Walker This Way: Recapping the Chiefs Win and Week 1 Winners and Losers

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

ESPN's going to Super Bowl 61, and so can you. Enter for a chance to win the trip of a lifetime. Four tickets to Super Bowl 61, plus a three-night stay at Disneyland Resort where you and up to three guests can enjoy the magic of Disney, plus the Super Bowl Champion Cavalcade. Enter at www.espn.com/sblxi by December 31st, 2026 for your chance to win. No purchase necessary. It's 1231 26 at 1159 p.m. Eastern. Open only the legal residence of the 50 US states in Washington, DC who are 18 plus at time of entry. For odds of winning and full official rules, visit www.espn.com/sblxi. Avoid word prohibited.

Mina Kimes (0:34)

Welcome back to The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny.

Monday Night Football Recap Edition.

New face, Ben Solak. As I mentioned last week, Dominique and Ben basically switched places. So you'll see Dominique every Thursday. You will see Ben on Tuesdays. Joining me to recap Monday Night Football and also to pick our winners and losers from the weekend. So you can think of it as a broader recap. Ben, how are you doing, bud?

Ben Solak (1:00)

Week one. There was football, there were points and everyone's very excited. Oh, one of the highest scoring week ones ever.

A lot of the points didn't feel very good. It felt like disastrous slop ball, but we have real football to ingest, to consume and to build long-standing beliefs off of despite the fact there's only one game. I'm thrilled to be back.

Mina Kimes (1:18)

Yeah, week one is always tough because there's a little bit of, are these offenses incredible or are these defenses that bad? And some of them I think we can kind of get out a little bit ahead of, and I think maybe in our winter section, we're gonna highlight a couple of those offenses.

And one of them I think we could talk about today because the Chase offense put up a 30 burger, 31 points on the Denver Broncos. I think, okay, this is a really fascinating game and I'm so glad you're here to discuss it because all off season, we spend this time, we do all these podcasts trying to predict what offenses will look like, what their goals are, what scheme changes mean, and then week one comes and a lot of those conversations are just immediately rendered boot. Like we were just talking about the commander's offense and where we started. And it's very funny that like after all of the off season talk, Jane Daniels under senders, like not really what they did. Chiefs are the opposite. The Chiefs did exactly what they told everyone they're going to do with their actions. They leaned in to the under center run game. Then I would say maybe though to an even greater degree and with greater success than anyone anticipated. But that is the story of this game. The Chiefs being so dominant running the football. Kenneth Walker, I mean, 191 total yards on the ground, averaging over seven yards a carry. Broncos missed tackles everywhere. We can talk about that side of it. But what did you make of this Chiefs' run rushing performance? What stood out to you?

Because that was the story of the game.

Ben Solak (2:59)

Yeah, 177 rushing yards for Kenneth Walker on this game is the most by a Chiefs running back since Jamal Charles in 2012

By his big run there, the start of the third quarter, the six yard touchdown run, Kenneth Walker had more rushing yards from under center than any Chiefs running back had had in over a decade. There was still half of the game left.

It's important to a little bit calibrate expectations before we go. How wild about the Chiefs have finally made the changes we've been asking for. This was the perfect aligning of stars for how well the Chiefs were going to run the football. They got the drop on the Broncos. They're coming out with a lot more under center, a lot more condensed sets. They've got these super duper jumbo, Kairos Tonga, and Hunter Norzad, and Josh Zedu sets. They've got weird formations that are unscouted that nobody's really ready for yet. You have all the broken tackles. Kenneth Walker is amazing. He's unbelievable at breaking tackles. Don't get me wrong. He's probably not going to do that at a historic rate every single night. In general, this was probably a peak Chiefs running game, and they're not going to set new season highs every single week. With that said, it was so sick. I think my number one biggest takeaway is less of the Kenneth Walker and more of the other guys that are already on the Chiefs, where Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith have been the highest paid center, one of the highest paid guards for years, and the Chiefs have never gotten juice for that squeeze because they've never been able to be a downhill, behind of the guards running game. They've never been a vertical running game. And by finally getting under center, and there's a rep of duo in the second quarter where Creed and Trey Smith take a Broncos defense attack while just nine yards down the field. This is what you've been paying these guys to do. You could have been this for so long. So those players, and then the skill position guys. My big concern with the Chiefs under center rushing attack was, do you have the tight ends and wide receivers to pull this off, right?