nine months after tearing the ACL and LCL in his left knee last December, and he said Wednesday that the knee isn’t the issue anymore.
“I feel normal,” Mahomes said Wednesday. “It’s like a blessing and curse.
You get sore everywhere else because you haven’t played football in so long. And so the leg is like the least of my worries right now.
“I’m just excited to be out there and playing. At the end of the day, you don’t know until you get out there and play, and I was able to go out there and play.”
The first half showed some rust. Mahomes was 8 of 18 for 62 yards before settling in and finishing 7 of 9 for 122 yards after halftime.
The Chiefs also had to patch together the line with left tackle Josh Simmons out because of a back injury, and undrafted rookie Kahlil Benson stepped in and held up well. Per Pro Football Focus, Benson allowed just one pressure in 11 true pass sets.
That combination - Walker carrying the load and Mahomes getting the ball out quickly - gave Kansas City a clean answer for Denver. According to Next Gen Stats, Mahomes averaged 2.27 seconds to throw, the fastest mark in the league in Week 1.
The Colts will have to deal with that kind of balance after spending opening week getting hammered on the ground by Baltimore. Derrick Henry ran for 144 yards and three touchdowns, Lamar Jackson added 40 rushing yards and a score, and the Ravens also exposed Indianapolis’ communication issues when they sped up between snaps and kept the defense scrambling.
That mess forced a change already. The Colts moved their green-dot defensive communication duties from safety Cam Bynum to linebacker Akeem Davis-Gaither, and that kind of adjustment is exactly the sort of thing Andy Reid can exploit.
Indianapolis defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo knows Mahomes well from his time running the Cincinnati Bengals’ defense, and he’ll try to regroup with two-time All-Pro Sauce Gardner and Super Bowl LIV champion Charvarius Ward in the secondary.
“Coach Anarumo is one of the best defensive coordinators I’ve went up against,” Mahomes said. “They will come out firing, just like any other team in the league.
When you lose that first game, you always want to get back on the right track. And so we have to match that intensity.
We can’t let this first week, a big win, make us be lackadaisical or something like that.”
Kansas City’s defense also gave the team plenty to like Monday night. The Broncos struggled to protect Bo Nix, and the Chiefs got sacks from cornerback Nohl Williams and defensive ends Felix Anudike-Uzomah and R Mason Thomas.
Rookie cornerback Mansoor Delane picked off Nix on the opening drive of his NFL career before leaving with a shoulder injury, though he is expected to be OK for Sunday. With safety Chamarri Conner still ailing as of Wednesday, Jaden Hicks could make his second straight start.
Steve Spagnuolo’s group held Denver to 176 yards, including just 61 on the ground, and now it gets another major test in Jonathan Taylor. Nick Bolton called him exactly what he is.
“(A) premier back, man,” Bolton said of Taylor. “He’s been one of the best backs in this league since I got here.
Just tests the edges, good cutback, good vision, hands out the backfield, screen guy, kind of does it all for them. So it’s definitely a challenge.
It’s going to be all hands on deck. It’s going to take all 11 of us to keep him bottled up.”
The Chiefs have already shown they can handle that matchup. In their last meeting with the Colts last November - their last win before Monday night - they held Taylor to 58 rushing yards and forced four straight three-and-outs on the way to a 23-20 overtime comeback.
Indianapolis is also dealing with its own quarterback comeback story. Daniel Jones returned from an Achilles tendon tear suffered a week before Mahomes hurt his knee, and he opened the year by going 19 of 31 for 166 yards with a touchdown and an interception against Baltimore.
The Colts also reshaped their receiving group this offseason, locking up Alec Pierce on a lucrative four-year contract and adding Keenan Allen as a possession option. Pierce led the team with 61 receiving yards in the opener despite limited snaps, while Allen caught all six of his targets for 32 yards.
The setup is simple enough: Kansas City wants to keep rolling, and Indianapolis is trying to avoid an 0-2 start. Based on what both teams showed in Week 1, the edge belongs to the Chiefs. Kansas City has rebooted its offense in a way the Colts looked ill-equipped to handle, and for a second straight week, the Chiefs should be able to run the ball against an opponent that knows it’s coming and still may not have a clean answer.
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