The Kansas City Chiefs were driving and within Harrison Butker’s field goal range in the fourth quarter. The Baltimore Ravens had one timeout remaining and there was just 1:24 left on the game clock. Typically, this would result in a routine long kick from Butker and a win for Kansas City. Things simply didn’t go that way this time around.
It was second-and-short for Kansas City, so they did the sensical thing, which was handing the ball off to RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire with the hope of rolling the clock. Instead of picking up an easy few yards, penetration met Edwards-Helaire in the backfield. That’s when a running back’s worst nightmare happened. Edwards-Helaire put the ball on the ground and Baltimore recovered it.
It was Edwards-Helaire’s first career fumble in the NFL and it came at the most inopportune moment. The game was on the line and the team put the ball in his hands. He put that ball back in the hands of a Ravens offense that the defense struggled to stop all night.
After the game, the Chiefs rallied behind their running back, with support from teammates and the coaching staff.
“I haven’t seen the replay, but from a naked eye, it looked like he didn’t have it all quite tucked in,” Chiefs HC Andy Reid told reporters after the game. “I don’t know if that was an exchange problem or what happened. [I’m] not worried about him fumbling because that’s not who he is.”
Coach Reid is right about that too, as Edwards-Helaire is historically not one to put the ball on the ground. In 439 touches at LSU in college, Edwards-Helaire only fumbled the ball once. It took 207 carries in the NFL for him to notch his first career fumble. That play coming in a prime-time game against an AFC foe only magnified the mistake, but no one in the locker room in Kansas City is putting any blame on the second-year running back.
“Yeah so listen, we’re not putting the blame on anybody in particular. That’s not how we roll, and things happen. That’s the human element of the game and he was working through the line of scrimmage with the ball,” Reid explained on Monday. “The thing he’ll learn is as opposed to switching arms, just keep that thing tight and just cover it with two hands and just roll. But he’s not a fumbler, that’s not his deal, and he’ll be fine with it.”
Asked what he told Edwards-Helaire after the game, Chiefs veteran TE Travis Kelce echoed similar sentiments. This loss was not solely on one play and one mistake. They’ve each got a share of the blame to go around.
“Man up. Man Up. It is what it is, and that’s not just to Clyde; that’s anyone in the building and in the locker room,” Kelce told reporters after the game. “We will never point fingers and say it’s just one person’s loss. That is not how we roll at Kansas City. We’ll fix it in the four quarters of football. We’ll fix it.”
As for Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes, who also had a costly turnover during the game, he advised Edwards-Helaire that he’ll have his shot at redemption later this season.
“We’ll need him the whole entire season,” Mahomes told reporters on Sunday night. “Don’t let one play define you. It’s a long season. Obviously, we lost to a good football team, and we played at their place. It’s a long season, and if we want to be great and have a chance to have another run at this thing, he’s going to be an important part of it.”
There is plenty of work to be done for Kansas City after this loss, but part of being able to correct mistakes is to have trust and confidence in each other. The Chiefs collectively have faith that Edwards-Helaire will be able to bounce back from this mistake and learn from it. After you put a ball on the ground in the NFL, you become the hunted. He’ll have no choice but to get better at securing the football moving forward.
“I think all of the players have trust in him, but he can learn,” Reid said of Edwards-Helaire. “If we can learn from the mistakes we made, then we’re going to be a better team and you got to grow together. Sometimes there’s going to be some highs and some lows in this thing, and you got to work through it and try to get yourself better, coaches and players.”
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