That sound you heard from watching the Kansas City Chiefs stomp out the Denver Broncos on Monday night was a collective sigh of relief. The concerns many of us had about our favorite football team did not come to fruition.
Phew.
In fact, it was quite the opposite. The fear subsided and gave way to jubilation. What a night. What a game. What a relief.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I came into Monday night with legitimate concerns. I’ve voiced many of those concerns here on this website in recent
weeks:
Can the defensive line generate enough pressure?
Did the Chiefs put too many of their eggs in the injured veteran cornerback basket?
Can these offensive tackles hold up?
Will head coach Andy Reid be willing to change the offense… again?
It felt like a lot of questions for a team built around Andy Reid, quarterback Patrick Mahomes, tight end Travis Kelce and defensive tackle Chris Jones. It made me nervous. So much so that I picked the Broncos to win.
What can I say, I’m a coward. I was quickly willing to acknowledge as much. The team came out with a swagger it had been missing. It didn’t come from anything anyone said. It was acted upon.
It showed up when defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo blitzed not one but two cornerbacks on the first play of the game. It showed up as Andy Reid — ANDY REID — gave the ball on a designed run to running back Kenneth Walker on seven of the first nine plays from scrimmage. It showed up when Mahomes scrambled for the first Chiefs touchdown of the season, only for it to get called back for a hold… And then he did it again on the very next play.
Those actions spoke louder than any words ever could.
Even if only for one night, the Chiefs got their championship swagger back.
The credit for that night should be spread around to countless individuals, but I would like to take a moment to credit a few in particular. I wondered aloud last week if Reid would be willing to make the changes necessary to get this team over the top. I think he’s an all-time great coach, but this game passes everyone by eventually. Was this his time?
If one game is any indication, Big Red still has some game left in him.
The general manager also deserves some kudos for what we witnessed this week. I personally believe Brett Veach gets far too much criticism. That said, one criticism is fair: The lack of star talent added to the roster in recent years has started to show up in bigger ways.
The Chiefs seemed to collect B-level players relentlessly. Sure, those players are helpful, but they lack the talent needed to take a team over the top. Blue-chip talents show up in the biggest moments of a game, or the biggest moments of a season. Think about how many times you recall Mahomes, Kelce or Jones putting the team on their back.
That’s been missing over the past couple of seasons as Kelce and Jones age into a different era of their respective careers.
Veach added a blue-chip talent (or two) this offseason.
The first is Kenneth Walker. We’ve talked for a couple of years about how the Chiefs lacked the ability to create explosive plays in the running game, and Walker is among the best in the league at that particular skill. He applied that ability Monday night to generate as many explosive runs in one game as the Chiefs had from their running backs all last season.
On the defensive side of the football, Mansoor Delane played just three snaps, but they were all impactful. He looked like a legitimate shutdown corner when he effectively ran Courtland Sutton’s route and forced an interception.
Takeaways sure are fun, aren’t they? We didn’t get to see many last year. The Chiefs finished the season 26th with just 14 forced turnovers. Those takeaways can lead to short fields, which ultimately result in points. That’s exactly what happened Monday night as the Chiefs had not one but two different touchdown drives begin on the plus side of the 50-yard line. The Chiefs had only three touchdown drives of 50 or fewer yards over the first 12 weeks of last year’s season.
Forgive me if it sounds like I’m waxing poetic. I got to watch my favorite football team open the season this week against a hated rival — a rival many projected to remain atop the division. Not only did the Chiefs beat them, but they also did so with the kind of dominance we rarely saw a year ago. The 21-point win would have tied for the largest margin of victory all season, but those wins came against the (5-12) Commanders and the (3-14) Raiders.
The last time the Chiefs beat a team that finished the season at or above .500 by 21 points was 2022, when Kansas City beat the San Francisco 49ers by a final score of 44-23. This team has been living on the razor’s edge of one-score victories in recent seasons, and this very much was not that.
This was a relief. With one game, my anxiety for the season was gone.
The Chiefs are back.
