Denver Takes Control Of AFC West: 3 Takeaways From The Broncos’ Win Over The Chiefs

This was too good a matchup for Week 8. But Chiefs vs. Broncos did not disappoint on Sunday evening, going down to the wire as ultimately one key play decided a winner.

Kansas City got another missed field goal from kicker Harrison Butker – that drama will continue to unfold this week – and it was Denver that got the long play and go-ahead touchdown in the final minutes.

Here are my takeaways:

Just when it looked like another Patrick Mahomes last-minute comeback to set the Chiefs up as the team to beat in the AFC West, Denver’s defense came up with three big stops.

Rookie running back Jonah Coleman’s go-ahead touchdown for Denver gave the Chiefs the ball with 1:56 left – “too much time,” as we’ve said with Mahomes for so long – and then Kansas City quickly found itself at the Denver 1-yard line with three shots at a winning touchdown.

But the Broncos stepped up – a Mahomes incompletion, stopping Kenneth Walker for no gain, then a false start negating a touchdown from Mahomes to Rashee Rice. One play with the game on the line, and Denver’s pressure got to Mahomes, with Malcolm Roach’s sack closing out a huge 28-24 home win for the Broncos.

Instead of a sweep and tiebreaker advantage for the Chiefs, the Broncos are suddenly back on top, 6-2 with a half-game lead on Kansas City nearing the midpoint of the season. The AFC playoffs went through Denver last year, so not only is the division title on the line between these two, but potentially the AFC’s first-round bye, which would currently go to Buffalo (6-1).

The Raiders have done well to stick around at 4-4, but this is a two-team race, and oddly, the schedule-makers put both their head-to-head meetings in the first half of 2026. Perhaps they were expecting more from the winless Chargers – who finish the season hosting the Chiefs and then at the Broncos – as they’ll be reduced to a spoiler role.

Kenneth Walker III has been such a central part of the Chiefs’ offensive success, but Sunday showed a promising glimpse of what they have in rookie running back Emmett Johnson, their fifth-round pick from Nebraska. He had played well in small doses in his first six NFL games, totaling 171 yards from scrimmage, but Sunday took it to another level.

Johnson’s big play was a wide-open 71-yard touchdown pass from Mahomes in the second quarter, and he finished the day with a team-best 128 receiving yards on five catches. It’s the fifth-most receiving yards ever by a Chiefs running back and the most in the Mahomes era, since Spencer Ware went for 129 in 2016.

Kansas City will be mindful not to overwork Walker to make sure he’s healthy for their postseason the way he was for Seattle’s last year, and doing that means having another back they trust to take some of the carries off his plate. If they don’t address their receiving corps at the trade deadline, that could mean leaning on Johnson more in the pass game as they did Sunday.

On third-and-3 in the fourth quarter, trying to salt away the clock with a three-point lead, Mahomes trusted Johnson to move the chains as he did with a four-yard catch. And his 49-yard kickoff return in the final two minutes gave the Chiefs a much easier path to what could’ve been a winning score.

Remember when the Broncos gave up a first-round pick to get Waddle from Miami to take their passing game to another level? He had a one-yard touchdown pass Sunday against the Chiefs, but Waddle’s production has been inconsistent, much like Denver has.

There was promise in Week 2 when he broke out for 138 yards on eight catches in an impressive win over the Jaguars. But in the five games that followed, he had 136 yards total. Even Sunday’s game was underwhelming despite his score and a two-point conversion, as he had just 39 yards on six targets.

Jaylen Waddle celebrates a first-quarter catch that got Denver a first down. (Aaron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post)

Bo Nix’s passing game has been bad enough that Denver changed play-callers, with only one game throwing for more than 222 yards.

Waddle had at least 744 receiving yards every year he was in Miami, even as a secondary option behind Tyreek Hill. He’s not on pace to get that this year in Denver, and his touchdown Sunday was just his second since joining the team. It’s not to say he can’t emerge as a bigger part of their offense as the year progresses, but there’s substantial room for improvement.