The NFL should be terrified that the Chiefs aren’t even on the right track yet

They are two-time defending Super Bowl champions and have won the Lombardi Trophy in three of the past five seasons.

They have the best quarterback in the league and in this generation.

They are the only team left in the NFL with an undefeated record entering Week 8 at 6-0.

And yet the Chiefs haven’t looked all that good this year. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes in particular didn’t look MVP-worthy.

That makes the Chiefs even scarier going into Sunday’s game in Las Vegas. What will happen when Mahomes finds his groove, stops turning the ball over and starts throwing some touchdown passes, playing more than his average: 33 per season over the past six years?

And with the injury-plagued team after acquiring productive receiver DeAndre Hopkins What will that mean for their breakdown this past week?

Hopkins – 943 career receptions and 79 touchdowns – is 32 years old and has been dealing with a knee ailment this season. The question is how productive he will be and how quickly he can contribute.

As it stands now, the Chiefs are in prime position to win the AFC West for the ninth straight year – they are three games ahead of the second-place Broncos (3-3). A win over the Raiders and they have a four-game lead in the loss column.

Yet Mahomes has fewer touchdown passes (six) than interceptions (eight, tied for the league lead with the Packers’ Jordan Love and the Raiders’ Gardner Minshew).

“There’s been a lot of turnovers, mostly by me,” Mahomes told reporters after Kansas City defeated the 49ers last Sunday. “I think it just shows the versatility of our team. It’s not just about me. It’s not just about the stats and the light show and stuff like that.

“It’s about playing team football, and I believe if we keep working, we can do a better job of throwing the ball down the field offensively.”

Mahomes, a two-time NFL MVP and three-time Super Bowl MVP, posted a career-worst passer rating of 44.4 against the 49ers and Kansas City still won the game. It was the second straight game in which Mahomes failed to throw a touchdown pass – the first time in his career he had back-to-back games with a TD pass. His passer rating of 82.5 is the worst of his career.

Still, the Chiefs are 6-0 anyway.

What does that say about this team if the offense, which has lost receivers Rashee Rice and JuJu Smith-Schuster and top running back Isiah Pacheco to injuries, starts to click?

Even Travis Kelce, Mahomes’ favorite target, has been virtually invisible this season, except off the court, wherever he is with Taylor Swift.

Kelce has a modest 28 receptions for 245 yards, an average of just 8.8 yards, and he hasn’t caught a TD yet. These numbers predict a full season of 79 catches for 694 yards and no touchdowns, and would be by far the worst of his career. In his 10 seasons, Kelce has averaged 90.7 receptions for 1,132 yards and 7.4 TDs per season with the Chiefs.

“It’s about us getting better throughout the year and how we can get better from our last game to now,” Kelce told reporters last week. “There are a lot of questions about what we can do offensively now with the guys we have, and I think we showed everyone that we can score points (against the 49ers).”

The Chiefs have an unusually small point differential for an undefeated team through six games: 146 to 103, just an average margin of victory of 7.2 points.

Their continued success is directly related to coaching. Head coach Andy Reid is a wizard, and his defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo is perhaps the most underrated and overlooked assistant coach in the league. Kansas City has remained undefeated in large part due to the fact that its defense ranks fifth in the league in points allowed at 17.2 per game.

The Raiders are the last team to beat the Chiefs, 20-14 last Christmas in Kansas City. Since then, they have won 12 in a row, including the Super Bowl, which was played at the Raiders’ Allegiant Stadium, where the Chiefs have won all four against the Raiders.

“They came in and chased us,” Reid recalled of that final loss. “That’s their personality. We didn’t handle it the right way, but I thought we learned from it and got better from it.”

That’s the Chiefs way under Reid: continually get better. And getting better from a 6-0 record with a struggling offense isn’t good news for the rest of the AFC, or the rest of the NFL.