Guess who's back? The loathed 'n loaded Kansas City Chiefs...
This is the healthiest KC's offense has been in ages. Patrick Mahomes is a happy man. Look out, NFL.
This is what it looks like when the NFL’s official heel make its triumphant return to the national stage. All hell breaks loose. As the clock hit triple zeroes, JuJu Smith-Schuster extends a hand to Brian Branch and the Detroit Lions safety smacks him in the face.
Players from both sides jump in. It’s a melee.
There’s no singular Spygate-like inflection point. But at some point, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce and Andy Reid and these Kansas City Chiefs — winners of three Lombardi Trophies — morphed from beloved renegades to despised. The rest of the country quickly grew tired of the winning.
In this particular case, Branch didn’t appreciate a block to his back earlier in the game and the sight of JuJu’s hand set him off.
Well, they’re back. All obituaries written about these 2025 Chiefs held up as well as a “Dewey defeats Truman” headline. We’ll look back at Week 6 of this NFL season as the moment Kansas City reintroduced and reasserted itself as a heavyweight contender. At home, Reid’s team authored a 30-17 statement win over a Lions team that had been steamrolling opponents. Mahomes threw for 257 yards and scored four touchdowns with a 132.2 rating. Every time it appears Kelce is certifiably washed, he makes a critical play on third down. And for the first time in ages, there are very real, very dangerous weapons elsewhere.
Don’t let the Chiefs’ 3-3 record fool you.
It’s taken 14 months of patience, but this offense is on the verge of finally rebooting into a juggernaut.
Go Long is your home for longform this season.
We’re powered by you.
A year ago, Kansas City planned to blow-torch defenses with Rashee Rice, free-agent pickup Hollywood Brown and first-round pick Xavier Worthy. Plans that lasted all of one preseason snap. Brown suffered a shoulder injury. Rice soon joined him on IR with a torn ACL. And then Rice was suspended six games to start this ‘25 season, following a road-racing incident in Dallas.
Finally, the band’s back together. Rice returns this week and he was blossoming into a true WR1 before that injury. Worthy is arguably the fastest player in the sport. He made Lions cornerback Amik Robertson look silly on a touchdown last night. Brown is still in the same upper speed percentile. In tight quarters, he broke free from Lions defenders for 9- and 3-yard touchdowns.
Tyquan Thornton has been catching bombs in this offense.
Smith-Schuster and Noah Gray can even slide into more natural supplementary roles.
The run game supplied enough. Isiah Pacheco is healthy and I’d keep an eye on rookie back Breshard Smith.
Elsewhere in the division, the Los Angeles Chargers and Denver Broncos engaged in pillow fights vs. bad teams. After taking it to Dan Campbell’s Lions, the Chiefs look primed to go on a run.
Last week, we explored how the Lions so masterfully balance intelligence with instincts. On Sunday, the script flipped. The Chiefs were the composed bunch, going a full 60 minutes without committing one penalty or turning the ball over one time. And whereas the Lions were 0 for 2 on fourth down, KC went 2 of 3. One was the fourth and 3 touchdown strike to Worthy. “We knew we’d have an aggressive mindset,” Mahomes said afterward. “They have an aggressive mindset as a team. When coach believes in us, we believed in ourselves.”
Most encouraging is how these Chiefs are shifting into high gear.
Sure, Kansas City advanced to its fifth Super Bowl in six years in 2024 but it was such a plodding slog.
A slog that required voodoo magic late in games. Eleven of their 15 wins were by one score or less… often of the Holy hell, what did I just see? variety. This Mahomes-powered offense didn’t even eclipse 30 points in a game until they faced Buffalo in the AFC Championship Game.
A slog that forced Reid to revert to schematic smoke and mirrors. It’s a minor miracle these Chiefs have won so many games with No. 2 and No. 3 talents force-fed into No. 1 roles. In that conference title win over the Bills, Reid reached into his bag of tricks. Bills defensive end Greg Rousseau admitted players weren’t prepared for Mahomes’ 10-yard TD run with 10 minutes to go. Out of a diamond formation, the Chiefs pulled a tackle left and ran the quarterback right. Multiple Bills were hoodwinked, helpless.
It all caught up with the Chiefs, of course.
They managed to beat Philly in one Super Bowl with the likes of Kadarius Toney and Skyy Moore catching fourth-quarter touchdowns. But not the second time around. In the rematch, the Eagles bludgeoned the Chiefs inside the Superdome. From high above — from the jump — you could see that nobody was getting open.
For the first time since Tyreek Hill and Kelce were in their prime, the Chiefs should be able to line up and scorch defenses with receivers winning their 1 on 1’s. Rice will command every defensive coordinator’s attention and open the floodgates for others.
When asked about Brown’s night in his postgame presser, Mahomes lit up.
The collection of talent around hasn’t been this deep in a long time. A nod toward Chiefs GM Brett Veach.
“The great thing about this offense is it can come from everywhere,” Mahomes said. “Obviously, Hollywood. Tyquan’s had big games. Xavier’s had big games. Travis, obviously. Now, we’re getting Rashee back. So it’s all about building depth. Veach has done a great job with that. Those guys love each other. That receiving room, they love each other. They want each other to do good. And when you have that mindset as a whole room, you can have a lot of success.”
We sat down with one of those players ahead of the Super Bowl last season.
Worthy is a player very driven by anyone thinking he’s too small to excel.
“Everybody doubted me,” Worthy told Go Long. “I’m just coming in and proving them wrong. I’ve been hearing it my whole life. … Put on my film. You don’t see ‘gadget guy’ or ‘reverse guy’ or ‘jet sweep guy.’ You put him on film, you see a guy that can run routes or take the top off or catch it intermediate and go to the house. People downplayed my film.”
