Patrick Mahomes: Rushing TD gave me confidence I could be myself

One of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes's greatest gifts on the football field has been his ability to make plays with his feet when things break down and whether he'd be able to do that after last season's torn ACL was one of the biggest questions around his return to action on Monday night. forumteam.blog

It didn't take long for Mahomes to show that he still has that part of his game. On the 10th play of Kansas City's opening drive, Mahomes took off for a five-yard touchdown run only to see the play get called back for a holding penalty. Mahomes repeated the feat from 15 yards out on the next play and the Chiefs were on their way to a resounding 31-10 win over the Broncos.

In his postgame press conference, Mahomes said that "gave me that confidence that I can go out there and be myself."

“Physically, I think that’s the moment," Mahomes said. "I want to get some of these passes down the field a little bit more — I think that’ll help me out mentally and kinda get back in the rhythm of things. That was definitely the moment, physically, to say all this work has paid off. I didn't feel anything. It’s still a process, I got to still keep getting better and better, but this is obviously a great first week."

Mahomes ran seven times for 23 yards overall and was 15-of-27 for 184 yards, two touchdowns and an interception through the air. Those numbers don't jump off the page the way some of his past performances do, but context matters and the context of Monday night made it everything that the Chiefs could have hoped to see from their quarterback.

Packers quarterback Jordan Love was pressured relentlessly by the Vikings' defense in Sunday's 39-22 loss, and Matt LaFleur said after watching the film that the pass protection needed to be a lot better.

"I saw some of the things we have to clean up," LaFleur said. "What’s disappointing is, we had a few protection busts that should not and cannot happen. We knew that was the challenge going in. They were gonna give some tough looks. That’s the toughest test you’re going to face Week 1, to play that defense in that environment. I thought there was some really good stuff, but when your quarterback gets hit 15 times, that's too many times. There are some things we could do schematically that we've got to do a better job with and there are some things we have to go out and execute. But we have to have everybody on the same page if we want to give ourselves a chance."

LaFleur also noted that the Packers' passing game had several explosive plays when they took advantage of the Vikings' blitzing. Love finished with 387 passing yards and an impressive average of 18.4 yards per completion, but ultimately the Vikings' defense got to Love too often.

"We had some great moments when we feasted on it, certainly, but at the end of the game when we needed to make plays, they did what they do," LaFleur said.

What the Vikings do under defensive coordinator Brian Flores is relentlessly pressure the quarterback, and that happened a lot on Sunday.