The Kansas City Chiefs are back to the drawing board after losing Week 1 at home to the Detroit Lions on Thursday night. The problems started days before Thursday with the injury to Travis Kelce during last Tuesday’s practice.
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid had to decide not to allow the All-Pro tight end to play on a bad knee even if he wanted to risk it. Reid addressed the Kelce situation during his post-game press conference.
“He just wasn’t feeling right, so I wasn’t going to put him out there with that, and he was honest with me, and we talked.” said Reid, “So, just not enough time there.”
Kelce is a significant part of the Chiefs’ offensive attack, and his absence could be felt on each drive. Reid, however, felt the loss was more of a team execution issue.
“No excuses at all. We’ve got guys who can play that right there to take care of business. They’ve got us on special teams and continued the drive; they got us on the tipped ball.” said Reid, “So I mean, listen, it’s unusual of the guys that dropped the ball to drop the ball. That’s not what I’ve seen from them, and I wasn’t expecting them to do that, so you do that, you take care of business there, and you’ll be alright.”
The Chiefs struggled to move the ball down the field in several drives. Reid didn’t blame the troubles on not having Kelce but rather the exceptional play from Detroit’s defense because the offensive game plan remained the same.
“We really didn’t have to. We kept the gameplan basically the same.” said Reid, “They did a nice job of mixing their coverages and that, but our guys handled it fairly well.”
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