Kansas City Chiefs defensive end George Karlaftis was one of the many heroes on defense in the 27-20 victory over the Las Vegas Raiders. In his post-game press conference, he opened up to reporters about the game-changing stop at the goal line by the defense to keep the Raiders off the scoreboard at that moment.
“We worked that all week. We worked that all season. And you know, we’ve come short a couple of times, like, if you go back to Cincinnati and stuff like that. So, put it all together. It’s great.” said Karlaftis. “We take pride in working together as a group, front end, back end, everything like that. So for our morale, for our defense, it is huge.”
The goal line stand was set up after Patrick Mahomes’ pass was intercepted deep in the Chiefs’ side of the endzone. Head coach Andy Reid expressed his thoughts on the situation after the game.
“Unbelievable. Offensively, we put the defense in a bad position, but we held up as a defense,” said Reid. “We came out and put our foot down and did a nice job there. That was important.”
Mahomes praised the defense while taking responsibility for the turnover, although the ball was tipped as he was throwing it.
“Those guys stepped up to the challenge. Obviously, it put them in a terrible position off the tipped pick,” said Mahomes. “Not only them getting that stop, I think it just flipped the momentum of the entire game. They kind of came back in that second half and were firing on all cylinders, and so for them to get that stop, then for us to have that long drive, it ended in a field goal, but it kind of switched the momentum, and then we were able to get the win from there.”