Question: What does the Chiefs’ offense look like when the offensive line cannot hold?

Answer: Three points, 213 yards, no snaps in the red zone, and eleven games to decide whether the fix is already on the roster.

Kansas City lost 20-3 at Seattle on Sunday night, its first defeat of the season, and the shape of the game was plain. The Chiefs ran 50 plays and gained 213 yards, 4.3 a play. They held the ball for 24 minutes and 9 seconds. They never reached the red zone, which had not happened in any start of Patrick Mahomes’ career.

Seattle (4-3) had lost two straight and played as though its season depended on it. Jaxon Smith-Njigba caught nine passes for 150 yards and a touchdown, 129 of them before halftime. Sam Darnold went 20 of 28 for 257 yards and was not sacked, after taking five in each of the previous two games. The Seahawks ran 69 plays, converted 11 of 16 third downs and held the ball for nearly 36 minutes.

The Chiefs’ week was stranger than the score. On Wednesday, according to NFL Network’s Mike Garafolo and Ian Rapoport, Andy Reid and Mahomes told left tackle Josh Simmons to leave an offensive meeting after Simmons, asked to lower his feet, said his back and hips were sore. Reid told him to see the trainers. Mahomes backed the coach. Simmons left, remained in the building, apologized afterward, and acknowledged that he could have handled the situation better. The next day the team put him on injured reserve with a bulging disc in his lower back. He cannot return until Week 11.

The game

Seattle’s first score came on a 25-yard Jason Myers field goal, set up by a 33-yard Darnold pass to Smith-Njigba. Ty Okada intercepted Mahomes on the next possession, on a throw for Jalen Royals. Darnold then found Smith-Njigba for 28 yards and a touchdown with 1:44 left in the half.

The Chiefs’ best play of the night was a defensive one. Darnold drove Seattle to the Kansas City 1, and Nohl Williams intercepted him in the end zone and returned it 65 yards. Butker’s 58-yard attempt at the horn fell short, and it was 10-0 at halftime.

Myers made a 35-yarder in the third quarter. Kansas City reached the Seattle 30, stalled, and took a 50-yard field goal from Butker. In the fourth, Mahomes found Kelce for 19 yards and Butker missed from 45, wide right. Emanuel Wilson ran 21 yards for the game’s last touchdown with 3:47 remaining.

Mahomes finished 19 of 33 for 165 yards with no touchdowns and one interception, a 58.3 passer rating. He was sacked once. ESPN counted pressure on 8 of his 15 first-half dropbacks. The receivers were worse than the line: Xavier Worthy, Cyrus Allen, Justin Watson, Andrew Armstrong and Jalen Royals combined for six catches and 39 yards. Kelce caught four for 44 and Noah Gray three for 44.

It was only the second full Mahomes start in which the Chiefs did not score a touchdown, as NFL.com noted, and the first was a 24-9 loss to Denver in 2023. The Broncos are next.

Kelce’s four catches raised his career total to 1,104, moving him past Marvin Harrison and Cris Carter into fifth on the all-time list.

Kenneth Walker III, facing the franchise with which he won a Super Bowl before leaving for Kansas City, ran 14 times for 36 yards after entering the week as the league’s leading rusher at 665. Seattle stayed in nickel or dime on all 50 snaps and held him to 19 yards on eight carries against seven-man boxes, according to Next Gen Stats. He got five carries after halftime. “I was frustrated. That’s about it,” Walker said, in ESPN’s account of his return to Seattle.

Kansas City had led the league at 7.3 yards per play against five or more defensive backs. Seattle bet that the depleted receiving corps could not make it pay, and the bet was not close.

The defense kept the game within reach. It stopped Seattle on all three red-zone trips, and Williams’ interception was the reason the halftime deficit was ten rather than seventeen. Drue Tranquill made 12 tackles, Nick Bolton 11 and Williams 10. But the pass rush did not get home once, against a line that had given up ten sacks in the previous two games.

Butker’s season is now a problem. He made one of three field goals in Seattle, missing from 45 and 58, and he is 11 of 16, with two makes from 50 yards or farther. Asked about it, Reid was brief: “He’s off a bit. Got to fix it.” The same game recap recorded his fuller verdict on the night: “All three phases we struggled, so we’ve got to do better, and that’s my responsibility.”

Mahomes was more direct. “This sucks. You don’t want to perform like this in primetime,” he said, in ESPN’s report on Walker’s return.

The state of the team

At 5-1 Kansas City still holds the AFC’s first seed, is 3-0 in the division and 5-0 in the conference, with a point differential of plus-40. Buffalo is 5-1 and second, Cleveland 5-2 and third, Denver 5-2 and fifth after three straight wins. The top seed carries the only bye, and the margin for it has narrowed.

The offense now averages 23.8 points and 387.2 yards a game, 245.7 through the air and 141.5 on the ground at 5.3 a carry. The running game that carried the first five weeks produced 50 yards in Seattle.

