Chiefs Head Coach Andy Reid. Photo courtesy Chiefs
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Chiefs Head Coach Andy Reid discussed Sunday night’s game during a Monday presser. Following are his comments.
OPENING STATEMENT: “The guys are just coming in to get their injuries looked at now, so I don’t have a report for you. As far as the game last night, I had a chance to go back and obviously look at the tape. When you’re playing a good football team, you can’t have the mistakes that we made in a close game. It’s something that we can learn from and take from that, whether it’s a turnover, a missed field goal – whatever it might be – dropped interceptions. We all had a part in it. Coaches and players, we can all do a better job, and will. There are no moral victories or any of that stuff. The guys that were in the game are in there to win the game. It doesn’t matter who, where or when, that’s how we roll. The thing that I took as a positive was that we played extremely hard and aggressive football. That is something that we can continue to build on. We have to get rid of a couple of these mistakes. We are an inch or two away from getting the turnover battle flipped around and going in our direction. On their part, they made some plays. Their quarterback, in particular, made some big throws and did a nice job. Anyways, with that, time’s yours.”
Q: Mecole Hardman only played nine offensive snaps, all early on. What was the thought process behind the limited amount of snaps that he got in the second half?
REID: “There wasn’t any real reason behind that. We try to keep the guys on a rotation the best that we can. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way, with his number being in there.”
Q: LeSean McCoy carries the ball a little bit differently, but it doesn’t seem like, in the past, that he has had a fumbling issue. What are your thoughts with him?
REID: “Traditionally he is not a fumbler, throughout his career. He has had the two here and they have come at bad times. Not that a fumble ever comes at a good time. But he has not been a fumbler. I would expect it to go back to that way.”
Q: Do you feel good about the team’s performance last night, considering the amount of injuries that your team is dealing with?
REID: “The positive is the effort. You win games with that, and then eliminating some of the mistakes. That’s a key right now. I really don’t care who is in or not in, I don’t get into all of that. I expect the guys that are in to go win the game, that’s what I expect. The whole moral victory thing, I’m not into. I appreciate the effort though that the guys are putting in. We have some young guys that are having an opportunity to play. That’s going to help us down the road. But, we have to maintain the attitude that we have. And as you start getting guys back, that they continue on with that same attitude, also. Then you’ve got something there. It’s not the guys that didn’t play. It’s the numbers. You do this thing as a team. You get kind of low on certain positions, then you don’t have that rotation going. That’s the part that ends up being a little bit tough. But, the guys battled through it.”
Q: Based on evaluating Matt Moore’s performance last night, if he has to play again, what do you feel like he can build on, now that you have almost two full games to evaluate?
REID: “We’re playing a good football team coming up here, a good defense. We’ll go through and look at what they do, study them and then we’ll come up with what we feel is best against them and for Matt, if he ends up being that guy in there. Then we go. It wouldn’t be any different if it is Patrick (Mahomes), Matt, whoever. I’m sure that Matt is going to wake up this morning a little stiff. He took a couple of hits in there and played a full game, which he hasn’t done for a while. But, there are some things that, if he is asked to play again, that you see that he does well. Going back to your question, you can build on some of those.”
Q: Patrick Mahomes told the NBC broadcast that if last night’s game would have been a playoff game, he would have been in the game. Is that something that the organization would agree with?
REID: “Isn’t that what you love about him? He was telling me that he wanted to go back in after he hurt it the first time in the Denver game. That’s him. Who wants to slow that down, right? That thinking, at least. Then, it’s important that the medical people take care of it from there. That’s how you want him. You want him wired that way. He wanted to play last night. Unfortunately, you don’t see a lot of that in this league right now. Not like that, out where the quarterbacks are saying things like that or people are saying things like that. But, there is a lot of heart. There is a small minority that is opposite of that thinking.”
Q: What is the next step in the evaluation process of Patrick Mahomes and his recovery process?
REID: “I leave that up to the doctors, as far as that goes, and (Vice President of Sports Medicine & Performance) Rick (Burkholder) in how they evaluate it. Then, Pat’s communication with them. I look at the visual part. Can he do the things that he needs to be able to do to play in a game? Then, I’m always asking, ‘How are you feeling?’ If I ask, he normally tells me how he feels. I probably would add that into the equation. But, the doctors have to do that. I don’t claim to be a doctor at all.”
Q: Was there any thought on the third and three for it being four down territory? Or were you not having those thoughts? Were you considering running the ball at all?
REID: “I did what I did. I did what I thought needed to be played first, second and third down.”
Q: Would the decision on fourth and three have been different if Patrick was available?
REID: “I don’t know. I would’ve had to feel it during the game and see what we have dialed up or available with how we were playing.”
Q: You mentioned the eagerness Tyreek Hill had during his rehab to get back, how much do you see that in Patrick Mahomes?
REID: “Those two are wired very similar. We talk to them. Everybody is different. Everybody is different but that’s why we don’t put a time on guys. You can’t do that. I’d say it’s similar in the fact in we’ll see how they feel medically, are they safe and that whole deal.”
Q: Is it safe to say or assume that Patrick will be at practice on Wednesday?
REID: “Yeah, unless he has as cold or is sick, I would imagine.”
Q: How did Patrick handle being on the sideline during the game and what was the conversation like with him on the bench?
REID: “He was great on the bench. He’s pretty-high strung, I had to pull him back off the field two or three times. You can’t go on the field without a uniform on, just to congratulate his teammates but that’s why I was pulling him back. He was into it. I thought he handled it as well as he can. He obviously didn’t like being in that role, but he handled it well.”
Q: You called the last timeout at 2:41, what goes into deciding when to make those calls and if you should wait until the two-minute warning?
REID: “Normally you get to that four-minute mark and you start thinking about getting your timeouts. We have a chart we work off of. It’s pretty accurate and a lot of study goes into it.”
Q: When it’s a couple of seconds away, is that a close call?
REID: “Every second counts.”
Q: After watching film, would you say there’s a lot of things to be corrected by Matt Moore if he were to start again?
REID: “I thought he played well for the situation he was put in. Are there things he needs to do better that he’ll go back and look at? Yeah. Every player does that. For where he was and what he was asked to do I thought he handled it very well and he will clean up the other things whether he is playing or not playing he’ll make sure he gets those cleaned up.”
Q: How did Chad Henne look in practice last week and do you think you’ll move him up this week?
REID: “I’ll get with Brett (Veach) on that. I thought he did well. He was a little bit sore early, but we’ll go through and look at that and evaluate that in the next couple days.”
Q: Early in the fourth quarter was the 25-yard pass to Sammy Watkins with (Preston) Smith coming down on him, how impressive was that play?
REID: “He had a couple of them. He had the throw to (Travis) Kelce for the touchdown. That was another one and Kelce did a nice job on it, but for Matt (Moore) to get that ball out with someone right in his face was nice. The one to Sammy (Watkins) was another one. He had a couple where he had to throw it on time, trust his guys and not having played with those guys but over a couple months, it was a pretty good job for him.”