The Chiefs emphatic win over the Buccaneers was a warning shot to the rest of the NFL

The Kansas City Chiefs didn’t just beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in prime time in Week 4. They went down to Florida and annihilated a defense that came into Sunday night as the league’s most dominant in a 41-31 win.

Tampa had given up three touchdowns in three weeks. It made Dak Prescott look like the league’s worst quarterback. It ruined Jameis Winston’s revenge game by picking him off three times and sacking him six more. It gave up two early scoring drives against Green Bay and then held Aaron Rodgers scoreless for 38 minutes.

This all meant nothing against Patrick Mahomes. The former MVP proved there are still levels to this and, even without Tyreek Hill in the lineup, he still has a mortgage on the highest one.

The Chiefs had buried themselves under unforced errors to give the Indianapolis Colts their first win of the season in Week 3. This made Tom Brady’s Bucs a slight favorite in a game they wound up trailing for more than 59 minutes. Kansas City knew nothing but domination in Tampa — and on a day where the Buffalo Bills struggled before eventually righting the ship in Baltimore, it served as a glowing sigil to the rest of the AFC: we’re still the Chiefs, so we’ll see you in the conference title game.

The brutality of Kansas City’s Week 4 win wasn’t simply a product of Mahomes’ wizardry. It’s that the Chiefs constantly found new ways to crush whatever budding optimism the Buccaneers could find. Mahomes threw for three touchdowns. Travis Kelce remained his huckleberry, but he still managed to connect with Jody Fortson, Skyy Moore and Clyde Edwards-Helaire in big moments.

Edwards-Helaire and seventh-round rookie Isiah Pacheco ran for 155 total yards on 30 carries against a defense that had held the Packers’ dynamite Aaron Jones-AJ Dillon platoon to 68 on 24 handoffs a week before. Matthew Wright, signed as Harrison Butker’s fill-in following last week’s Matt Ammendola special teams jamboree, made all five of his kicks and scored 11 of Kansas City’s 41 points.

Chris Jones only had one tackle but was a constant thorn in the middle of a rebuilt Tampa offense line, generating penalties and flushing Brady out of the pocket and into bad ideas. The Buccaneers called six running plays all evening. They gained three total yards.

This is all very scary for an AFC West that’s underwhelmed to start 2022 and, in honesty, the AFC as a whole. This year’s offseason briefly looked like a changing of the guard as the Chiefs traded away Hill and stars like Russell Wilson, Davante Adams, JC Jackson and Von Miller filtered to likely contenders.

Instead, Kansas City has solidified its position and is likely one poorly-timed Butker injury away from being the conference’s only unbeaten team. Stopping the Chiefs remains the football equivalent of catching a falling knife — a lose-lose scenario that can cut you up a hundred different ways. The Cardinals tried blitzing Mahomes in Week 1 and got exploded into tiny pieces as a result. The Buccaneers kept two safeties deep and the quarterback scanned the field, shrugged, and ruined them with shorter passes instead.

via nextgenstats.nfl.com

The Chiefs are THE CHIEFS again and left no doubt about it by thrashing the Buccaneers. That’s awesome to watch … unless you’re a fan of any of the 15 other AFC teams vying for a spot in Super Bowl 57.