After a Week 5 bye, the Chiefs will be back in action when they play the Chargers on Sunday.
Kenneth Walker likely needed the idle week, as he’s racked up 99 touches over his first four games. He’s leading the league at 6.2 yards per carry and 134.3 rushing yards per game.
Has this kind of production surprised Kansas City head coach Andy Reid?
“Yeah, I would tell you not really because we thought he did well, especially when [the Seahawks] had to turn everything over to him during the playoffs,” Reid told reporters in his Monday press conference. “So, we saw his whole game there, and now we’re just seeing it on an extended basis where he comes in and he’s been able to showcase all that.”
Walker has rushed for at least 170 twice in his first four games with the Chiefs and accumulated at least 175 yards from scrimmage in three of four games. He’s also scored at least two touchdowns in three of four to help Kansas City start the season 4-0.
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Chargers wide receiver Ladd McConkey was not on the team’s inactive list for Sunday’s loss to the Broncos, but he never got on the field.
McConkey missed practice all last week with a foot injury and was listed as questionable on the team’s final injury report. That report was a long one and it included six players who were ruled out ahead of Sunday. The Chargers also deactivated cornerback Rodney Shelley, who joined McConkey in the questionable category and head coach Jim Harbaugh said on Monday that the team did not want the wideout on the field unless extreme circumstances demanded it.
“He was an emergency situation. We did not want to put him in,” Harbaugh said, via the team’s website.
McConkey played a limited role in Week 4 and went without a catch in the team’s loss to the Seahawks. He has 12 catches for 183 yards and a touchdown this season.
Harbaugh said it is possible that McConkey will be “working back in” for this week’s game against the Chiefs.
Wide receiver Justin Watson is back with the Chiefs.
Head coach Andy Reid said at a Monday press conference that the Chiefs have signed Watson to their practice squad. Watson played for the Chiefs from 2022-2024 and moved on to the Texans last season, but he has been a free agent since being released at the end of August.
Watson had 64 catches for 1,064 yards and seven touchdowns in 50 regular season games for Kansas City. He also had nine catches for 120 yards during three postseasons with the team and he helped the Chiefs win a pair of Super Bowls.
The Chiefs saw wideout Tyquan Thornton go down with a dislocated ankle in Week 4 and there was some talk of interest in bringing Tyreek Hill back in the wake of that injury, but the Chiefs have opted for a different reunion as they come out of their bye week.
The Chiefs had their bye this week, meaning they’ve only played four games. But Chiefs running back Kenneth Walker still has more rushing yards this season than his former team, the Seahawks, has totaled in five games.
Walker has 87 carries for 537 yards in four games. The Seahawks have 139 carries for 530 yards in five games.
The Seahawks could have used a good running back in Sunday’s loss to the 49ers. The two running backs Seattle had, Emanuel Wilson and George Holani, combined for 24 carries for 68 yards, an average of just 2.8 yards per carry.
Seattle drafted running back Jadarian Price in the first round after the Chiefs signed Walker away, but Price is on injured reserve with a chest injury. When healthy, Price was better than Wilson or Holani, but Price isn’t the player Walker is. Price averaged 39.7 yards a game in the three games he played; Walker is averaging an NFL-high 134.3 yards per game this season.
Walker, who was the Super Bowl MVP for the Seahawks in February, has been one of the NFL’s best playmakers for the 4-0 Chiefs this season. The 3-2 Seahawks may be regretting letting the Super Bowl MVP walk away.
Former NFL linebacker Darron Lee, a first-round pick of the Jets in 2016, faces charges in Tennessee of killing his girlfriend. Lee has a trial date in his first-degree murder case.
Via Fox Chattanooga, the trial against Lee will begin on September 20, 2027.
Lee entered no plea in response to the allegations, which operates under Tennessee law as a not-guilty plea.
The family of the victim, Gabriella Perpetuo, has filed a separate civil lawsuit arising from her killing. The family had been pursuing a potential claim against OpenAI, based on evidence that Lee used ChatGPT for help in how to deal with an “unresponsive” person.
Lee spent five years in the NFL, playing for the Jets, Chiefs, and Bills. He was a member of Kansas City’s Super Bowl LIV-winning team. He appeared in 58 regular-season games, with 38 starts.
The NFL has only three 4-0 teams after four weeks. Two of them — the Chiefs and Vikings — didn’t make it to the playoffs in 2025.
Via NBC Sports research, it’s the first time since 2013 that multiple teams that failed to make the playoffs in the prior season started with 4-0 records. That year, the Chiefs and Saints started 4-0. (In 2012, the Chiefs were 2-14, and the Saints went 7-9.)
The 2025 Chiefs went 6-11 after three straight Super Bowl appearances. The 2025 Vikings finished 9-8, with five straight wins.
Minnesota has the current longest active winning streak in the NFL, with nine in a row. They’ll go for 10 in a row, tying the second-longest winning streak in franchise history, on Sunday at New Orleans.
The 1975 Vikings started 10-0. The 1969 Vikings lost their first and last games of the regular season — and won all 12 in a row in between.
The week began with a flurry of news regarding receiver Tyreek Hill’s supposedly imminent return to the NFL. Then, reality set in.
