By Jesse Newell, Nicki Jhabvala and Amos Morale III<\/p>\n
The Kansas City Chiefs opened the second half of their \u201cMonday Night Football\u201d matchup against the Washington Commanders with three consecutive touchdown drives en route to a 28-7 victory at Arrowhead Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Chiefs (5-3) emerged from the locker room with the score tied 7-7. However, quarterback Patrick Mahomes led Kansas City on an eight-play, 80-yard touchdown drive to start the third quarter. The Chiefs followed with scoring drives that ended with touchdown passes to tight end Travis Kelce and receiver Rashee Rice.<\/p>\n
Kelce\u2019s touchdown was the 83rd of his career, tying him with Priest Holmes for the most in Chiefs history.<\/p>\n
Kansas City\u2019s defense found its stride in the second half as well. The Chiefs held the Commanders (3-4) \u2014 who were playing without star quarterback Jayden Daniels because of a hamstring injury \u2014 to 66 yards of offense in the third and fourth quarters.<\/p>\n
Nearly flawless<\/p>\n
It took a while to clean up some mistakes, but the Chiefs offense couldn\u2019t have played much better coming out of the halftime break.<\/p>\n
Kansas City\u2019s first three drives out of the locker room? Touchdown, touchdown, touchdown. The Chiefs averaged 8.9 yards per play while executing those 80-, 75- and 94-yard scoring drives.<\/p>\n
Mahomes appeared to be toying with the Commanders defense on the third of those drives, wheeling for no-look sidearm passes and dancing around the pocket to move defenders while playing the world\u2019s highest form of backyard football.<\/p>\n
It was a reminder \u2014 after a two-interception first half \u2014 of just how dangerous this Chiefs offense can be with all its receivers healthy and Rice back from a six-game suspension.\u00a0\u2014 Jesse Newell, Chiefs beat writer<\/p>\n
Clutch again<\/p>\n
The Chiefs defense continued a season-long trend of allowing some yardage but coming through in critical moments. That was especially true in the first half, when the Commanders averaged a healthy 6.1 yards per play but were held to 7 points thanks to a timely interception from defensive end Mike Danna and two other fourth-down stops.<\/p>\n
According to TruMedia, the Chiefs became just the second team this season (joining the Los Angeles Rams) to allow 7 points or fewer in consecutive games. Kansas City\u2019s defense hadn\u2019t accomplished that feat since the 2019 season. \u2014 Newell<\/p>\n
Not hurting his cause<\/p>\n
Though Mahomes had a two-interception first half (one was deflected off Kelce\u2019s hands), he didn\u2019t hurt his odds of winning MVP, thanks to a dominant second half.<\/p>\n
Mahomes, who entered the season as the betting favorite for the award ahead of Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen, was spectacular in the final 30 minutes, displaying his full arsenal of passes and runs while showing off for a national TV audience.<\/p>\n
Mahomes completed 25 of 34 passes for 299 yards and three touchdowns with two interceptions. He and the Chiefs travel to face Allen and the Bills on Sunday. \u2014 Newell<\/p>\n
Injuries, mistakes mounting<\/p>\n
This Commanders team is just not built for anything more than one good half. Injuries are part of the problem \u2014 and that only got worse tonight with left tackle Laremy Tunsil (hamstring) and wide receiver Terry McLaurin (quad) leaving early.<\/p>\n
McLaurin\u2019s return showed just how valuable he is to the offense. The potential to lose him again would be a dagger for the Commanders, though he said after the game that he was \u201cpretty optimistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aside from ailing stars, persistent mistakes continued to do in the Commanders.<\/p>\n
Washington finally got takeaways but couldn\u2019t sustain the pressure on Mahomes for four quarters. The Commanders are halfway through the season but appear gassed. \u2014 Nicki Jhabvala, Commanders beat writer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jesse Newell, Nicki Jhabvala and Amos Morale III The Kansas City Chiefs opened the second half of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245010,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[436],"tags":[49,48,1727,514,82,1758],"class_list":["post-245009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-kansas-city-chiefs","tag-nfl","tag-sports","tag-washington-commanders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}