Super Bowl champions Kansas City Chiefs continued their unbeaten start to the season as they saw off the challenge of the New Orleans Saints.
Chasing a third successive NFL crown, the Chiefs won 26-13 to join the Minnesota Vikings as the only teams with a perfect 5-0 record, although they again struggled to convert territory into points.
Kareem Hunt, who ran for 102 yards, put the Chiefs ahead with a five-yard touchdown run in the first quarter.
Three Harrison Butker field goals stretched the advantage in the second quarter to 16-7, interspersed with Rashid Shaheed catching a 43-yard pass from Derek Carr – more than half of the total first-half yards for the Saints quarterback.
With many in the Kansas crowd cheering the city’s baseball team, the Kansas City Royals, as they clinched a play-off win at the New York Yankees, the third quarter was scoreless.
Carr found Foster Moreau from six yards to cut the gap to three points early in the fourth quarter.
But that was as close as the Saints got as they dropped to 2-3 and lost Carr to an oblique injury late on.
Rookie Xavier Worthy ran in from three yards little more than two minutes later and Butker’s final field goal from 38 yards stretched the Chiefs’ advantage.
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