The Kansas City Chiefs might be both the most surprising and exciting team of the 2018 NFL season thus far.
Andy Reid’s team had another early playoff exit after a 10-6 finish a year ago, and then veteran quarterback Alex Smith was swapped out for young gunslinger Patrick Mahomes, an enticing but altogether unproven prospect. The Chiefs also sent perhaps their best defensive player, cornerback Marcus Peters, to Los Angeles during the offseason.
And yet, through three weeks of the 2018 campaign, no team has matched the Chiefs in terms of pure explosiveness.
Kansas City ranks first in the league in points per game (39.3), has scored no fewer than 38, and all of a sudden it looks not only like the AFC West front-runner, but the class of the AFC thanks to the effortless MVP-caliber play of Mahomes, who’s now thrown 13 touchdowns and zero interceptions during Kansas City’s 3-0 start.
Fourth-year wide receiver Chris Conley has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of Mahomes’ hot debut, hauling in two touchdown passes in two weeks, including one on Sunday in a 38-24 win over the San Francisco 49ers. Conley had never caught more than one touchdown catch in his previous three NFL seasons, and already he’s carved out a prominent role as a red-zone target for Mahomes, not to mention helped fuel one of the NFL’s best teams of the first quarter of the season.
Yet Conley, a devout Christian, is staying humble amid his own success and his team’s headlining performance. After Sunday’s latest victory, the fourth-year veteran had a message for Chiefs fans: “Win or loss, God is good,” he tweeted.
Win or loss, God is good.
— Chris Conley (@_flight17_) September 23, 2018
Conley’s used similar sentiments to describe the rest of his journey with the Chiefs, crediting highs and lows of his time with Kansas City — and the fate of his team — to God. In October 2017, for example, after rupturing his Achilles tendon and landing on injured reserve, the former third-round draft pick said Jesus was his “strength” and said he’d give glory to God “in our wins and losses.”
A self-proclaimed “lover of Christ” who includes Romans 1:16 in his Twitter bio, Conley joined the Chiefs out of Georgia in 2015. His career-best numbers came as a second-year wideout for Kansas City, when he had 44 catches and 530 yards, but he’s already on pace to set new personal records in the Chiefs’ high-flying offense this year.
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