Mercy, that was a beating.
Chiefs-Broncos used to be an event, and maybe it will be again soon, but for now the difference between these teams is like traveling first class or on a riding lawn mower.
The Chiefs beat the Broncos 43-16 in Denver Sunday and that it came without the offense doing much should be a source of embarrassment for the Broncos and at least a little fear for the rest of the AFC.
The Chiefs have now won 29 of their last 32 games against the AFC West, which means in two entire regular seasons worth of division games the Chiefs would have gone 14-2 and 15-1. That stretch goes so far back that it began when Patrick Mahomes was a sophomore at Texas Tech.
So, beating the Broncos was not the point Sunday.
If the Chiefs lost this game, we would have some problems to talk about.
As it stands, we can still take some learning points from this. For now, we'll focus on four.
Le'Veon Bell looks every bit like a man who escaped professional hell for happiness. He's full of energy, running hard, blocking where he can. The cut he made upfield on that 16-yard run — his first touch with the Chiefs — was decisive and powerful.
The sample size isn't big, but what we saw is better than the Jets got, and better than any team should have from its backup running back.
This is not perfect. You can see clues about Bell adjusting to a new place. The pace is quicker than he's prepared for at the moment. There are subtle ways to play off Mahomes that he needs to learn.
There's no reason to believe this will be a problem. Bell is said to be a smart player. He's only had two practices, and went from Adam Gase to Andy Reid, from Sam Darnold to Mahomes. This will take time.
But for now it appears the Chiefs are clear on their base goal of having someone to help keep Clyde Edwards-Helaire fresh for December, January and (they hope) even February.
The potential for something much better exists, too.
Honestly, that was more than I expected this soon.
The Chiefs' defense throttled most everything the Broncos tried to do.
This got into that weird territory where it becomes hard to know how much of this was the Chiefs' defense and how much was the Broncos' offense. Because, man, the Broncos stunk. Drew Lock stunk. They all stunk. That's not rude, just true.
But the Chiefs had their part. We see a pattern: The pass rush and coverage play off each other. That's always true in football, of course, but it seems particularly true with this group. When one does well, so does the other. When one struggles, it can get ugly.
Tershawn Wharton and Willie Gay deserve special mention here. The Chiefs' defensive line is short with injuries, and — channeling Eric Bieniemy here — Wharton put consistent behavior on tape that will make the Chiefs want to hold onto him and other teams interested if he's available.
Gay started and played the most effective game of his rookie season. He made stops in the run and was consistently bothersome in coverage. This was always the Chiefs' plan for Gay this season, for him to start slow and consistently stack more responsibility.
But this might be a little faster than they planned.
Steve Spagnuolo gets a shout here, too. He had the answers to the test, particularly with a nice blitz call that gave Charvarius Ward a free run at Drew Lock for a sack that took the Broncos out of field-goal range late in the second half.
The offense never found its typical juice — and we're going to talk about that next — but Mecole Hardman had an interesting game.
His hands have been inconsistent, but he made a nice one-handed catch going toward the sideline.
His role in the offense has been sort of hard to quantify, but the Chiefs gave him some aggressive routes that attacked downfield and used his quickness.
His trust from Mahomes has seemed to go in and out, but he caught both passes that came his way for 57 yards.
The Chiefs need Sammy Watkins to be at their best, and it's still sometimes hard to know why Byron Pringle doesn't have a bigger role, but Hardman is doing what he can to complicate the depth chart. That's a good thing for the Chiefs.
Mahomes and the offense performed well below their typical standard. This will be an interesting game to re-watch, particularly once the All-22 comes out.
But on first watch, it appeared to be some combination of game situation and subtle failures in execution.
The game situation is simple enough. There was a stretch of the second quarter when the Chiefs scored 14 points without the offense ever going on the field. When Byron Pringle returned a kickoff 102 yards the lead had stretched from 10-6 to 24-9 without Mahomes ever touching the ball.
We've seen the Chiefs go vanilla with leads. That's a trend that goes back well before Mahomes was the quarterback.
The execution was inconsistent, too. I'm thinking here primarily of two plays, one by each running back.
There was a third down in the first quarter that former Chiefs lineman (and Mitchell's brother) Geoff Schwartz explained well. The Broncos brought a heavy blitz, with more rushers than the Chiefs could block.
The way to beat the blitz was for Bell to turn around for the ball quicker than he did. There's no guarantee. It could've ended up being a difficult catch. But as Schwartz pointed out, the Chiefs had numbers downfield and it may have been a touchdown. As it happened, Mahomes had to eat the ball and the Chiefs took a field goal.
There was another play in the third quarter when Mahomes flushed the pocket to his right. He and Edwards-Helaire saw the same thing — this is that partnership that Bell still needs to build — so the running back released down the sideline, behind a defender, and Mahomes put the pass on Edwards-Helaire's hands. He just dropped it. Field goal.
There were other missed plays, and some of you just yelled Nick Keizer's name. Football is never perfect. But if the Chiefs make just those two plays they have eight more points on offense, and 2.7 points per possession. Their season average entering the game was 2.9.
In other words: I'm not worried about the Chiefs' offense, and you shouldn't be, either.
