Sunday at Allegiant Stadium is the first game of the Klint Kubiak era that the rest of the league will treat as real for the Las Vegas Raiders. Both teams are 3-0, and the Chiefs are about 4.5-point favorites. Kickoff is 1:25 p.m. PT on CBS.
History is not on Las Vegas’ side. Patrick Mahomes is 13-2 against the Raiders in his career, and Andy Reid is 21-5 against the franchise since taking over in Kansas City. The last time the teams met here, however, the Raiders won 14-12 in the 2025 finale with Mahomes sitting out. He will not be sitting out this time.
The tape also shows a different Chiefs offense than the one Las Vegas has spent a decade failing to solve. Kansas City is not asking Mahomes to invent the game. Instead, it is asking Kenneth Walker III to make the defense honest, then letting play-action do the rest. That is the whole problem, and it is where the three keys begin.
1. Fit the run, then actually tackle Walker. Everything else the Chiefs do is downstream of that.
Walker is the concern, and the numbers are not a small-sample mirage. Through three games, he has 65 carries for 360 yards, a 5.5-yard average and two rushing touchdowns, plus 11 catches for 82 yards and two more scores. That works out to 120 rushing yards a game and 442 yards from scrimmage. His PFF grade is 90.6, second among running backs, and he has forced 34 missed tackles. Kansas City’s rushing success rate is 50 percent, the best mark in the league. Denver gave up 173 yards in Week 1, and Indianapolis gave up 117. Miami held him to 70 yards and still lost.
This is not the Isiah Pacheco and Kareem Hunt version of the Chiefs, when the run was a courtesy and the defense could sit in two-high and live with a 3-yard gain. Walker is a home-run back who also finishes through contact. Much of the damage is coming on power and gap looks to the left side, behind Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith, where he is averaging more than 10 yards a carry. He is also on the field for about three-quarters of the snaps and drawing a career-high target share out of the backfield. If the Raiders treat him like a between-the-tackles grinder, he will bounce the edge and turn a fit into a 22-yard gain.
Las Vegas has the tape to feel good and the tape to worry…
The Raiders held the Chargers to 57 rushing yards on 2.0 yards a carry in Week 2, but they also allowed the Saints 113 yards on 27 carries, and opponents are averaging 4.5 yards a carry on the season. Walker at 5.5 is a different assignment than Malik Willis scrambling or a Chargers back who never got a lane. Rob Leonard has already named this the problem.
The answer starts up front, with gap integrity from Adam Butler and Tonka Hemingway. It continues at the second level, where Nakobe Dean and Quay Walker must fill downhill instead of scraping late, and in the secondary, where safeties have to tackle in the alley instead of arriving for the highlight. Jackson Powers-Johnson’s absence is an offensive-line problem, so on defense the problem is simpler and harder: One missed tackle on Walker is a first down, and a first down sets up the next play.
The standard is not shutting him out. It is holding him under 4 yards a carry and keeping the explosive plays off the stat sheet. If he reaches 5 yards or more again, the rest of this game plan is a suggestion.
No. 2: Do not let the play-action game breathe, because that is how Mahomes is actually beating people.
Mahomes is 67 of 98 for 812 yards with seven touchdowns, two interceptions and a 108.9 passer rating. That is efficient, not reckless, and the engine is the fake. On 36 play-action dropbacks, he is completing 71 percent of his passes for 348 yards and three scores, with 11 throws of 20 yards or more. In Miami, he was 7 of 7 for 164 yards on under-center play-action, the highest rate of those calls in any game of his career. He was 11 of 12 on play-action overall at 15.3 yards per attempt, while his non-play-action throws in that game averaged 5.3. He is also scrambling on a career-low 11 percent of dropbacks coming off the knee injury, yet he is still completing 77 percent of his passes under pressure at 9.5 yards an attempt.
