Despite suffering an injury on the first drive of the game for the Kansas City Chiefs' offense, quarterback Patrick Mahomes still managed to throw for 360 yards and five touchdowns en route to a big win.
Kansas City's victory over the Arizona Cardinals was über-impressive, especially considering how many moving pieces are still involved in Andy Reid's offense and Steve Spagnuolo's defense. After jumping out to an early lead, the Chiefs kept their foot on the gas pedal and never looked back. Mahomes, even with a bum left wrist that appeared to collide with a helmet early in the first quarter, did more than enough to get the job done. Afterward, he gave a bit of an update on his injury.
"I fell on it on that first touchdown — kind of just threw my hand back and fell on it," Mahomes said. "I just got it looked at and everything looked good, so hopefully it's not something that lingers around [and it's] something that we can kind of get cleared up quickly."
Mahomes, who missed zero snaps with the injury, completed 30 of his 39 pass attempts and posted a scorching 144.2 passer rating during on the afternoon. It was one of the best performances of a now lengthy stretch of Week 1 greatness for the Chiefs' superstar quarterback, and he did all of it while striking a balance between favoring old reliable in Travis Kelce and hitting his new pass-catchers in stride.
Of those 39 attempts, Mahomes targeted a whopping 10 different receivers and completed passes to nine of them. Four different Chiefs hauled in Mahomes touchdown passes, and the target share was split between running backs, wide receivers and tight ends alike. It was one of Mahomes's more benevolent games of his career and when asked whether this is what he's grown to expect from the new-look Chiefs offense, was confirmed that.
"Oh 100%," Mahomes said. "With the amount of tight ends, running backs and receivers that we have, it's going to be everything. It's going to be a lot of guys catching passes, it's going to be running the football, it's going to be throwing the football. It's going to be short game, [and] it's going to be deep passes. I think that makes us a hard offense to stop, and when the defense plays like it did today, we're going to win a lot of football games."
All offseason long, ever since the Chiefs traded star wideout Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins, Mahomes was tasked with building chemistry with new additions such as JuJu Smith-Schuster, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Skyy Moore, Justin Watson and others. He even took the time and effort to host his offensive weapons down in Texas back in April in an effort to keep that continuity and progress going. The returns are already positive, and Mahomes is glad to see his teammates' faith being rewarded after showing them the ropes and working together to create something special.
"You want to go out there, kind of like I was saying earlier, and show the culture of how we play," Mahomes said. "And that all that hard work, and all that stuff we put in in OTAs, and in Texas and in training camp in St. Joseph [MO], that it's going to pay off. Until you go out there and do that, guys are just kind of blindly believing. I think now they see it. They're like, "hey, if we go out there and we practice like this, we prepare like this, we can go out there and win a lot of football games.' I think that's going to help us get better as the season goes on.
The Chiefs' road back to the postseason will surely come with greater challenges than Sunday's opener, but the fact that things came together so quickly on Sunday is a massive boost moving forward. With a critical intra-division matchup against the Los Angeles Chargers looming this coming Thursday, that rapport — and Mahomes's wrist — will be put to the test. In their first game in front of the home crowd this season, however, it appears that Mahomes and company will be up for the task at hand.
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