Can Kenneth Walker Become The Chiefs’ Biggest MVP Candidate Since Patrick Mahomes?

Can Kenneth Walker Become The Chiefs’ Biggest MVP Candidate?© Instagram

Kansas City had one of the worst rushing attacks in the league last season, finished 6-11, and watched Kareem Hunt and Isiah Pacheco walk out the door in free agency. The solution was to go out and sign the Super Bowl MVP. Kenneth Walker, who earned that honor after rushing for 135 yards in Seattle's Super Bowl 60 win over New England in February, agreed to a three-year deal with the Chiefs worth up to $45 million, with $28.7 million guaranteed. Six weeks into the season, it looks like one of the more one-sided transactions in recent memory.

Walker leads the NFL with 665 rushing yards through Week 6, averaging 133 yards per game and 6.3 yards per carry, both tops in the league. He has forced 47 missed tackles, also first in the NFL, and his 277 rushing yards over expected, per Next Gen Stats, are well clear of any other back. The Chiefs are 5-0 in games he has played, the only undefeated team in the AFC, and their rushing offense has risen from 25th in the league to third. In Kansas City's Week 6 win over the Chargers, he had two rushing touchdowns for the fourth multi-score game of his season.

What He Did to Get Here

Walker was a second-round pick in 2022 who spent four seasons in Seattle, totaling 3,555 rushing yards and 29 touchdowns. His career high was 1,050 yards in a single season, which makes his current pace all the more striking. Through six games, he is on pace to approach Eric Dickerson's single-season rushing record from 1984, a threshold NFL.com's Kevin Patra says he would likely need to clear to actually win MVP. Patra placed Walker second in his Week 7 tracker while noting the award has gone to a quarterback in each of the past two seasons, and that the last non-quarterback winner was Adrian Peterson in 2012.

Walker opened the season with a 60-yard touchdown on a fourth-and-one in Week 1 and later had a 76-yard run against the Raiders. Teammate Xavier Worthy's response to that run: “Man, that's normal for him.” The threat he poses on the ground has opened up the passing game as well, including a 48-yard gain by Travis Kelce off play-action in Week 3. He has added 84 receiving yards on 12 catches as a safety valve out of the backfield.

What It Would Take

His FanDuel odds sat at +7500 to win MVP entering Week 7, long enough to suggest the market does not fully believe. The structural argument against him is the same one that has applied to every running back since Peterson: voters lean heavily toward quarterbacks. The argument for him is that the Chiefs' entire offensive identity has been rebuilt around his production, and no player in the league has altered his team's trajectory more visibly in the first quarter of the season.