The NFL’s pending Personal Conduct Policy investigation of Hill based on abuse allegations made by his ex-wife, Keeta Vaccaro, has taken a back seat to a civil trial that started on Tuesday. In it, Vaccaro seeks compensation for multiple instances of assault and battery.
On Thursday, Hill testified. Via Xuan Thai of ESPN, Hill admitted to pushing Vaccaro against a wall.
“I told her that night, I said, ‘Don’t you ever touch me in your life,’” Hill said on the witness stand. “I pushed her against the wall, and I tried to force her to get off me. I created a hole in the wall trying to force her to get off me that night.”
Hill clearly sees pushing Vaccaro into a wall hard enough to put a hole in it as a reasonable act of self-defense. The NFL may not agree with his assessment.
He also admitted threatening Vaccaro. Hill said he was “deeply ashamed” for saying that he was “able to get people to hurt her.” (He had no choice but to admit to saying it; his words were recorded and preserved.)
Hill denied Vaccaro’s allegation that he hit her, scratched her, shoved her (other than the admission that he pushed her into a wall hard enough to create a hole), spit in her face, or tried to punch her in the stomach while she was pregnant. While that may persuade a jury to exonerate him, the NFL will make its own assessment as to whether he did or didn’t do the things Vaccaro has accused him of doing.
If, in the end, the NFL’s investigators believe Vaccaro more than they believe Hill, he could be facing a significant suspension. In theory, each incident of alleged abuse could spark a six-game baseline suspension.
Then there’s Hill’s history, dating back to the 2015 guilty plea to domestic assault and battery by strangulation in an incident involving his then-pregnant girlfriend and a still-unresolved 2019 incident that left his young son with a broken arm. While the jury in the ongoing case may not hear evidence as to those situations, the NFL knows all about them. And they will likely influence the league’s assessment of Hill’s credibility — and they could result in enhanced discipline.
The trial testimony to date makes the out-of-the-blue effort to get Hill on an NFL team even more strange. Whatever the strategy for introducing the notion of Hill signing with the Chiefs or some other team on the eve of the civil trial, the civil trial significantly complicates his desire to play again.
Even if the NFL doesn’t choose to banish him with the opportunity to apply for reinstatement after a year — the strongest punishment available under the Personal Conduct Policy — what team in its right mind would sign him after the testimony of the past few days?
Kenneth Walker has gotten off to a hot start in his first season with the Chiefs, running the club to a 4-0 record at the Week 5 bye.
But there’s one notable stat about Walker that, ironically, involves Walker’s new position coach.
As noted by the Chiefs on Thursday, Walker’s league-leading 537 rushing yards are the most by a player in the first four weeks of the season over the last 15 years.
The player Walker surpassed?
DeMarco Murray, who tallied 534 yards with the Cowboys to start the 2014 season.
But now, Murray also happens to be Walker’s position coach.
The Chiefs hired Murray as running backs coach in February, after he’d spent the last six seasons as Oklahoma’s running backs coach. Murray, of course, played his college ball for the Sooners before the Cowboys took him in the third round of the 2011 draft.
Murray finished the 2014 season with a league-leading 1,845 yards rushing, totaling 2,261 yards from scrimmage on 449 touches.
We’ll see if Walker can touch numbers like that this year — and what it could mean for the running back’s career moving forward.
As the divorce trial brought by Keeta Vaccaro against free-agent receiver Tyreek Hill proceeds, plenty of interesting tidbits continue to come to light.
The trial includes audio and video that may make its way into the official record. Some did on Wednesday. On Tuesday, Diana Moscovitz of Defector Media published details as to materials that Hill hopes to block from the process.
“Can I have a simple conversation with you?” a transcript of nanny-cam footage says, per Moscovitz. “You’re a little-ass girl who will never be successful. OK, get my daughter out of here. No don’t get my daughter! Get the fuck out of here! Come on. I get my daughter, and I [will] get the fuck out!”
Hill also calls Vaccaro “insane” and “a bitch.”
“You ain’t shit but a broke bitch,” he says, per Moscovitz. “That’s all you is. . . . You won’t be talking all this dumb shit. The police don’t scare me, bro. They don’t, bro.”
He also says, “I’m gonna throw your ass up, man. . . . We going to see when the crew come over here. We going to see what can happen.”
Vaccaro also wants to play audio from a phone call during which Hill says to Vaccaro’s mother, "[T]ell her to get out before she get hurt. . . . I’m not going to hurt, but I—I got friends that will hurt her.”
All of this will become directly relevant to the NFL’s pending investigation of Hill under the Personal Conduct Policy. Regardless of the outcome of the ongoing trial, the NFL will surely consider his words when evaluating his credibility and Vaccaro’s credibility (if she cooperates with the league) as a decision is made on whether he committed one or more violations of the policy.
Chiefs punter Matt Araiza used his feet to help the team in multiple ways in Week 4.
Araiza had five punts against the Raiders and all of them landed inside of the Las Vegas 20-yard-line with one pinning the Raiders inside the 5-yard-line. Araiza also converted a fake punt with a 12-yard run in the first quarter of the 30-27 win.
The NFL announced on Wednesday that Araiza has been named the AFC special teams player of the week. It’s the first time that Araiza has earned that honor.
Araiza averaged 47.6 yards per punt last Sunday and is averaging 52.3 yards per kick for the entire season.
