Even in the offseason, Sundays can be anxiety-inducing. There’s the fleeting feeling of the weekend flowing away from you with a brand new, sometimes arduous work week ahead. The clock is ticking on the time you have for yourself before you have to start giving it back to the man. During football season, that’s generally ratcheted up tenfold as the NFL is almost always a crapshoot in terms of what outcome your team will produce on a given weekend. So when your team can grant you a virtuously relaxing Sunday afternoon full of mostly good feelings, that’s a great thing, right?
That’s exactly what the Kansas City Chiefs did on Sunday with a dominating 31-0 win over the division rival Las Vegas Raiders in a now-rare noon kickoff at Arrowhead Stadium. On a day where the weather was nearly perfect in Kansas City, so were the Chiefs in pitching the first regular-season shutout in Andy Reid’s historic head coaching career while firing on all cylinders on the offensive side of the ball as well.
Patrick Mahomes once again made the only non-reach case as the MVP frontrunner this season, looking as good as he has looked, perhaps ever in his also historic (albeit much more brief than Reid’s) career. Getting one of his favorite weapons back (again) certainly helped. Rashee Rice’s return was spectacular, the Chiefs’ running game gashed the Raiders essentially whenever they wanted, and the rest of the receivers and tight ends looked to be clicking on all cylinders with Mahomes as well. It was one of those “this is… nice” days in Chiefs Kingdom.
We’ve obviously experienced the reverse recently, but the last two weeks feel kind of like a renaissance for this 2025 team. They took some lumps early, but from an objective point of view, they are winners of 4 of their last 5 games. They’ve averaged 30 points a game in that span and only appear to be gaining strength from the tears of their opponents’ fan bases. This is looking like trouble for the rest of the league, and that is something that is as fulfilling for me to write as I imagine a symphony was for Beethoven.
Even in the best of times, there are still large, looming question marks for the Chiefs. Large in the sense that some of the team’s largest players (Trey Smith, Jawaan Taylor, Omarr Norman-Lott, and Josh Simmons) statuses are very much up in the air. Looming because the Chiefs have a dangerous-when-healthy Commanders team and the rival Buffalo Bills on the immediate horizon. But for now, we will focus on the mostly awesome from today and the fact that Kansas City is over .500 for the first time in 2025.
Overreaction #1: This is the best offense of the Patrick Mahomes era
Aerial fireworks in the immediate backdrop of the world’s greatest signal caller felt more than fitting for this portion of the blog. Patrick Mahomes has done some incredible things in his young career. Name a record and he’s probably got it, along with 3 Lombardi Trophies, 3 Super Bowl MVP honors, and 2 league MVPs. He’s 30. We all know this. We know that Mahomes’ greatness is immense and still growing, and we by now all know he’s without debate the best American football player on planet Earth at the moment.
What we don’t know is what his actual ceiling is, because we have never seen him play an extended number of games with an offense as talented top to bottom as the one we saw on Sunday. Rashee Rice’s return would have been big regardless of who else was in the receiving room, but the fact that he joins Xavier Worthy, a healthy Hollywood Brown, and Tyquan Thornton makes this a nearly lethal arrangement… for the rest of the NFL.
The Chiefs still have question marks at some positions on offense. The running back room leaves some room for improvement, even if the development and continued role expansion of Brashard Smith is reason for legitimate excitement. The offensive line limped away from Sunday’s game with Trey Smith going down with a back injury and Jawaan Taylor exiting with a shoulder injury. Add that to Josh Simmons’ status still being up in the air, and there are some major short-term red flags up front.
If the offensive line can hold up in even a remotely effective way, Mahomes has a buffet of options in front of him on every snap heading into the heart of the 2025 season. Which is good, because apparently everybody’s gotta eat. Or so the kids on Twitter are telling me. This unc may not know much, but I know an electric offense when I see one. With the depth provided by the Rice/Worthy/Brown/Thornton 1-2-3-4 punch in the receiving corps, Travis Kelce and Noah Gray on the ends, and a suddenly resurgent running back room, this offense could just be getting started on a potentially historic warpath. Which leads me to my next point.
Overreaction #2: The Chiefs have already lost their last game this season
Listen, I am an overly superstitious person. This has been well documented on this site. So saying this makes my skin crawl, and if the Chiefs do in fact falter again in 2025, I will be feeling that deeper than most — especially if it comes in a big moment. I’ll likely ask for this post to be taken down and somehow burned.
But this team isn’t losing again. The way the offense clicked, even if it was against the Raiders, is too much for anyone left on the Chiefs’ schedule to fully manage. The Bills’ defense just got beat up in back-to-back weeks by Drake Maye and Michael Penix. The Broncos have played no one — I repeat, no one. The Chargers are shaking so badly with the Chiefs now matching them record-wise that they won’t even be able to get their cleats laced up by the time Mahomes and the Chiefs have put 21 on the board. Sure, the Colts are a pleasant surprise, but do we think that Patrick Mahomes is going to walk into a game against Daniel Jones and lose?
Look, a lot can happen between now and the end of the season. There are still 10 games to be played. But I am not going to bat an eye if this team rattles off 12 in a row to end 2025 and finish at 14-3 with, presumably, the AFC’s top seed in the process. With the way the offense is gelling while just getting its best receiver back, and the efforts that the defense has strung together to start the season, there is just too much well-coached talent on this roster for the remainder of the Chiefs’ opponents to handle. The Chiefs not only have a talent edge, they have the most bloodthirsty competitor in the sport (Mahomes) and schemes on both sides of the ball that are concocted by two of the greatest to ever do it (Reid and Steve Spagnuolo).
Each week and each win that the Chiefs string together will be more and more painful for those who were dancing on their graves when the team stumbled out of the gates at 0-2. But if those highly ineffective football coroners thought that their misdiagnoses of the Chiefs wouldn’t be heard and held within the hearts of the winningest current franchise in the sport, they were sorely mistaken.
Overreaction #3: If something can derail the offense, it happened on Sunday
Mahomes is great. The receiving corps is loaded. The offensive line is, well, banged up. While we don’t know much yet about the long-term status of All-Pro guard Trey Smith (back), right tackle Jawaan Taylor (shoulder), and rookie left tackle Josh Simmons (personal), we do know that not having those guys protect Patrick Mahomes is a lot scarier than having them up front.
These injuries and absences may not have affected much on a day when the Chiefs were just comically better than the Raiders in every possible facet of football, but they could be enough to cause not just concern, but real issues for the Chiefs as the season grinds along. If they are forced to live life without Smith for an extended period of time, the run game will inevitably suffer. It might not be immediate, but it is almost certain. Mike Caliendo is a nice backup and could probably start for a lot of teams in the NFL, but he is not Trey Smith.
While Jaylon Moore has filled in extremely well for Simmons in two starts, having Taylor missing on the opposite side of the line suddenly turns a deep position into a very, very thin one. No matter the performances that Moore and Wanya Morris can craft, there is zero insurance policy behind them. We are fresh off the heels of a season where Kansas City was forced to slide a guard out to left tackle because of injuries. The problem this time around is if we do that, we’re not sliding Joe Thuney out there.
Let’s hope the injuries to Smith and Taylor are minor, and we can get some positive (at least less cryptic) updates about Simmons in the coming days. Having the whole gang back together in the receiving corps is fun. You know what would be more fun? Having an electric receiving corps that’s catching dimes from a potential 3-time MVP behind a rock-solid offensive line. This is a distinct reality. Can we just get the big guys back on the field, please?
