Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes sets season-opener mark
KANSAS Town, Mo. — Confronted with a defensive approach he hadn’t witnessed in advance of from the Houston Texans, Patrick Mahomes did what he does most effective. He adjusted.
The Texans, who performed generally male-to-male coverage in two video games versus Mahomes and the Kansas Town Chiefs last season, performed a great deal of zone and labored to eradicate the large play Thursday.
So Mahomes took the beneath passes and did it a good deal very well. He turned the 1st participant to throw 3 landing passes with no interceptions in 3 consecutive season openers in the Chiefs’ 34-20 victory in the NFL’s season kickoff.
“They changed it up a great deal,” Mahomes claimed of the Texans’ defensive approach. “They did a great deal of stuff at the line of scrimmage, they held safeties again and they set a person in excess of [Tyreek Hill] fairly considerably the total match.
“That is what will make this offense so superior is we can modify within just video games. We can go all through our match plan and discover strategies to rating and discover strategies to go the ball down the subject, and tonight it was using the brief passes. And I assume when we get to the Chargers next week, we’ll be participating in yet another good protection and we’ll have to discover a way to go the ball and rating that week as very well.”
The win was the Chiefs’ tenth straight, counting two playoff victories and Super Bowl LIV.
Mahomes took generally shorter passes that the Texans have been inclined to give him. He threw for 211 yards on 24 completions, with a prolonged of 19. But he also was sharp in the crimson zone. His 3 landing passes have been of six yards or fewer.
“Pat did a great task of examining it down,” coach Andy Reid claimed. “We experienced some further factors that he resolved to arrive down on simply because they have been protected downfield.”
Rookie operating again Clyde Edwards-Helaire was yet another offensive star. The Chiefs expended more than a 50 percent-billion bucks extending the contracts of Mahomes and limited close Travis Kelce, but their most important go for 2020 may well have been drafting Edwards-Helaire in the 1st round.
Edwards-Helaire rushed for 138 yards, and his 27-yard landing run in the third quarter was outstanding. The LSU solution designed a few of cuts to weave through the Houston protection on his way to the close zone.
On that play and other people, the Texans experienced issues bringing down the 5-foot-8, 209-pound Edwards-Helaire in the open up subject.
“The biggest factor in training camp is you do not constantly get to see the hitting component, no matter if a person is easy to deal with or no matter if he’s introduced down easy,” Kelce claimed. “That was proven nowadays. He is a tricky son-of-a-buck. For how tall he is, male, he’s obtained the strength of somebody my dimension. He operates the ball like no 1 I’ve at any time witnessed at that dimension, and it is enjoyable to play with. It really is infectious when you see him participating in his tail off and operating his tail off, you want to go out there and block for him and make performs as very well.”
Edwards-Helaire turned the Chiefs’ principal again when Damien Williams opted out of the season soon in advance of the get started of training camp amid the coronavirus pandemic. Williams led the Chiefs in speeding last season with 498 yards, but Edwards-Helaire arrived at about 1-quarter of that full in his 1st NFL match.
