Well, that was a game.

Kansas City Chiefs v Denver Broncos | Matthew Stockman/GettyImages

The Kansas City Chiefs played a game on Sunday afternoon. To be honest, that’s about as much as anyone can confidently take away from Week 18 in terms of analysis. The starters were resting. The game plan was vanilla. The calls were conservative. The goal was to clearly just make it out as unscathed as possible.

The good news is that the Chiefs came out of Mile High as healthy as they went in, so perhaps the team had a righteous celebration for achieving exactly that in a 38-0 loss to the Broncos.

Broncos faithful will go to bed feeling good tonight about Bo Nix looking like the second coming of Peyton Manning after such a lopsided victory. They can also enjoy calling themselves a playoff team as they secured the No. 7 seed. Credit them for taking care of business when they needed to.

As for what we should take away from this for the Chiefs? We feel like we’d be irresponsible to not offer up at least some sort of quick-hitting thoughts, even as we basically shrug our way through the whole thing.

1. Jaden Hicks is legit

Even when tasked with vanilla assignments, even when set up to fail, even when surrounded by lackluster talent, there was no way to keep Jaden Hicks from looking better than everyone else around him on Sunday.

The Chiefs have a lot of youth at safety, so even as Justin Reid hits free agency, the Chiefs have playmakers to consider there—from Chamarri Conner to Bryan Cook —and others on the depth chart in the secondary are versatile enough to slide into safety roles. Hicks wasn’t a great need in the draft, but his inexplicable slide to the fourth round made him too rich of a target to pass up.

Now he’s looking like an anchor for the future in a young secondary that will love having such a dynamic playmaker in the back end for years to come.

2. Nikko had his moments

Mecole Hardman is poised to come off of the injured reserve list in the next couple of weeks if the Chiefs want, and at that point, Remigio becomes redundant. Both players are primary returners with rare offensive looks available to them. One is more trusted and a bit older, but Remigio was a preseason sensation who looked solid when tasked with more on Sunday.

We’re not sure that Reid and company are ready to abandon Hardman given his postseason experience for K.C. but we wouldn’t be surprised at all to see Remigio take over that role full-time in 2025.

3. Harrison Butker Worry-O-Meter is set up

Whether you find yourself quite worried or just shrugging your shoulders at questions about Harrison Butker’s reliability these days, there’s no denying that it’s now a talking point after watching him miss wide left on a makeable field goal.

Ever since he’s come back from injury, Butker has missed 2 of 5 field goals and an extra point. To give my two cents, I think the sample size is far too small to draw any conclusions and I’d trust Butker as much as ever in the postseason. But the discussion is already out there and there’s no way to rein it in. It’s Butker who has to do the talking once the Divisional Round starts.

4. Losing sucks (a good reminder)

Not going to lie, losing 38-0 is a bad feeling no matter which players are suiting up, and for those of us with memories of this franchise that go back considerably (to Christian Okoye’s playing days for me, personally), this loss feels like the sort of games that the Chiefs used to provide their fans on a regular basis. We’re glad those days are long gone but maybe it’s good to be reminded every once in a while.

5. Carson Wentz never had a shot

The Chiefs largely went with an offensive front of D.J. Humphries, Kingsley Suamataia, Hunter Nourzad, C.J. Hanson, and Wanya Morris up front against a very motivated Denver pass rush. The results weren’t pretty and it put Carson Wentz in a pickle from the outset of the game on Sunday.

That makes us feel bad for Wentz who had this one shot in front of a national audience to remind teams what he could do. Instead of having his time in the spotlight in an Andy Reid offense, he was forced to get rid of the ball in record time because pressure was coming from every direction at once.

If teams wondered what Wentz has left in the tank, the answers still aren’t clear even after this game. And anyone blaming Wentz for looking bad is pointing away from where they should be.

6. Joshua Uche sighting!

Not much to say here other than it was nice to see Joshua Uche given a chance to play actual football since the Chiefs did want to trade for him at one point not too long ago. We’re still not sure why he’s been stuck in the doghouse (or why the Chiefs traded for him in the first place if he was just going to sit), but it might be worth revisiting things going forward. Just a thought.

7. A quiet Leo

I’ll end on this note because if there’s one concern that I think more people should be focused upon it’s this one. I was hoping to see a bit more from Chenal when he wasn’t surrounded by Drue Tranquill or Nick Bolton and others—to see what he might do when given greater responsibility. Instead, he really didn’t stand out at all in a game in which the defense gave up 38.

Of course, we’ve already stated that this game is an outlier, but ask yourself this: when was the last time you saw Chenal’s dynamism at work consistently in a game? It feels like it’s been several games—as if the last month or so has worn him down.

It’d make sense to wonder if there’s a nagging injury but the Chiefs would not have given him so many snaps on Sunday in a meaningless game if Chenal were hurt. Instead it just seems like something isn’t clicking that was before.

When you recall just how dominant Chenal was last winter, you can only hope Chenal can get over any hiccups at the present moment and channel that ridiculous combination of burst and strength and agility when it’s time for the Chiefs to play again.