Through four weeks, Walker is the NFL’s leading running back by a huge margin. He leads the NFL with 537 rushing yards, 116 more than second-place James Cook. He’s second in the NFL in carries and best in the NFL in yards per carry, a seemingly impossible combination of workload and efficiency. He has 212 rushing yards over expectation, per the NFL’s NextGenStats; nobody else even has 100.

Walker already has more rushing yards than anybody on the Chiefs had in their first Super Bowl-winning season this century, 2019. (Damien Williams led the team with 498 yards.) They’ve never had a 1,000-yard rusher in the Mahomes era; Walker might hit that by November.

In 2025, the Chiefs were last in run plays of 20+ yards, with just three. Kenneth Walker already has six, the most in the league. 

The Chiefs’ newfound effectiveness running the ball with Walker has dramatically changed the Chiefs’ ability to sell the run fake on play-action passes — and play-action passes are the most effective plays in football. Last year, the Chiefs ranked dead last in play-action passing yardage, with just 396 total yards. Through Week 3, they already had 312 — second-most in the league. (Sorry it’s not through Week 4, it’ll take a day or two for the play-action stats to update.) 

And here’s what’s annoying me: Anybody could’ve had this guy! Any team in the league! 

Walker signed a three-year, $43 million contract this offseason, the 20th-largest deal in the NFL. 20th! 

This was the player named MVP of the Super Bowl. The biggest game of the NFL season. They said he had the most value of any player in that game. And he had the 20th most value of the players available for free agency in 2026. ESPN ranked the Walker signing as the No. 17 acquisition of the offseason (although that list included trades). 

The Seahawks opted to spend more money securing the returning services of return specialist Rashid Shaheed, who they signed to a three-year, $51 million deal. Shaheed has 10 offensive touches this year for 110 yards. He had a touchdown Sunday, so hey, maybe it’s paying off.

If you add up the combined stats of the five offensive skill positions signed to larger contracts than Walker — Colts receiver Alec Pierce, Titans receiver Wan’Dale Robinson, Patriots receiver Romeo Doubs, Saints running back Travis Etienne, and the Seahawks’ Shaheed — they have a total of 85 touches for 688 yards and five touchdowns. Walker alone has 99 touches for 622 yards and six touchdowns. 

The Chiefs understand why everybody passed on a running back. For years, they were the poster boys for the zero-RB lifestyle, the idea that running back was a replacement-level position where teams should spend as few resources as possible. The two running backs who got snaps in their 2019 Super Bowl win were Damien Williams, an undrafted player on a $2.5 million contract, and Darwin Thompson, a rookie drafted out of Utah State in the sixth round. When they won it again in 2023, the two backs were Isiah Pacheco, a rookie seventh-rounder out of Rutgers, and Jerick McKinnon, a 30-year old on a one-year, $1.2 million contract. Kansas City’s one attempt to invest significantly in the running back room, a first-round pick used on LSU star Clyde Edwards-Helaire, was a bust. 

But the NFL has changed. Defenses have gotten lighter, faster, and more focused at defending the pass, resulting in decreased returns on the all-Mahomes, all-the-time passing attack. Mahomes averaged a career-low 6.8 yards per attempt in 2024 and a career-low 4.4 percent touchdown rate in 2025. 

The Chiefs are changing, too. It’s 2026. Travis Kelce is a year or two away from transitioning into full-time life as a stay-at-home podcast husband (as a stay-at-home podcast husband: I recommend it).

Walker could help the Chiefs transition into a new era (Swiftie term). To squeeze every ounce out of their GOAT’s career, Kansas City had to abandon the roster-building philosophies of its first few championships and adapt to what works in the NFL today. With Walker, the Chiefs seem to have figured it out. The threat of Walker has re-engaged Mahomes, re-established Kansas City as one of the league’s most fearsome offenses, and potentially allowed the Chiefs to put together a new championship timeline.

AND EVERYBODY JUST LET THEM DO IT. 

WE ONLY HAVE OURSELVES TO BLAME.

Last year, the Texans’ magic number was 20. Houston was 12-0 when it scored more than 20 points, and 1-6 when it went under. This year, the defense has broken the promise that the Texans would win games if the offense showed up: Sunday was their second loss this season where they scored more than 30 points.

