SI:AM | Patrick Mahomes Didn’t Need to Be Great

He didn’t look like his usual self, but neither did the Chiefs.

Patrick Mahomes wasn’t asked to do much in his return from injury against the Broncos. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. I wouldn’t want to be a Broncos defender getting chewed out in the film room this week. 

In today’s SI:AM: 
😤 Chiefs crush Broncos
1️⃣ NFL power rankings
⚾ Should Ohtani stop pitching?

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Ground-and-pound Chiefs

If I told you before last night’s Broncos-Chiefs game that Patrick Mahomes would throw for just 184 yards while completing 55.6% of his passes but Kansas City would win 31–10, would you have believed me? 

Surely not, but thanks to a revamped run game, that’s exactly what happened. 

Free-agent addition Kenneth Walker III, the reigning Super Bowl MVP, ran for 173 yards on 23 carries as the Chiefs bullied the Broncos up front all night long. He’s the first Chiefs player to rush for at least 170 yards since Mahomes took over as the starting quarterback in 2018. 

All eyes were on Mahomes and his surgically repaired knee as he returned to the field nine months after tearing his left ACL and LCL. It’s an injury that usually takes players closer to a year to recover from, but from the beginning of training camp there was little doubt that Mahomes would be under center in Week 1. 

Was the knee the reason for his uncharacteristically bland performance? It’s tough to tell. He looked healthy enough while running for a 15-yard touchdown in the first quarter, but the Chiefs’ game plan was clearly designed to take pressure off of Mahomes. It wasn’t just that they leaned on Walker and the run game. When they did pass, they didn’t push the ball downfield. Of Mahomes’s 184 passing yards, 166 came after the catch. His average pass attempt was just five yards past the line of scrimmage, compared to 7.9 last season. 

“Going for the end zone, it kind of gave me that confidence that I can go out there and be myself,” Mahomes said of his touchdown scramble, according to ESPN. “I just wanted to play. I had done so much rehab and so much work to put myself in this position. I just wanted to get out there and play. This is what you do it for.

“That was definitely the moment, physically, to say all this work has paid off. I didn’t feel anything.”

Might Mahomes have been capable of playing more aggressively than he was asked to? Perhaps. We’ll find out in the coming weeks just how healthy his knee is and how quickly he can return to playing like the MVP candidate that he’s been in the past. The bottom line is that he didn’t have to do much last night because the Denver defense was shockingly ineffective. 

The Broncos’ D was among the best in the NFL last season, leading the league in yards allowed per play and sacks while ranking third in points allowed. But they were awful last night. The most glaring issue was the shocking number of missed tackles, which allowed Chiefs receivers to put up those gaudy YAC numbers and contributed to Walker’s big day on the ground. They missed 28 tackles, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, which led to 247 additional yards by the Chiefs. That’s the most yardage allowed on missed tackles since 2018. 

The Chiefs showed they could make adjustments and win in ways they don’t usually do. Now it’s time for the Broncos to make adjustments to get back to playing the way they did last year. 

The best of Sports Illustrated

Kenneth Walker III stole the show in his Chiefs debut. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

• Matt Verderame: Patrick Mahomes’s New Teammates Were the Real Story of His Return to the Field
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• Pat Forde: The SEC Is Back on Top of College Football’s Power Rankings
• Pat Forde: Most Bitter Breakups Between Coaches and Their Former Schools
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• Bryan Fischer: College Football Playoff Eliminator: Which Teams Are Out or Alive for a Berth After Week 2
• Ryan Phillips: It’s Time for Shohei Ohtani to Give Up Pitching for Good
• Jon Wertheim: 50 Parting Thoughts From the 2026 U.S. Open

The top five…

Travis Kelce was the beneficiary of one of the Broncos’ many missed tackles. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

… things I saw last night: 
5. Aaron Judge’s first homer since his return, which landed in the third deck in Minnesota. (The Yankees won, 8–3, to clinch a spot in the postseason.)
4. Travis Kelce’s 59-yard catch and run. (Yes, there was a missed tackle by a Broncos defender that made it possible.)
3. Kenneth Walker III’s 60-yard touchdown run. 
2. Walker’s second touchdown of the game, which came on a funky play out of a single wing formation. Andy Reid loves breaking out plays from the leather helmet days in goal line situations. 
1. Elly De La Cruz’s homer that flew out of Great American Ballpark. The sound of him making contact with the ball was unbelievable. 

📺 What we’re watching today …

MLB

Braves at Cubs, 7:40 p.m. ET, TBS, truTV

The Cubs took the opening game of the three-game series on Monday night as both teams are closing in on playoff berths.