
2020 vs. Texans
Coming off of a Super Bowl 54 victory, you would expect Arrowhead Stadium to be rocking for the Thursday night season opener for the defending champion Chiefs, right? As we’re all well aware, the world had different plans.
In front of 15,895 socially distanced and masked fans the Chiefs took a while to get going in the first game since summiting football’s highest peak, but when they did it was clear that the 2020 Chief’s sights were set on the exact same season finale. They would start by taking on the team who they had absolutely demoralized by erasing a 24-point deficit in under 10 minutes in the previous year’s divisional round on their way to a 51-31 whomping.
After the Texans took a 7-0 lead with just under 5 minutes to play, the Chiefs elected to make the comeback and subsequent icing of this game much less dramatic than their last game against Houston. On their next drive, Kansas City went 11 plays for 75 yards, taking 5:41 off of the clock before Mahomes found Travis Kelce in the end zone. They followed that up with a 16-play, 91-yard drive to eat over nine minutes of the clock with Mahomes finding Sammy Watkins for a 2-yard score.
Balance was the name of the game offensively in this one for the Chiefs. Kelce (6 catches, 50 yards), Tyreek Hill (5 catches, 46 yards), and Watkins (7 catches, 82 yards) all found the end zone through the air, and rookie running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire ground the Texan run defense to a pulp with 25 carriers, 138 yards, and a touchdown of his own. The Chiefs began their title defense by sending a message to the league: we can still kill you, in a lot of ways.