(CHIEFS)—-Patrick Mahomes was Patrick Mahomes, Kenneth Walker III was Kenneth Walker III. The offensive line looked like a vintage line. The defense was solid and Mahomes and his rebuilt knee and the Chiefs with their rebuilt roster delivered a dominating win over last year’s division champions Denver Broncos 31-10.
Walker had more yards of total offense than the entire Broncos team. His 173 rushing yards on 23 carries are the most for a Chiefs running back since Jamal Charles ran for 226 on December 23, 2012 (he also ran for 233 three months earlier and had a career best 259 in January of 2020).
Travis Kelce’s long catch and run moved him into second place, all-time, in tight end yardage with 13,067, trailing only Chiefs predecessor Tony Gonzalez, who finished with 15,127.
Mahomes showed no fear in running the ball when necessary and ran for a touchdown early. Although he was a pocket quarterback most of the game, he did show he could scramble if necessary and was not limping at the end of the game.
The Chiefs meet the Indianapolis Colts next weekend. (9/18/26)
(MUKU)—Sometimes it’s interesting for fans to hear what the other coach has to say about your team after a big game. Our coach, of course, will mix the good and the bad with his reviews of his team’s performance and Coach Drink has plenty of things to talk about the Tiger’s needing to improve. Six false starts were among the ten Tiger penalties, for example.
But the Tigers left Lawrence with the first Missouri victory there since 2001.
KU Coach Lance Leopold wasn’t happy that his team gained only 255 yards againt Missouri’s defense and succeed on only three of its fifteen third downs. The KU defense allowed Missouri to gain an average of 6.6 yards per play to run up a total of 469 yards. The Missouri pass defense held KU quarterback Isaiah Marshall to just 13 of 30 passing and forced him into two turnovers.
Although he thought KU played “really good football game” in the first half but thoughts the Tigers “derailed us a lot.” Although Missouri had two field goals blocked, one of which was run back for the game’s first touchdown, “a good football team is going to get themselves corrected…and they did it, especially when we gave them those short fields.” He called the game “very deflating.”
The Jayhawks could not stop Austin Simmons because “he’s a really good football player” who found his rhythm early in the game. Simmons hit 19 of his 29 passes for 292 yards and here touchdowns.
Leopold complimented Missouri for “having a good game plan that “found ways to attack us,” The offensive line impressed Leopold, who thinks “they’ve got probably eight draftable guys” and at least one who will go high in the draft.
The rivalry won’t be renewed until at least 2031, if even then. “It’s a good rivalry,” said Leopold…I think these are things that help make college football what it is and iat’s a special game.”
Missouri’s Drinkwitz wasn’t happy with the Tigers’ first half. “The things that we gave them were undisciplined penalties. Our special teams was not good tonight, in any form or facet, and that’s going to get cleaned up.”
The trophy since 1935 for this long-standing, but interruptible rivalry, is a drum, originally purchased by Missouri and Kansas alumni from a Kansas City pawn shop. One drum head has a Tiger on it. A Jayhawk is on the other. That first drum is now in the College Football Hall of Fame. In the 1980s the Taos Pueblo Indians in New Mexico made a new drum as the new traveling trophy. Missouri has kept it since 2009 and has beaten the Jayhawks five straight games. The last time that happened was 84 years ago.
The game has brought weekly SEC honors for two Tigers. Quarterback Austin Simmons and defensive lineman Daeden Hopkins are offensive and defensive players of the week. Simmons, who has completed 75% of his passes in his first two games at Mizzou, shares his award with Texas QB Arch Manning. Pro Football Focus says Hopkins, who is only a sophomore, led the charge that pressured KU quarterback Isaiah Marhall better than forty percent of KU’s 70 snaps with eight pressures and one and a half sacks.
This week’s coaches poll moves Missouri up one place, to 22nd. The AP sportswriters rank Missouri 20th.
The Tigers play Troy University next Saturday evening in Columbia. The Trojans have won both games this year, against Sam Houston and against Alabama State. Troy has about 14,000 students.
(BASEBALL)—Only a dozen games are left and the Cardinals have to win eight of them to finish even. They have a chance to hit that mark with the first game of a series tonight against the Giants who went into the game 62-88. Three of those wins, however, came in a series in San Francisco last week.
