Three things to know about the Broncos opening their 2026 regular season in Kansas City

The Broncos earning one of the NFL’s spotlight assignments for Week 1 should come as no surprise, not after their 14-3 finish that brought them to the penultimate round of the postseason last year.

But their matchup against the Kansas City Chiefs drips with intrigue far beyond what you’d get from a rivalry that is among the league’s best.

Here are three things to know about the game that will kick off the Broncos’ 67th season:

1. THE NFL WOULDN’T PUT THIS GAME IN THE SPOTLIGHT IF IT DIDN”T FEEL GOOD ABOUT PATRICK MAHOMES BEING READY

The defining offseason storyline in Kansas City revolves around Patrick Mahomes’ recovery from two torn ligaments in his knee — an anterior cruciate ligament and a lateral collateral ligament. His rehabilitation appears to be going well, and Chiefs general manager Brett Veach declared earlier this month that Mahomes is “way ahead of schedule” as he works his way back.

Those are just words, of course. But if there was a reasonable chance of Mahomes not being available for Week 1, the league wouldn’t put this matchup in the Monday Night Football slot.

The Chiefs weren’t a watchable side without Mahomes last season. They averaged 11.7 points per game after his knee injury. They scored just one touchdown in three games without him, and that came on a short field: a 35-yard drive that followed an interception in the Christmas night game between the Chiefs and Broncos — a matchup that the NFL would not want to see re-run in a spotlight time slot.

Mahomes may not be 100 percent of what he was immediately, but expect him to be good enough to go. Only with that assurance would such a matchup have been greenlit.

2. IT’S A SIGNIFICANT TASK FOR A BRONCOS TEAM THAT HAS STARTED SLOW UNDER SEAN PAYTON

Payton often references the “race to get better” at a season’s start, and his team is often still coming together in the first month of the campaign. In his three seasons as Broncos coach, his teams have started 0-3, 1-2 and 1-2.

This mimics a pattern that developed during his final eight seasons as Saints head coach, when his teams went 9-15 in the opening three weeks of those seasons, but followed that by going 70-35. In that span, the Saints had a worse winning percentage from Week 4 onward just once: in 2021, when Jameis Winston tore his ACL seven games in to the season and the team had to patch its QB situation together afterward.

Including his three seasons as Broncos coach, Payton’s teams are 11-22 in Weeks 1-3 since 2014 and 100-47 from Week 4 onward. So, perhaps opening with, say, the Miami Dolphins, New York Jets or Arizona Cardinals might have been better.

3. DECEMBER IS THE WORST MONTH TO GO TO ARROWHEAD FOR THE BRONCOS. SEPTEMBER IS THE SECOND-WORST

The Broncos are 4-17 all-time at Arrowhead Stadium in December, which should come as no surprise. Thus, it’s a positive for the Broncos to avoid that. But they’re also just 2-5 in September all-time … with one of those wins coming in their most recent world-title season of 2015.

A win this time around would augur well for their future, no doubt.

The Broncos’ best month at Arrowhead? It’s November, with an 8-3 mark all-time. They’re 6-7 in October.

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