Kansas City is 4-0 and idle this weekend. The best part of the bye is that nobody gets to tackle Kenneth Walker III for seven days.
Walker leads the NFL with 537 rushing yards through four games, with four rushing touchdowns, 84 receiving yards, and two more scores as a receiver. He signed with the Chiefs in free agency this offseason after finishing last season in Seattle, and he is the best addition any contender made.
These Numbers Are Not Normal
Walker went for 173 yards in the opener against Denver and a career-high 177 with two scores at Las Vegas in Week 4. Per NFL research cited by Heavy, that makes him one of three players in league history with two 170-yard rushing games in a team’s first four games. The other two are Jim Brown and O.J. Simpson.
His 5.5 yards per carry and 53.8 percent rush success rate are both career bests. Stretched over 17 games, his current pace lands near 2,283 rushing yards, which would clear Eric Dickerson’s record of 2,105. He will not actually get there. The pace is still the loudest thing in the league right now.
This Is How Kansas City Fixed Itself
For years the Chiefs asked Patrick Mahomes to drag a thin offense through January, and last season ended with him tearing an ACL in a loss to the Chargers. He had surgery, targeted Week 1, and made it back. Now he is quarterbacking a team that does not need a miracle from him on every possession, which is the single biggest change in Kansas City.
The supporting cast is doing real work. Undrafted rookie Kahlil Benson has been starting at left tackle since Josh Simmons got hurt and was named Offensive Rookie of the Month for September. “For what we’re asking him to do, he’s done a heck of a job,” Andy Reid said of him. Walker and Benson swept the AFC’s September offensive honors, a sentence nobody would have written about this franchise a year ago.
Even the punter is getting paid in trophies. Matt Araiza was named AFC Special Teams Player of the Week on Oct. 7. The Chiefs needed overtime to beat Indianapolis 33-30 and won 30-27 at Las Vegas, so 4-0 has not come easy, and they got it anyway.
The Chargers Are Walking Into Something
Los Angeles visits Arrowhead next, and the Chargers were still looking for their first win of the season through four games. They are also the team Mahomes was playing when he tore the ACL.
A rested 4-0 Kansas City team, with the league’s leading rusher and a quarterback who has that specific memory, hosting a winless opponent. I would not want that assignment either.
One more thing about this bye: it is early, which means the Chiefs now play 13 straight weeks to close the season. That is usually the argument against an early break. With a back averaging 134 rushing yards a game and an offensive line that found a starting left tackle for free, it looks a lot less scary than it did in August.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.