The Redbirds got some good news about J. J. Wetherholt during the weekend. He’s rehabbing from a wrist injury and hit off a tee Friday. He hopes to be back in the lineup before the end of the season.
Thomas Saggese has filled in for Wetherhold at second base and has impressed people since his callup from Memphis when Wetherholt went out. He’s hitting .260 with four homers and a dozen runs batted in, a record good enough to be moved to the leadoff position.
The Royals will finish below .500 if they win all of their remaining game. They dropped to 66-84 with a series-ending loss to the Red Sox. But a couple of guys continued their run at the Royals record books during the weekend.
Carter Jensen has tied Bob Hameline’s record for most homers by a Royals rookie. He provided a souvenir in the outfield seats for the 14th time this year. He also racked up his twelfth straight extra-base hit, joining New York’s Aaron Judge for most consecutive extra-base hits by a rookie in the expansion era (namely, since 1961).
Bobby Witt went into tonight’s game needing two home runs to compile a third straight 20 homer, 40 stolen bases in a season. It will be his second time (the first was in 2023). Carlos Beltran had 26 homers and 41SBs in 2003.
We now know who is going to build the new stadium in KC. Three companies will tame up to build the three-billion dollar roofless ball park near crown Center, downtown. The nationally-know construction companies of Mortenson and McCownGordon will jointly serve as construction manager. J.E. Dunn will superintend the ballpark village-like development in the surrounding 85-acre site. The stadium will seat about 34,000 fans, about four thousand fewer than can watch a game at the K.
Now: Racing to the End—
(NASCAR)—Kyle Larson can quit counting how many races it has been since he won. Larson survived intense racing marred by a track-record 18 caution flags to win the Enjoy Illinois 300 at the World Wide Technology Raceway just across the river from St. Louis. It’s his first win since May of last year, 51 races in all.
Larson finished just ahead of teammate Alex Bowman. Pole sitter Joey Logano, who led the most laps, came home third and the third Hendrick driver, William Byron was fourth. Points leader Denny Hamlin had a mediocre day but finished ninth when several drivers ahead of him crashed, many of them because their heavily-used brake rotors exploded, putting them into the wall and out of the race sometimes taking some other drivers with them. The race was stopped twice for track clean-up.
Thirty-five percent of the race’s 247 overtime laps were run under caution leaving an average speed of just 81.47 mph. Between the yellows, however, racing sometimes was three and four-wide on the egg-shaped oval that relies of heavy braking and road course-like shifting in the turns. The 18 yellows were the most race caution periods in any Cup race this year. The record for most caution periods in a race is 22, at Charlotte in 2005, a race that was twice as long (600 miles) as Sunday’s race.
Hamlin led the standings by a dozen points going into the race and gained a few points on last weeks’ neared challengers. But Larson’s win shortened the Hamlin lead to nine going into next week’s short-track race at Bristol, the third stop in the ten-race series for the championship.
The race was the first to honor Kyle Busch with a new permanent trophy that honors Busch’s memory at WWTR.
(INDYCAR)—Look for several drivers wearing different colors next year in IndyCar. The seat juggling that began before season’s end has continued in the days after. There are only 15 fulltime rides available so it’s a fairly closed society. Here’s what’s being reported so far.
Scott Dixon was reported moving from Ganassi to McLaren some time ago. Meyer-Shank has lost Indianapolis 500 winner Felix Rosenqvist to Mclaren. They will join with Pato O’Ward there. Jettisoned by McLaren are Christian Lundgaard, although he was third in the points chase this year, and Nolan Siegel.
Mick Schumacher is moving from Rahal Letterman Lanigan to replace Rosenqvist at Meyer-Shank. Marcus Armstrong will stay with M-S but will moved to the 60-car that Rosenqvist had this year.
Rahal Letterman Lanigan has sold one of its franchises to the returning Dreyer & Reinbold team, which quickly filled the seat with Connor Daly.
It’s a long seven months, though, before we see the realigned series take to the track in earnest again. The 2027 season opens with the annual street race at St. Petersburg, Florida on March 7.
(Photo credits: Walker—Facebook; Drum—St. Joseph Post; Larson–Bob Priddy)