Ethical Sports Takes

For most of the Patrick Mahomes era, the Kansas City Chiefs have had one obvious weakness offensively: they have never consistently been able to scare teams by running the football.

It usually hasn’t mattered. When you have Mahomes at quarterback, Andy Reid designing the offense and an elite passing attack, you can overcome a lot. Kansas City has won championships without having a dominant rushing attack. But the lack of a truly dangerous running game has also allowed defenses to approach the Chiefs in a certain way. Stopping Mahomes always came first.

That has changed in 2026 because now Kansas City has Kenneth Walker III. Through the first month of the season, Walker hasn’t simply been one of the best running backs in football. He has completely changed the way defenses have to play the Chiefs.

Kansas City Has Been Missing This for Years

To understand Walker’s impact, you first have to look at what Kansas City had before him. Here were the Chiefs’ leading rushers over the previous four seasons:

2022 — Isiah Pacheco: 830 yards
2023 — Isiah Pacheco: 935 yards
2024 — Kareem Hunt: 728 yards
2025 — Kareem Hunt: 611 yards

Not one 1,000-yard rusher. In fact, Kansas City’s leading rusher didn’t even reach 750 yards in either of the previous two seasons.

That didn’t stop the Chiefs from winning games because Mahomes could compensate for it. But defenses knew where the biggest threat was coming from. Kansas City could run the football, but you weren’t building your entire defensive game plan around stopping its running back. You were building it around stopping No. 15.

Now you have to account for both.

Kenneth Walker Has Been Ridiculous

Through the first four games of the 2026 season, Walker has rushed for 537 yards on 87 carries, an average of 6.2 yards per carry, with four rushing touchdowns. He has also added 84 receiving yards and two receiving touchdowns, giving him 621 total yards from scrimmage and six touchdowns through four games.

Think about this for a second. Kareem Hunt led Kansas City with 611 rushing yards over the entire 2025 season. Walker already has 537 after four games. He is only 74 rushing yards away from matching the total that led the Chiefs for an entire season last year.

His performance against the Raiders was another perfect example. Walker exploded for 177 rushing yards and two touchdowns, including a 76-yard run. That is the type of play Kansas City’s offense has been missing. A defense can play good football for most of a drive, make one mistake against Walker and suddenly he is gone.

That changes everything.

The Biggest Improvement Isn’t Just Walker — It’s the Entire Offense

The important thing to remember is that Kenneth Walker didn’t suddenly become a good running back when he arrived in Kansas City.

He was already really good in Seattle.

Last season, Walker rushed for 1,027 yards on 221 carries, averaging 4.6 yards per carry. He was already a 1,000-yard rusher and had established himself as one of the better running backs in football.

His individual production has certainly improved in Kansas City. Going from 4.6 yards per carry last season to 6.2 through four games this year is a major jump.

But the more important improvement has happened to the Chiefs offense as a whole.

Early last season, Kansas City’s offense was producing around 20 points and 315.7 yards per game, with an offensive EPA of approximately +0.04 per play.

Compare that to what we are seeing now.

Through four games in 2026, Kansas City is averaging 29.5 points per game, nearly 10 more than at the same point last season. The Chiefs are also averaging 6.67 yards per play, third-best in the NFL, while producing +0.176 EPA per play, fifth-best in football, with an offensive success rate of 48.8%, sixth in the league.

Kansas City has scored 118 points through four games, and this isn’t simply Kenneth Walker putting up better individual numbers. The entire offense has become more explosive and more efficient.

And I don’t think it is a coincidence that the improvement has happened after Kansas City finally added an explosive running back defenses genuinely have to respect.

Walker didn’t go from an average running back in Seattle to a superstar in Kansas City. He was already a very good player. What has changed is what his skill set allows Kansas City to do.

The Chiefs can run from under center with a legitimate home-run threat in the backfield. They can use the threat of Walker to create play-action opportunities for Mahomes. They can punish light boxes when defenses sit in two-high coverage, and when those defenses finally bring a safety down to help against the run, Kansas City can attack the space that opens behind him.

That’s why Walker’s impact can’t be measured by his 537 rushing yards alone.

His individual numbers have improved. The entire Chiefs offense has improved even more.

Defenses Can’t Just Sit Back Against Mahomes Anymore

To really understand why Kenneth Walker changes this offense, you have to go back to Super Bowl LV against Tampa Bay.

Before that game, one of the defining characteristics of the Mahomes-era Chiefs was the deep ball. Mahomes could extend a play, Tyreek Hill could get behind a defense and Kansas City could completely change a game with one throw.

Then Tampa Bay showed the rest of the NFL one of the best ways to slow it down. The Buccaneers consistently played with two safeties deep, keeping a lid over the top of Kansas City’s offense and refusing to allow Mahomes to beat them with explosive throws downfield.

It worked, and during the first part of the following 2021 season, Kansas City struggled as more teams began using similar two-high looks against Mahomes.

In the long run, I actually think that helped make Mahomes a better quarterback. He had to become more patient. Instead of constantly hunting the explosive play, Mahomes learned to take what the defense gave him, attack underneath, take the checkdown and patiently move Kansas City down the field.