The 2025 Texans were second in points allowed (17.4 per game) and fourth in yards per play allowed (4.8.) This year, they’re 26th in points allowed (27.3 per game) and 18th in yards per play allowed. After finishing third in the league with 19 interceptions last season, they have just one through four games this year.

Houston’s defense earned praise from the ball-knowing community for its simplicity and violence. They don’t do anything fancy — they just line up and beat you. They were close to the bottom of the league in blitz rate (18.9 percent, 28th of 32) and lined up the same defensive personnel on basically every snap. They weren’t adaptive or schematically complex. They just believed their talent would win — and they were right. Will Anderson got to the QB no matter what, and Derek Stingley Jr. shut down receivers no matter what.

The Lamb catastrophe felt like an overconfidence in that simplicity. The Texans will let opponents get the matchups they want, betting they’ll win those matchups. Sunday, that was a bad bet. Lamb lined up in the slot over and over, avoiding Stringley and attacking the Texans’ nickel back, Jalen Pitre. Houston didn’t pressure Prescott enough to make a difference — he was sacked three times on 48 dropbacks.

The good news: Stroud is way outperforming expectations. He threw for 347 yards with two touchdowns and still hasn’t thrown an interception all season long. He’s 10th in the NFL in ANY/A. The players in spots 1-9 are all on teams that are .500 or better while Stroud is 0-4. 

The Texans probably shouldn’t be 0-4. They’ve now lost three one-possession games, leading all three until the game’s closing moments. They gave up a 34-yard touchdown pass from Josh Allen to Joshua Palmer with 90 seconds remaining to lose to the Bills, allowed a field goal drive against the Colts last week with 16 seconds remaining, and gave up the Lamb game-winner with 40 seconds to go.

In a 17-game season with 14 teams making the playoffs, the Texans aren’t dead. ESPN gives them a 16 percent chance of making the postseason. They should be able to snap out of it with a relatively easy schedule the rest of the way: Their remaining opponents have a .462 winning percentage, and that includes the 3-1 Giants and the 3-1 Browns. Houston has a good chance to get right against the winless Titans next week.

The Texans just need to start flipping these close losses into close wins. But part of me wonders if their repeated late-game losses stem from that never-change, do-what-we-do-best mentality. The Texans give their opponents 59 minutes of football to see what works and what doesn’t, who’s playing well and who isn’t. And in that last minute, their opponents keep finding the right answers.

The Commanders began the season with Jayden Daniels at QB, but he dislocated the same elbow he dislocated last year. That brought in Marcus Mariota, who led the team to a big win over the Seahawks, but he suffered a knee injury on Sunday, opening the door for Kaliakmanis. 

Kaliakmanis played his college ball at Minnesota and Rutgers, notably passionate about throwing the ball deep. His NFL.com draft profile noted “improved aggressiveness attacking downfield” among his pros; in Dane Brugler’s The Beast (where Kaliakmanis ranked 300th out of the top 300 prospects), Brugler noted that Kaliakmanis had 28 completions on passes 28 yards downfield while #1 pick Fernando Mendoza had 29.

Kaliakmanis attempted 33 passes after coming in for Marcus Mariota in the first quarter. Six of these passes were to receivers at least 30 yards downfield; four were to receivers at least 40 yards downfield.

Kaliakmanis finished the game with 12.8 intended air yards per attempt. As of right now, that makes him the all-time career leader in that stat among players with at least 10 career passing attempts. (I’m almost rooting for him not to get into the game again, so he can hold onto that mark forever.)

But he wasn’t just throwing the ball deep — he was throwing deep to guys who were tightly covered! NextGenStats tracks quarterback aggressiveness — the percentage of throws made to a player with a defender a yard or less away. Kaliakmanis registered a stunning 33.3 percent, making him by far the most aggressive player in the NFL. (Last year, Dak Prescott led the NFL at 20.3 percent.)

Unfortunately, Kaliakmania is probably going to be short-lived. Mariota is likely out for a while, but early indicators are that the Commanders are going back to Jayden Daniels, who started practicing last week. (Rushing your franchise QB back from a repeated injury, what could go wrong!) 

This is perfect third-string quarterback behavior. Players like Kaliakmanis might have exactly one shot to do something cool on an NFL field; Kaliakmanis shot that shot, over and over again.