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The Kansas City Chiefs are fresh off the bye week and after some holiday introspection, they’re due to make a few changes for the stretch run.
Speaking to reporters for the first time since the win over the Dallas Cowboys in Week 11, Chiefs ST coordinator Dave Toub explained his process during the bye week. He’s been looking hard for any proclivity on his part, but he also intends to find any sort of edge he can to get things trending in a positive direction.
“You go back and do a lot of self-scouting,” Toub said. “You want to see what other teams are looking at. Do you have any tendencies? Are you doing anything 100% of the time? That’s where you have to be careful, if you do it every time, then you’re susceptible to a fake or some kind of trick play or something. You look at — are you successful in what you’re doing? You look at the return game and are you getting what you want as far as numbers and are the guys blocking the way you like? You spend a lot of time doing that. We did that early and then we jumped ahead and started looking at Denver too as well. We feel like we got a good jump on them this week.”
Ahead of the bye week, Toub did make one change and it looks like that change will stick. For the first time since being drafted in 2019, Mecole Hardman didn’t play any snaps on special teams. Instead, the Chiefs opted to give Mike Hughes all the punt returns during the game. According to Toub, this was an effort to jumpstart a punt return game that has been rather dormant this season.
“We’re trying to get a spark,” Toub said. “We’re not giving up on Mecole (Hardman) by any means. He is, obviously, probably the most dynamic guy we have. But just a little bit (of time) to maybe sit back and watch a little bit, watch from the sideline, maybe that will help your confidence.
“We’re happy with (Mike Hughes). Mike does a great job, he’s a good catcher, he makes good decisions. We just want to get part of that game going. You try different things like that.”
Hughes has only returned three punts on the season averaging 18.3 yards per return. Hardman has returned eight punts this season averaging 10.3 yards per return. While the Chiefs still have Hardman available to return punts, it’s Hughes’ job to lose at this point. According to Toub, Hughes will be ‘the guy’ at the punt returner position moving forward.
“Right now, yeah,” Toub said. “That’s what we’re going to go with. We always know we’ve got Mecole (Hardman). We know we’ve got Tyreek (Hill). There’s a lot worse situations in the NFL than we have right now. We have guys we can use.”
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