Third down is 28 of 71, 39.4 percent. The red zone is 19 scores in 23 trips but only 13 touchdowns. Penalties are 41 for 359 yards. The kicking game is 11 of 16.

ESPN dropped Kansas City to fourth in its Week 8 power rankings, from second. Nate Taylor’s entry makes the case that Walker is the reason the team is where it is: he is second in the league with 701 rushing yards, and his production has made play-action work for Mahomes. Both things are true. The offense was built to run through Walker while the receivers heal, and the healing has not happened.

Injuries and personnel

Josh Simmons. Placed on injured reserve October 22 with a bulging disc in his lower back. The team’s head trainer, Rick Burkholder, said Simmons had “plateaued in the rehab process” and does not need surgery, per CBS Sports. He is ineligible to return until Week 11, when Arizona visits on November 22. The 2025 first-round pick has appeared in eight of a possible 22 games.

Jaylon Moore. The right tackle remains in the concussion protocol and is listed as questionable on October 27. He missed Seattle.

Rashee Rice. The hamstring has cost him two games. He is listed as questionable on October 27.

Tyquan Thornton. On injured reserve since October 13 after surgery on a dislocated ankle.

Brashard Smith. The backup running back went on injured reserve October 24 with a hamstring injury, NBC Sports reported. The Chiefs promoted Jaydn Ott from the practice squad and activated linebacker Cooper McDonald.

The line. Kahlil Benson, an undrafted rookie, stays at left tackle. Joshua Ezeudu plays right. That is the arrangement until Simmons returns, and it is the arrangement Denver will attack.

The next game

Kansas City plays at Denver on Sunday at 3:25 p.m. Central (2:25 p.m. in Denver), at Empower Field at Mile High, on CBS.

The Broncos are 5-2, 3-0 at home, and have won three straight: 23-17 at the Chargers, 17-14 in overtime over Seattle, and 30-16 at Arizona. Their losses were 31-10 to Kansas City in the opener at Arrowhead and 24-14 at San Francisco. Bo Nix is the quarterback. They have scored 144 points and allowed 141, which is a good defense rather than a great one.

DraftKings lists Kansas City at minus-1.5 with the total at 41.5, and the money lines at minus-125 for the Chiefs and plus-105 for Denver. ESPN’s Matchup Predictor gives Kansas City 55.7 percent and Denver 43.9. Those are the feed’s numbers, not this site’s, and they describe a game the book expects to be close.

Three things to watch.

The edges. Benson and Ezeudu against a Denver front that lists Zach Allen as questionable. If Mahomes is pressured on half his dropbacks again, nothing else matters.

Rice. His return would give the offense a receiver who can win against single coverage, which is what Seattle refused to offer.

Walker against a light box. Every defensive coordinator in the league watched the tape. Denver can be expected to sit in dime and dare the Chiefs to throw. The counter is play-action and movement, as Mahomes said after the game: “We have to help him.”

What to watch beyond Sunday

Eleven games remain. The trade deadline is November 10, and the case for a receiver has become the loudest argument around the team.

Ben Solak argued this week that the Seattle loss should “bully them into making the trade they need to make,” naming Brian Thomas Jr., George Pickens and Garrett Wilson among the possibilities and suggesting Xavier Worthy could be included in a package. He also noted that Brett Veach has made an in-season trade in five consecutive seasons. None of that is a prediction. It is the shape of the next two weeks.

The market took the loss calmly. Kalshi prices Kansas City at 10.5 percent to win the Super Bowl, 17.5 percent to win the AFC, 62.5 percent to win the AFC West and 89 percent to make the playoffs.

MarketNowEight days agoChange
Super Bowl champion10.5%10.5%unchanged
AFC champion17.5%18.0%down 0.5 point
AFC West champion62.5%67.5%down 5 points
Playoff qualifier89.0%92.5%down 4 points
Line chart of the Chiefs' Super Bowl, AFC championship, AFC West and playoff market prices over the last several weeks.
Season-long Chiefs market prices, Kalshi. Every figure also appears in the table above.

The Super Bowl price did not move at all, which is what a market says when a road loss to the defending champions was already in the number. The division price fell five points, which is what a market says when Denver wins three straight and the West stops looking like a formality.

The No. 1 seed tells the same story more sharply. Kalshi has it at 22 percent, down two points against the venue’s own previous print, and last week’s report quoted 30 percent.

Kalshi’s win-total ladder has ten or more wins at 84 percent, eleven at 74, twelve at 54, thirteen at 30 and fourteen at 18. The fifty-percent rung now sits at twelve, so the market’s expected total is about twelve, down from a little better than twelve a week ago. With eleven games left, twelve wins means 7-4 from here.

Polymarket reads it a little differently: 10 percent for the Super Bowl, 18 for the conference, 64 for the division, 88 to make the playoffs and 4 for Mahomes as MVP.

Sources

PRH | huffmanwrites.org | © Philip Huffman