MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — There’s only one team in the NFL that Patrick Mahomes has yet to beat. The Minnesota Vikings are the only one he’s never faced. Playing against the two-time MVP Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs ought to be as accurate of a measuring stick as the Vikings could find for the first weekend in October. The Chiefs are 3-1. The Vikings are 1-3. Mahomes is 67-17 in the regular season and 11-3 in the playoffs. The Chiefs beat the Vikings in 2019 when Matt Moore started at quarterback while Mahomes recovered from a dislocated kneecap.
Kickoff is 4:25 PM ET, October 8, 2023 in Minnesota.
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Who: Vikings vs Chiefs
When: 4:25 PM ET, October 8, 2023
Where: U.S. Bank Stadium
Stream: fuboTV (free trial and NFL RedZone); Sling; DirecTV Stream; NFL+
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Chiefs struggling to get production from young group of wide receivers
By DAVE SKRETTA AP Sports Writer
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Patrick Mahomes stood in the pocke t for what seemed an eternity and, after finally giving up on finding anybody downfield, the Chiefs quarterback tucked the ball and ran for a crucial first down against the New York Jets.
That play last Sunday night wasn’t the first time Mahomes has failed to find much help this season.
Through the first four games, the entire Chiefs wide receiver corps has combined to catch 45 passes for 588 yards and just two touchdowns. To put that into perspective, Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson — whom they will see on Sunday — has already caught 33 passes for 543 yards and three scores all by himself.
The meager production from Kansas City wide receivers has had a trickle-down effect on the rest of the offense, which outside of a big performance against lowly Chicago has struggled to put up the big points for which it has become known.
“The beauty of our offense,” Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said Thursday, “is that we’ve got a lot of different guys that are learning how to play wide receiver within this offense, and we’re learning who they are. So it’s a little bit of both, and it just continually grows, and hopefully to the point that when we get to the end of the season that we’re rolling.”
In other words, some of the blame for the poor production can be traced back to youth.
Wide receiver Skyy Moore is only in his second season. Kadarius Toney in his second with the Chiefs. Rashee Rice and Justyn Ross had never stepped on the field for a regular-season NFL game before Week 1 against Detroit.
So they’re all learning on the fly.
They’re learning how to get away from man coverage, which is far more difficult at the professional level than college. They are learning how to uncover soft spots in zones, which also means building a rapport with Mahomes so that the quarterback knows when and where the wide receiver might be setting down and waiting for the ball.
It also means figuring out how defenses might be trying to confuse everything else they do.
“A lot of NFL defenses, they’re very good at trying to disguise what they’re actually going to run,” Rice explained, “so it just kind of forces our offense to use a lot of motions and stuff so we can diagnose the defense.”
It remains a work in progress. And in the meantime, the offense has been suffering.
There were 11 wide receivers in the league entering this week with more touchdown receptions than the entire Kansas City crew. Rice tops the team with just 13 catches for a scant 140 yards, while Justin Watson leads that group with 163 yards receiving.
Neither them nor anyone else has been able to produce the splash plays that are a hallmark of the Chiefs, either. Toney has elite speed, but his nine catches for 57 yards come with 0.1 yards-before-catch per reception. That essentially means that, on average, all nine balls he has caught this season have been at the line of scrimmage.
That’s hardly the way to blow the top off a defense.
None of the issues happen in a vacuum, of course. The Chiefs have played some of the best defensive backfields in the league, and Jets cornerbacks Sauce Gardner and DJ Reed — whom they faced last week — might be the best tandem. They also tend to throw it quite frequently to Travis Kelce, Isiah Pacheco and the rest of the tight ends and running backs, which further takes the wideouts out of the equation.
“This isn’t the offense where you’re going to see one guy that has 18 targets every week,” Nagy said. “That’s just not us.”
Yet two years ago, Tyreek Hill led the team with 111 catches for 1,239 yards and nine touchdowns, and the Chiefs had three other wide receivers with at least 25 catches apiece. Last year, JuJu Smith Schuster caught 78 passes and Marquez Valdes-Scantling had 42, and both of them produced enough big plays to keep opposing defenses honest.
If Rice remains on his current pace, the second-round draft pick would lead the Chiefs with 55 catches in all.
Mahomes didn’t sound concerned this week, pointing out that the Chiefs are still 3-1 and atop the AFC West, thanks in part to a run game that has suddenly become quite devastating.
Turns out his coach didn’t sound too concerned, either.
“We have a couple young guys we’re kind of bringing along,” Andy Reid said. “but I think they’re doing a pretty good job.”
NOTES: Chiefs LB Nick Bolton (ankle) and CB Jaylen Watson (shoulder) practiced for the second straight day Thursday. That raises the likelihood that both will be available against the Vikings. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo said that Bolton would be a game-time decision. “He’s a competitor,” Spagnuolo added. “I don’t think he likes standing on the sideline.”
