With the AFC Showdown set for tonight in Kansas City, the Chiefs face their division rival, the Denver Broncos. So many stories are circling this early-season matchup, but the only one that matters is how Patrick Mahomes performs in this game.
Let’s be honest, Patrick Mahomes is the face of the Kansas City Chiefs franchise, and the NFL, if they’ll be honest. The league scheduled back-to-back primetime games, hoping the face of the league would be available for both.
With the final game of Week 1 upon us, the Chiefs are once again in the national spotlight, and it’s a titanic moment for Mahomes because he’s tired of talking about the knee injury, rehab, and whether he’ll do his usual magic this season starting Monday night.
I’m sure the media will keep asking him about it, win or lose tonight, but if he’s done with the questions, so am I.
It’s hard to gauge this game because, honestly, so much depends on Mahomes. Yes, the changes on the offensive line- undrafted rookie Khalil Brown and veteran Jaylon Moore will start at left and right tackle- could be the lynchpin of the success of this offense.
I generally have a feel for how a game pans out, and over the last several weeks, once they broke camp, I’ve had a sense that Mahomes will look at Monday night as the first game he started in the NFL in 2018.
That afternoon, against the Los Angeles Chargers, he completed 15 of 27 passes, threw for 256 yards, and threw four touchdowns and zero interceptions. A week later at Pittsburgh, he threw six touchdowns.
Will we see that type of performance tonight?
For the fan base that wants to bury the 2025 season completely, and those that want to see Denver knocked off their AFC West perch, I hope so.
Yes, we are a fickle fan base, and now we’re like the rest of the NFL teams where one injury can alter your season. We already saw significant injuries in week one, but now we are prepared, and it’s vital Mahomes gets past the last eight months by winning this game.
Mahomes eats pressure 24 hours a day. He loves the big games, the big moments, and though he doesn’t always succeed, it’s proved he’s far more Superman than Human.
When Mahomes emerged as the starter in 2018, we had hope, but no way could anyone envision he’d take the Chiefs to five Super Bowls, winning three of them. He put the entire Chiefs nation on his shoulders, waiting five decades to drink from the Lombardi Trophy.
I can’t think of another player in franchise history who understands the prime directive, Super Bowl or Bust, better than Mahomes. His head coach, Andy Reid, made it emphatically clear at the first team meeting in St. Joe: this team will never have another 11-loss season.
This team is quite different than last year’s bunch. They have youth on both sides of the ball that were hand-selected to continue the Chiefs dynasty. Granted, that’s a lot to ask from the younger players, but they accept that challenge when they enter the franchise.
So, this game, with all the potential storylines, will be written mostly on the success or failure of Mahomes. It’s not fair, and even one could argue he needs a couple of games to bounce into a better rhythm.
Yet he doesn’t feel that way and has made it clear he’ll play the same way he has always done between the white lines. His goal has remained the same: win every game. There are no moral victories for Mahomes, and he would not have it any other way.
He’s a machine that has a clear picture of his future, because he’ll define it. Let’s hope that definition becomes painfully clear to the rest of the NFL, who will see what Mahomes can do with a bigger fire in his belly.
Score Prediction: Chiefs 26 – Broncos 23
