The Kansas City Chiefs did not play their cleanest football Sunday at Allegiant Stadium. They did not need to. A quiet third quarter gave way to a fourth that belonged to Kenneth Walker III, and Kansas City left the desert 4-0 after a 30-27 win over the previously unbeaten Las Vegas Raiders.
Walker finished with a career-high 177 yards and two touchdowns on 22 carries. The second of those scores, a 22-yard burst, came one play after a kickoff fumble and turned a one-score game into an 11-point cushion with a little more than three minutes left. The Raiders answered. They did not quite catch up.
Patrick Mahomes was 15 of 30 for 225 yards and two touchdowns, both to Tyquan Thornton, and remained unbeaten at Allegiant Stadium. Thornton had the afternoon of his career — five catches, 111 yards, two scores — and also the play that flipped the game. On third-and-5 from Kansas City territory, with the Chiefs trailing 19-17 and the building loud, Mahomes found Thornton for 55 yards. Walker scored from 2 yards out on the next play to put Kansas City ahead 23-19 with 3:21 remaining. The two-point try failed. Thornton was carted off with a left ankle injury on the 55-yard catch.
The margin did not last long on the scoreboard. On the ensuing kickoff, Las Vegas return man Dareke Young fumbled, and the Chiefs recovered at the 22. Walker took the first play from scrimmage to the end zone. Harrison Butker’s kick made it 30-19.
Kirk Cousins, who had won his previous seven starts dating to last season in Atlanta, kept the Raiders in it. He completed 31 of 52 passes for 365 yards and two touchdowns, with one interception on the final possession. Brock Bowers, playing through an illness, caught six passes for 86 yards, including a 20-yard score that, with a two-point conversion to Cody White, cut the deficit to 30-27 with 1:44 left. Kansas City went three-and-out. The punt was downed at the 1. Cousins got Las Vegas to midfield and no further. The interception ended it.
Las Vegas had controlled the first three quarters. Ian Thomas’s 27-yard touchdown catch from Cousins put the Raiders up 7-0. Thornton’s 2-yard score, set up in part by a 41-yard catch from Xavier Worthy, tied it. Matt Gay field goals of 32 and 48 yards, sandwiching a 28-yard Butker kick, sent the teams to halftime with Las Vegas ahead 13-10. Neither side scored in the third quarter.
The fourth opened with Mahomes’s 8-yard touchdown pass to Thornton, Kansas City’s first lead of the day at 17-13 and the first points the Raiders’ defense had allowed in the fourth quarter this season. Gay answered with kicks of 44 and 48 yards to put Las Vegas back in front, 19-17. From there, the game turned on Thornton’s catch, Walker’s legs, and the kickoff fumble forced in the sequence that included Jeff Bassa.
The box score favored the home team in several columns. Las Vegas had 28 first downs to Kansas City’s 18 and 437 total yards to 399. The run game told a different story: the Chiefs rushed for 189 yards, the Raiders for 72. Ashton Jeanty managed 58 yards on 15 carries. Cousins was not sacked. Mahomes was sacked twice.
For Kansas City, the win hands the Raiders their first loss under coach Klint Kubiak, puts the Chiefs alone atop the AFC West, and sends them into an early bye at 4-0. Walker, the free-agent addition and reigning Super Bowl MVP, remains the league’s leading rusher. The cost is Thornton, whose status will hang over the week off.
The Raiders made them earn it. Walker made sure they left with the win.