His touchdown on fourth down may be emblematic of everything to come for this Chiefs offense.
Robertson wants to get his hands on Worthy to disrupt the timing.
But he can’t. He’s too slow. He whiffs.
There were more options within this play. But the milisecond Mahomes saw Worthy break free, he knew where he was going with the ball. It’s going be awfully difficult for any defense to line up man-to-man vs. all of this speed.
“Now that we’re adding those guys back,” Mahomes said, “they all have the confidence that they can win their matchups and know how to work within the offense. It makes my job easier. When those guys up front are blocking like that, I have weapons everywhere where I can throw the football.”
Next to this Canton-bound QB, the person who’s most excited about Rice’s imminent return is undoubtedly Worthy. He’ll benefit most. Thrust into a leading role as a 21-year-old rookie through the Chiefs’ postseason run last season, he quickly had many Bills fans wishing their team went a different direction in that ’24 draft.
The sport’s best coach and best quarterback are about to unleash his Combine-record 4.21 speed on inferior defenders each week.
Mahomes bit his tongue afterward. He said he’s very excited about Rice’s return and wanted to leave it at that.
On social media, however, he posted the hashtag #EGE, a reference to one of Rice’s sayings: “Everybody’s gotta eat.”
All daytime television freakouts were always misguided. These Chiefs are a few bonkers plays from being 5-1. They’re the closest this sport has to Gregg Popovich’s San Antonio Spurs in that they spend a month or so playing possum, working through injuries and piece together a title contender by playoff time. If anything, this 2025 edition of the Chiefs is ahead of schedule. They’ve got a realistic chance of improving to 5-3 by the time they travel to Orchard Park, NY for a Nov. 2 date with the Bills… a group that relies on its own “everyone eats” mantra.
Along the way, we can probably expect JuJu Smith-Schuster and co. to crawl under the skin of opponents, too.
Head on a swivel.
No Huddle
I’m not sure which Aaron Glenn moment was worse. At the end of the first half in London, his New York Jets successfully ran a fake punt on fourth and 1 with 1:04 to go… and then lost all urgency. Glenn inexplicably let the clock run out. And once this horrendous 13-11 loss to Denver was complete — an unsettling scene straight out of Monster: The Ed Guin Story — Glenn snapped at a reporter for asking if Justin Fields would be his starting quarterback the next game. The same Fields who was sacked nine times and led New York to minus-10 yards passing. I loved Glenn in Detroit. Through an absurd amount of injuries, he kept that Lions defense competitive. We’re seeing firsthand that being a head coach is a totally different world than coordinating a defense. (It probably doesn’t help that the Jets are a cursed franchise.)
One sequence perfectly encapsulated The Aaron Rodgers Experience at age 41. In the third quarter of Pittsburgh’s 23-9 win over Cleveland, he wound up for a deep ball and woefully underthrew D.K. Metcalf up the left sideline. The very next play? He found Metcalf short and let the wideout do YAC damage for 25 yards. Three snaps later? He proved there’s still smoke on his fastball in throwing a 12-yard TD pass to Connor Heyward across his body. Injuries to Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson have rolled out a red carpet to Pittsburgh in the AFC North. Dinkin’ and dunkin’ and taking the occasional red-zone risk when required, Rodgers is playing within his means and doing more than enough to win. Whether this formula can work against the AFC’s elite remains to be seen.
In June 2023, over chicken wings, Nyheim Hines could hardly contain his excitement. He was set to play a major role in the Bills offense. (Here’s our story, icymi.) Then, he tore up his knee in a freak Jet Ski incident and has been forced to wait… and wait… and wait for his time to shine. It’s been a brutal two years. Loved seeing Hines return a kick 40 yards to set up a game-winning field goal for the Chargers on Sunday. He’s a freak athlete with a ton of heart. Not surprised one bit that he’s back and contributing.
Green Bay screwed around for a while with the Joe Flacco-led Cincinnati Bengals, but pulled away thanks to the brute physicality of both Josh Jacobs (150 total yards, 2 TD) and Tucker Kraft (19-yard TD reception). It wasn’t pretty, but the Packers should make no apologies. Once again, you can see why GM Brian Gutekunst made the move for Jacobs. Battling an illness, he battered Bengals defenders all day. When Matt LaFleur runs this offense through sheer physicality, the Packers are at their best.
Drake Maye was lights out again. The second-year Patriots QB threw for 261 yards and three touchdowns on 18-of-26 passing in a win over New Orleans. His best throw didn’t even count: a 51-yard deep shot to Stefon Diggs. (The wideout was flagged for a questionable OPI.) One of Maye’s coaches from ‘24 predicted that he’d be a top 5 QB by 2026. Maye might already be in such rare air.
No. 1 faces No. 2 tonight. It’s Caleb Williams vs. Jayden Daniels on Monday Night Football. Here’s how the 2024 draft went down. (No, the Bears didn’t care for Maye.)
Baker Mayfield isn’t only the MVP frontrunner. He’s easily the most entertaining player to watch in today’s NFL. Each week, the Buccaneers quarterback does something that demands an instant rewind. In Tampa Bay’s 30-19 win over San Francisco, Mayfield supplied the play of the day. On third and 14 in the third quarter, he’s sandwiched by a pair of 49er defensive linemen, ducks his head, escapes, jukes past on defender and blasts his shoulder through another for 15 yards. Receivers keep herding into the trainer’s room. This day, the Bucs lost rookie sensation Emeka Egbuka to a hamstring injury. Somehow, Mayfield makes it work with whoever’s out there. So, OK. On second thought, maybe the Browns fans out there should not hit that rewind button.
I need to issue a public apology for tempting fate and questioning the Chiefs in the mailbag questions!