No good run lasts forever, which the Kansas City Chiefs learned the hard way
in Week 7 against the Seattle Seahawks. Going on the road to face the defending Super Bowl champions proved to be too tall a task for head coach Andy Reid's crew, resulting in an embarrassment on the Sunday Night Football
stage.
Multiple players on both sides of the football struggled to make a positive impact. On the flip side, others' arrows might be pointing in the right direction despite the 20-3 defeat.
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Let's dive into the good and bad from Week 7's Chiefs loss against Seattle and single out three players whose stock is trending up, as well as three who could use a better showing in Week 8 and beyond.
Chiefs Stock Up After Week 7
These players stood out for positive reasons over the weekend, potentially changing the trajectory of their seasons in the process.
Ashton Gillotte
Coming into the regular season, many had questions about how viable of an option second-year defensive end Ashton Gillotte would be. After all, he was on the heels of an underwhelming debut campaign and also sustained a plantar fascia injury
in August. After a quiet start to 2026, those concerns were only amplified, but Gillotte's been improving since then.
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According to
Pro Football Focus
, the former third-round pick logged three pressures in back-to-back games against the Las Vegas Raiders and Los Angeles Chargers. The outlet didn't credit him with one in Week 7, but he logged a season-high four "stops" on SNF
. For reference, that's a quarter of his 2025 total.
R Mason Thomas
Speaking of pressures, rookie D-end R Mason Thomas racked up four of them against a tough Seattle squad. He was one of just four Chiefs to notch a statistic in that category and trailed only fellow pass rusher George Karlaftis' six on the night.
Thomas, a second-rounder out of Oklahoma
, is the best athlete in the room and wins quicker than anyone else. He's an excellent change-of-pace piece whose sack numbers aren't there yet, but there's no denying his raw ability. He has 14 combined pressures in his last three games and isn't getting washed out in run defense as often as he did earlier in the season.
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Nick Bolton
Not all tackles are created equal, especially in the modern NFL. Elements like depth in relation to the line of scrimmage, pursuit versus crashing downhill, whether a player was in coverage and so much more go into the value of that box score stat. Linebacker Nick Bolton knows that better than anyone, evidenced by him sitting in the double digits in four of his last five contests. The Missouri product had another 11 tackles on Sunday, but this game felt a bit different.
Bolton was a huge factor in run support in Seattle, including a TFL on halfback Velus Jones Jr. on the club's fifth possession and a couple of other stops. He did whiff on an attempt that comes to mind, but this was the fully realized version of the heat-seeking missile Kansas City needs. Add in that Bolton was fighting through some obvious discomfort down the stretch, and you get a bang-up job for the leader of the defense.
Chiefs Stock Down After Week 7
This group of three didn't meet the standard in Week 7 and desperately need to recover moving forward if the team is to remain successful.
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L'Jarius Sneed
No one - and I mean no one
- had a rougher Week 7 for the Chiefs than cornerback L'Jarius Sneed. I almost feel bad for him, as this shouldn't have been the plan for him when the club reunited with him
on a one-year deal during the offseason. His rough year continued on Sunday night, even on just 14 defensive snaps, which underscored just how colossal of a failure this stint was against wideout Jaxon Smith-Njigba.
Sneed routinely lost to the reigning Offensive Player of the Year on in-breakers, including a third-and-7 on Seattle's second possession for a gain of 33 yards. At that point, Sneed had been targeted three times in coverage and surrendered 53 yards. The aging Cooper Kupp, too, got his game off against Sneed by way of a third-and-9 conversion on that same drive.
The bad moments didn't stop there for Sneed, who ceded a nine-yard reception despite committing defensive holding on a play with less than a minute left in the first half. This was a game to flush for the veteran defensive back; only time will tell if his play improves.
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Kenneth Walker III
Back to the theme of all good things coming to an end. With how otherworldly impressive he was to begin the year, running back Kenneth Walker III was eventually bound to stumble. There's no shame in doing so against a defense that, according to
RBSDM
, ranks second in rush success rate (32.1%) and third in EPA per carry (-0.196) allowed. Walker rushed for 36 years on Sunday, and each of them was about as hard-earned as it gets.
A 2.6 yard-per-carry average was nothing for a player who's averaging 4.10 yards after contact
per tote in 2026. Walker's patented wiggle didn't allow him to break strings of tackles in tight spaces in prime time, nor was he able to escape around the edge and record explosive rushes. His longest carry was seven yards, easily his worst in a single contest this year.
Better days are ahead for Kansas City's best player this season.
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Patrick Mahomes
Week 7 was an ugly one for quarterback Patrick Mahomes, seeing him complete just 19 of his 33 passes for 165 yards, no touchdowns, an interception and a 58.3 passer rating. The two-time MVP looked like anything but that under the bright lights at Lumen Field, missing multiple throws in various fashions and also bailing on a couple of clean pockets.
Mahomes admitted following the loss
that he can be better, and everyone expects him to. It's also difficult to place too much blame on him considering he was down both starting offensive tackles
and perhaps his two best receivers. Running an offense at a high level while shorthanded and being under duress roughly half the time is virtually impossible.
We'll honor the stock watch component and list Mahomes here, but don't expect to see his name too many times.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com/nfl/chiefs/onsi as Chiefs Stock Watch: Multiple Risers and Fallers After KC's First Loss vs. Seahawks
.