If defenses wanted to keep both safeties deep, Mahomes would take the easy completions until they were eventually forced to change. Then, once a safety started coming down and Kansas City got a single-high look, Mahomes could attack deep again.

That evolution helped Mahomes become a more complete quarterback, but there was still one problem: Kansas City never had a running game dangerous enough to consistently force defenses out of those looks.

That is where Kenneth Walker changes everything.

Defenses can no longer comfortably sit back with two safeties deep and dare Kansas City to run the football. If you keep both safeties deep and give Kansas City a light box, Walker can punish you.

Eventually, you have to bring another defender toward the line of scrimmage, and the second you do that, everything changes for Mahomes. Linebackers have to respect the handoff, safeties start creeping toward the box and suddenly the same deep shots defenses spent years trying to take away begin opening again.

We saw it against the Raiders. Mahomes only completed 15 passes, but Kansas City still hit two massive deep completions — a 41-yard shot to Xavier Worthy and a 55-yard completion to Tyquan Thornton. On the Thornton play, Mahomes got exactly what Kansas City wants: Thornton isolated in single coverage downfield.

That doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Walker spent the game destroying Las Vegas on the ground, finishing with 177 rushing yards on 22 carries, including that 76-yard run. A defense cannot watch Walker do that and continue treating Kansas City’s running game like an afterthought.

For years, defenses had a choice they were comfortable making: make Mahomes be patient and dare Kansas City to beat you on the ground. Now Kansas City has an answer. If you sit back, Walker can run. If you load the box, Mahomes can throw. If you bring a safety down, the deep ball becomes available. And if you bite on the run, Andy Reid can hit you with play action.

Walker hasn’t just given Kansas City more rushing yards. He has changed the choices a defense has to make before the ball is even snapped.

Play Action Becomes Even More Dangerous

That leads directly into what might be Walker’s biggest impact on the Chiefs offense. Play action only reaches its full potential when the defense genuinely respects the possibility of a run, and Kansas City now has that respect.

When Mahomes fakes the handoff to Walker, linebackers have a decision to make. Do they immediately drop into coverage, or do they take that first step toward Walker because they have already watched him rip off explosive runs all season?

Against most quarterbacks, that split-second hesitation might not matter. Against Patrick Mahomes, it absolutely does. That tiny window can be the difference between a linebacker getting underneath a route and Mahomes finding a receiver behind him for a huge gain.

Andy Reid can also become more creative with Mahomes operating from under center. The Chiefs can show the same formations and personnel packages before handing the ball to Walker, using play action, moving Mahomes outside the pocket or attacking a defense vertically. Everything can look identical before the snap, and now the defense has to respect every possibility.

That’s when Andy Reid is at his most dangerous. Kenneth Walker gives him the one thing this offense has been missing for years: a running game defenses actually fear.

Walker Makes Mahomes’ Job Easier

The difference becomes even more obvious when you compare the first four games of last season to the first four games of this season.

Through four games in 2025, Patrick Mahomes had 123 rushing yards. That was second on the entire Chiefs roster, only five yards behind Isiah Pacheco’s 128 and actually ahead of Kareem Hunt’s 117.

Think about that. A month into last season, Kansas City’s quarterback was essentially tied for the team lead in rushing.

Compare that to this year.

Through four games, Mahomes has rushed for only 41 yards.

Why?

Because Kenneth Walker has 537.

Mahomes doesn’t need to be one of Kansas City’s primary sources of rushing production anymore. He can still scramble when a play breaks down or take off when a defense gives him space, but the Chiefs don’t need their quarterback creating with his legs just to give the offense another dimension.

Walker does that for him.

And the difference in explosiveness might be even more impressive. Kansas City produced only three runs of 20 or more yards during the entire 2025 season.

Walker already has six by himself this year.

Four games.

That changes Mahomes’ job considerably. Walker can turn a normal handoff into an explosive play, keep Kansas City ahead of the chains and force defenses to devote resources toward stopping someone other than No. 15.

Mahomes is still the engine of this offense. That isn’t changing. But last year, there were stretches where Kansas City needed Mahomes to be its quarterback and one of its most productive runners.

This year, through the exact same four-game sample, Mahomes has 41 rushing yards while Walker has 537.

That’s what having a legitimate running game does.

When the Chiefs get a lead, they also finally have a running back capable of helping them control games rather than forcing Mahomes to continuously put the football in the air. That should become even more important later in the season when the weather gets worse and Kansas City gets into playoff games where protecting a lead and draining the clock matters.

For years, the answer to almost every offensive problem in Kansas City has been let Mahomes figure it out.

Now the Chiefs have another answer: give the football to Kenneth Walker.

And that is why Walker’s impact goes far beyond his individual statistics. The Chiefs haven’t just added a running back capable of putting up huge numbers. They have added a player who changes how defenses have to approach Patrick Mahomes.

Mahomes adapted when the league started taking away the deep ball. Now Walker is giving Kansas City a way to punish defenses for sitting back in the coverages that were designed to slow Mahomes down in the first place.

If defenses stay light, Walker can run. If they bring defenders down to stop him, Mahomes gets opportunities behind them.

That’s what makes this pairing so dangerous.

Kenneth Walker III hasn’t just improved the Chiefs’ running game. He has changed their entire offense.

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