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
Chiefs visit Vikings after close call last week as Mahomes makes 1st appearance in Minnesota
By The Associated Press undefined
KANSAS CITY (3-1) at MINNESOTA (1-3)
Sunday, 4:25 p.m. EDT, CBS
OPENING LINE: Chiefs by 5 1/2, according to FanDuel Sportsbook.
AGAINST THE SPREAD: Chiefs 2-2; Vikings 1-2-1.
SERIES RECORD: Chiefs lead 8-5.
LAST MEETING: Chiefs beat Vikings 26-23 on Nov. 3, 2019, in Kansas City, Mo.
LAST WEEK: Chiefs beat Jets 23-20; Vikings beat Panthers 21-13.
CHIEFS OFFENSE: OVERALL (3), RUSH (9), PASS (6), SCORING (9)
CHIEFS DEFENSE: OVERALL (8), RUSH (12), PASS (8), SCORING (T5)
VIKINGS OFFENSE: OVERALL (9), RUSH (28), PASS (3), SCORING (16)
VIKINGS DEFENSE: OVERALL (20), RUSH (15), PASS (21), SCORING (19)
TURNOVER DIFFERENTIAL: Chiefs minus-3; Vikings minus-8.
CHIEFS PLAYER TO WATCH: RT Jawaan Taylor has a close eye on him from the officials, so why not watch him? He’s the most penalized player in the league with nine flags thrown against him this season, and a facemask call that was ruled to have occurred in the end zone last week against the Jets resulted in a safety against the Chiefs. Taylor has been an excellent blocker when he hasn’t been penalized.
VIKINGS PLAYER TO WATCH: RB Alexander Mattison got off to a slow start but has topped 90 rushing yards in each of the past two weeks, carrying the ball 20 times against the Chargers and 17 times against the Panthers. The Chiefs have yet to allow more than 118 yards rushing in a game this season.
KEY MATCHUP: The Vikings offensive line against the Chiefs offensive line. OK, so they don’t actually match up against each other, but whichever group performs better will give their team a huge advantage. The Vikings have allowed 46 pressures of Kirk Cousins, according to Sportradar, for the second most in the NFL. The Chiefs rushed for more than 200 yards against the Jets to offset an uncharacteristically shaky performance by Patrick Mahomes.
KEY INJURIES: Vikings C Garrett Bradbury (back) hasn’t played since getting hurt in the opener, but he’s been practicing and appears to be on track to return to the starting lineup. … Chiefs starting LB Nick Bolton (ankle) has missed the past two games. He practiced on a limited basis on Wednesday.
SERIES NOTES: The first meeting between the teams came in the fourth Super Bowl, when the Chiefs won 23-7 for the first of their three titles. The Chiefs have won three of the past four in the series, with all of those wins in Kansas City. They have lost their past two games in Minnesota, and their previous win there came at the old Metrodome on Nov. 3, 1996. The Vikings won the most recent game in Minnesota 16-10 on Oct. 18, 2015, at the University of Minnesota while U.S. Bank Stadium was being built.
STATS AND STUFF: Chiefs coach Andy Reid moved into a tie with Tom Landry for fourth in regular-season wins with his 250th last week against the Jets. He has 119 wins since arriving in Kansas City in 2013. … The Chiefs had 200 yards in the first quarter against the Jets and just 201 yards the rest of the game. … Mahomes threw his 200th career touchdown pass last week. He reached the mark in his 84th game, five faster than Dan Marino for the quickest in NFL history. … The Vikings are the only team that Mahomes has neither faced nor beaten in his career. He missed the 2019 matchup because of a knee injury, and Matt Moore led the Chiefs to the victory. … Chiefs DT Chris Jones has 3 1/2 sacks in three games, including at least one in each. He had 15 1/2 sacks in the regular season a year ago. … Vikings QB Kirk Cousins and WR Justin Jefferson had their 27th career touchdown connection last week. That passed Warren Moon and Cris Carter for third most in team history. … Vikings S Harrison Smith had three sacks against Carolina, giving him 19 1/2 for his career. … Minnesota (6.18) along with Miami (8.02) and San Francisco (6.34) are the only teams averaging at least 6.0 yards per play. … Cousins has thrown a league-leading 11 TD passes to six different receivers, joining Kansas City as the only teams with at least that many players with a TD reception. … Vikings FB C.J. Ham played his 100th career game last week at Carolina, making him the fourth undrafted player in franchise history to reach that mark. Mike Tingelhoff (240), Leo Lewis (140) and Adam Thielen (135) are the others.
FANTASY TIP: Travis Kelce remains a must-start tight end, even though he had just 26 receiving yards last week against the Jets. But as teams increasingly try to take him away, and given the Chiefs’ propensity for using multiple tight end sets, Noah Gray could become a viable option in deeper leagues. He has two games with three catches and had a 34-yard TD reception last week against the Jets.
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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