Read that again. The run look is the pass. Kansas City leans on bootlegs, condensed formations, Rashee Rice on the crosser and Travis Kelce leaking into space once the linebackers step. Kelce has only 14 catches, but they have gone for 231 yards and two touchdowns, a 16.5-yard average, with 155 yards after the catch. Rice is the volume piece underneath, and Xavier Worthy and Tyquan Thornton are the vertical tax if a safety cheats toward the box. The Chiefs are averaging 29.3 points and allowing 16.7, third in the league, and they have outscored opponents 28-7 in the fourth quarter. The Raiders, however, have not allowed a fourth-quarter point all season. One of those streaks ends Sunday.
That leaves Las Vegas little margin for error…
The Raiders cannot sell out to stop Walker and then watch Kelce run a glance route behind Dean. They also cannot sit in soft zone and let Mahomes pick the intermediate. The workable version is what they did to the Dolphins and, in stretches, the Chargers: early-down disruption that keeps Kansas City in second-and-long, rush lanes that do not give Mahomes an escape to his left and a second level that stays disciplined on the boot.
The pass rush has to do its part, too. Maxx Crosby is the matchup Kansas City’s tackles would rather not see, and Kwity Paye and Malcolm Koonce have to win enough one-on-ones that the Chiefs cannot slide the protection to Crosby and forget the other edge. Pressure without a run fit is just a free lane for Walker. A run fit without pressure is a 20-yard play-action shot to Kelce. Both have to happen on the same snap.
History, meanwhile, is the warning label. Mahomes has spent most of a decade dissecting this secondary, and the 3-0 record does not erase that. It only means the Raiders finally have a front that can make him uncomfortable if the fits are right.
Related: These 3 Raiders could decide how far Las Vegas goes
No. 3: Bowers has to be the answer when Kansas City loads the box, and the ball has to stay in Raider hands.
The offensive counter is already on film. Brock Bowers returned against New Orleans and caught 10 passes for 116 yards, lined up all over the formation and gave Kirk Cousins an answer that was not a checkdown. Cousins is 62 of 92 for 661 yards with nine touchdowns and three interceptions, and he has thrown three scores in every game. Around him, the Raiders are averaging 29.3 points, leading the league in drives of 10 plays or more and committing an NFL-low 30 penalty yards a game. That is a real identity: long drives, few mistakes and points when the script holds.
Against Steve Spagnuolo, however, the script will not hold the same way. Kansas City will put bodies in the box until Las Vegas proves it can throw over them. That puts pressure on Ashton Jeanty, who has the volume, with 63 carries for 206 yards, a 3.3 average, 13 catches for 97 yards and two Week 1 scores. He does not have the efficiency Walker has, though, and he still has no rushing touchdown. Mike Washington Jr. remains the changeup, but with Powers-Johnson out, the interior is thinner than it was against Miami. Asking Jeanty to win a pure gap battle against this front for four quarters is how the game gets away.
That is why Bowers is the stress point…
If Spagnuolo brackets him, Tre Tucker, the team’s leading receiver at 189 yards, and Jalen Nailor have to win the one-on-one matchups outside. If Spagnuolo does not bracket him, Cousins has to deliver the ball on time and let Bowers work after the catch. Either way, the Raiders do not need a shootout. They need to keep Patrick Mahomes on the sideline.
Their takeaway habit is the other half of that plan. The Raiders have nine takeaways and a plus-five differential, with multiple takeaways in every game, including four in the fourth quarter at New Orleans. Kansas City, meanwhile, has given the ball away less often. One of those truths has to break.
The path, then, is narrow and not cute. Tackle Walker. Stay sound on the play-action so Travis Kelce and Rice are not running free behind a crashing linebacker. Let Bowers be the reason the box cannot stay loaded, and finish the drives that have kept this team unbeaten. Do those three things and 4-0 is available in a building that has already beaten this opponent once without Mahomes. Miss the first one, and the other two do not matter. Walker at 5.5 yards a carry is not a subplot. It is the game.
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