KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The first pass Patrick Mahomes threw in an NFL game in nine months targeted the player to whom he’s completed nearly a thousand passes in his life.

Easy prediction, right?

Mahomes dropped back just four minutes into the Chiefs’ opener against the Broncos on Monday, looked to his left and never took his eyes off his favorite target, Travis Kelce, before firing in his direction. It’s worked 908 times in the past, regular season and postseason combined.

The problem this time: Mahomes never looked elsewhere. And elsewhere had the opening.

“The last read is Kenneth (Walker), the route out of the backfield,” Mahomes said two days later, after watching the film on his tablet. “And if you give it to him, he has a chance to score a touchdown there.”

Indeed, Walker is completely uncovered on a drag route after emerging from the backfield. He is moving in the opposite direction of every wide receiver route and, in turn, moving in the opposite direction of every Broncos defender. He is, simply put, wide open.

Mahomes never saw him. He never gave himself a chance to see him.

The Chiefs demolished the Broncos on Monday night, 31-10, on a convincing and dominating night. But like every other NFL win, there is an exception to a pursuit of perfection.

In this case, the exception is married to the intrigue: The Chiefs looked great without Patrick Mahomes looking like his vintage self — or, more to the point now, before Patrick Mahomes looks like his vintage self.

The return from knee surgery was always going to be more of a process than a snap of the fingers — there would always be a gap between Mahomes being on the field for the first time and Mahomes being himself.

That gap is here, in not waiting to see Walker spring wide open and instead quickly targeting Kelce, who had a defender both underneath and over the top.

“I was a little bit quick with my reads and getting the ball out of my hand,” Mahomes said after the game.

It’s not exactly a surprise.

Rashee Rice, who last year returned from his own ACL surgery, told me the adrenaline of an NFL game takes on a different speed. It’s hard for training camp to completely replicate that.

Mahomes felt it, his coach assessed, and so he sped up, too.

He released the football in an average of 2.27 seconds, by far the quickest of any quarterback in the league in Week 1. The second fastest, Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, was at 2.54. It’s a distant second.

The 2.27 seconds is also the quickest average time to throw Mahomes has ever posted in a game in his career, per the data tracking from Next Gen Stats.

So, yeah, he was in a bit of a hurry.

“You figured there was going to be a little bit of that — (it’s) just the speed,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. “Even if you’re handing the ball off, just the speed of everybody and the calls — the urgency of the calls you’ve got to make. I anticipated a little bit of that (adjustment).”

A week ago, on the eve of the game, Mahomes quipped that he hoped he was done answering questions about his leg. (His knee came out of the game feeling good, he said, though other muscles he hasn’t used as frequently were a bit sore.)

A return to form is about far more than the health of his knee.

He still has to adjust to the game he’s missed for nine months.

Midway through his news conference Wednesday, I’d asked if he had a specific example of rushing too quickly through a read. True to form, he immediately had a play in mind. Two of them, actually.

He missed Walker on his first pass. And later in the first quarter, he quickly fired incomplete to wide receiver Xavier Worthy on a third-down throw — all the while a backside route to Tyquan Thornton had a crease for first-down yardage.

Look, Mahomes did not play poorly Monday night. He played like a quarterback who missed the last nine months and then skipped the preseason. He played like a quarterback who was still working through the kinks — like a quarterback who figured his worst mistake would be holding the ball too long, taking a hit and taking a sack.

He actually already found a better rhythm after halftime. He started 2 for 12 — the first time since at least 1999 that the Chiefs won a game with their quarterback starting 2 for 12 — but completed 12 of his final 15 throws.

“You have to get out there and play,” he said. “In order to (be) good at football, you have to play football. For me, getting those reps, getting out there and playing, getting hit, it kind of slowed me down in general. It just showed me I can play my game. I don’t have to try to press and push to be even better.”

He rushed for a touchdown on the opening drive. That play will help him feel more confident in the health of his knee.

The offensive line held up, though it’s certainly easier to hold up for 2.27 seconds than, say, the 3.41 seconds Washington quarterback Jayden Daniels used last week.

But the opener is a reminder of everything this return was always going to entail.

Mahomes made a remarkable comeback in nine months. We’ve covered that plenty.

The Chiefs just beat a reigning division champion by three touchdowns as the process to come all the way back endures.

It’s the intrigue.

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