KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Chiefs Head Coach Andy Reid met with the media on Monday. Following are his comments.

OPENING STATEMENT: “Alright guys, go ahead and fire away. The players are coming in now so I don’t have any injury report updates or anything.”

Q: Morris Claiborne is eligible to be activated this week, what are your plans for him and is he a player that can hit the ground running or does he need to be slowly worked in?

REID: “I’ll meet with Spags (Coach Spagnuolo) on that. I haven’t gotten to that point yet. We’re still going back through yesterday’s game and working on that with the defense. When I get a minute, I’ll talk to him about it. He’s been working and doing a good job. I’ll have to talk to him and see where he thinks he’s at with that.”

Q: There was a play with Patrick yesterday trying to wrestle the ball away from a defensive lineman, do you prefer he shies away from something like that or do you fear that if you do that, it will take away from his instinctive competitiveness?

REID: “He’s got pretty good judgement. I don’t really worry too much about that. He’s going to play the game, he normally keeps himself relatively out of harm’s way there. I’m not really worried about that, no.”

Q: You don’t want to turn the ball over the way you did, a lot of things went against you but you still were able to grind out a win, does that make this team a little bit more satisfied and does it make a statement on the team’s ability to handle adversity?

REID: “I mean yeah, I got so excited I thought Mozart was an artist (laughing). It was pretty exciting. Listen, you don’t want to turn the ball over. You want to capitalize on turnovers which we talked about and at least we were able to get half of that done and capitalize on turnovers. But, the best part about it, which I think answers your question, the guys never doubted one another or themselves for whatever case it might be with a turnover. They picked the guys up that had the turnovers and we were able to rally around it. The defense made some stops. The offense made some plays. It worked out ok. There was a good feeling on the sideline, there was an emotional feeling that we were all in and going to take care of business. That’s reassuring for a head coach.”

Q: The Lions were punching the ball a lot, had you seen that on tape from earlier?

REID: “Yeah we had talked to our guys about that earlier in the week. They take advantage of turnovers. They create them and take advantage of them. You’ve got to keep the ball high and tight. You have to cover it in traffic, you have to do those basic fundamental things. We didn’t do a great job of that at times.”

Q: One thing we talked about this week was LeSean McCoy and being able to push through his injury, easing off of him toward the end of the game, was that preference of Darrel Williams or due to the ankle?

REID: “We have confidence in all those guys. If one guy gets a little tired, we can rotate the other guy in. Obviously, Darrel is a little more familiar with the protections, just having done them all for the time that he has, and they’re different from what LeSean had done in Philly. He’s getting caught up in that area so that’s part of it. Most of it comes down to trying to keep the guys in a rotation and keep them fresh, that’s what we really try to do.”

Q: You mentioned the Mozart line, with social media we get a little more insight to the locker room and the celebration after, you seemed particularly excited even though the team didn’t seem as clean, when in your career did you take on the mentality that no matter how we played, we were able to accomplish something today? Did you learn that from Coach Holmgren?

REID: “I’m not sure about that. Probably just from experience. I don’t want to slight Coach Holmgren at all either, he was good at all that. I respect the game, I respect that team. I feel like they are well coached, and they have great players and they’re doing something special up there and they’re working on that. We came in and had some things not go our direction which happens in this league, that’s the human element in this game. To persevere and to keep fighting I think becomes important and it’s emotional. That’s I guess where I was coming from. There’s time here where we can correct the mistakes. I always come into this saying the guys are the best in the world at what they do, and that’s the whole NFL. It’s a small fraternity of players and coaches. They want to do great, but it’s not always going to be great. That’s just human nature, the way things work and the way the ball bounces. So, for them to continue to fight, not everybody does that. That’s important and our guys did that.”

Q: As the week unfolds and you get into the scouting of the Colts, can you speak on the challenge they face with the quarterback situation at the beginning of the season and how they seemed to handle it pretty well?

REID: “They’ve got good leadership, in the front office with Chris (Ballard) and Frank (Reich) the head coach. They’ve got good coaches along with that. They have a quarterback there that’s a good player that they trust. They were able to overcome the shock or whatever of losing a big-time player. Andrew (Luck) is a phenomenal player with a good attitude, I’m not going to slight him a bit. It took a lot of courage to do what he did, in a lot of areas. So, I would just tell you to overcome that you need to have good leadership and they have that.”

Q: Lions Head Coach Matt Patricia comes from the Patriots system and it appears that he has used some of the same schemes. What is real in your estimation as far as how much you’re able to take from what other teams have done and found success with against common opponents, compared to sticking with what you do? How do you balance that and is it a real thing?

REID: “Yeah, (Patricia) comes from that tree there. I guess they slowed us down a little bit. Not every play is going to be a good play when you play against that coverage, but the good ones could be great ones. The main thing is that you score more points than the other team, and we were able to do that. I don’t really care how many it is. You start getting into the upper 30’s, that’s not a bad day. Your defense contributes, that’s a beautiful thing. The offense contributes a little, that’s good, too. Field position becomes important in a game like that where we were able to kind of flip that at important times.”

Q: Coming off of three road wins and having four out of the next five games at home, do you have to be a little cautious that you don’t start feeling too good about yourself?

REID: “After yesterday, there is no clear-cut picture in this league. There were some crazy games yesterday. The teams that are supposedly the real good teams didn’t always have the best production – and I’m speaking for ourselves, and other teams that are considered to be that, that’s just a consideration though. Nothing changes as far as we go. Every week you’ve got to put out your best product, the best you can do that day. Strive for that. We’ll continue to do that. As long as we can keep that mindset, we’ll be fine. But, you have to maintain that, work hard and so on. We try to keep it that way. Try to make that a culture and make sure our guys stay focused – coaches included. We all have to do that.”

Q: Over the past two games it appeared to me that towards the end of the second quarter, that Patrick wanted to keep the guys on the field and try to set up a scoring opportunity. What has the conversation been like regarding those situations in trying to decide how to manage the clock and set up either a field goal or a touchdown at the end of the first half?

REID: “Both of those have been unique situations where you could flip a coin on which way you want to go with it. When it was all said and done, I thought we did the right thing. We came away with points with no time for the other team to be productive. When it’s really said and done, that’s where you want to be. I thought we were able to do that in both of the cases that you’re talking about. Again, those are up for discussion because you can go in a couple of different directions with both of those scenarios.”

Q: There was a comment made on the broadcast about the number of people that surround Patrick during the breaks. Is everybody just there and it’s just you and Offensive Coordinator Eric Bieniemy to Patrick, or is everybody chiming in on that discussion at that time?

REID: “So normally the way that works is that Eric gathers information from the other coaches, and then he formulates that and gives his opinion on that and where we need to go forward. Then, Pat, (Quarterbacks Coach) Mike (Kafka) and I, and the quarterbacks are there, obviously, sit there and then Eric comes over with that information. We sit and talk through what Pat saw and what we’re thinking. Then, E.B. comes over and we go through that with what he has gathered from the other coaches, and then we get his opinion on things, and then we kind of mix it all together. The main thing we try to do is keep open communication the best we can in a short period of time. It’s been a pretty good system that works. Periodically, guys will come over and jump in. (Wide Receivers Coach) Greg Lewis sneaks over and we talk a little bit there. Anything that we need, they kind of know where the spot is that we can be away and kind of formulate things. We’ve also got the guys upstairs that do a good job with it.”

—CHIEFS—