The Kansas City Chiefs have a long week to fix issues before they face the Buffalo Bills.
The Kansas City Chiefs need to go back to the drawing board after suffering their first loss of the season — also their first loss in the last 14 games they’ve played. At times when it mattered most last year, the Chiefs were able to overcome mistakes and scoring deficits. On Sunday, that good fortune ran out as they fell 40-32 to the Las Vegas Raiders.
After the game, Chiefs HC Andy Reid pointed to some glaring problems that hurt his team during the game.
“We hadn’t had all these penalties, so that part was new,” Reid said. “Then, we really haven’t given up that many big plays. So, those things, we’ve just got to make sure that we clean that up. If you kind of narrow it down, that’s the problem. And I could’ve put our offense in a better position that second half. That didn’t take place. We weren’t able to move the ball very well, so I’ll be able to look at that too.”
Penalties, in fact, were a huge problem for a team that is typically disciplined. By the end of the game, the team had committed 10 penalties totaling 94 yards. Looking back at the game tape, several were unnecessary and came on what could have been game-changing plays. Look no further than Kelechi Osemele’s shoulder-tugging hold, which nullified a 58-yard touchdown to Tyreek Hill. On the flip side, while penalties cost the offense some big plays, the defense struggled to stop them.
“Listen, they just got behind us,” Reid said. “And I’ll look at the tape and see exactly what went on there, but I would say a couple of them were just beat, and then other ones I’m not sure we were doing the right things. That’s how these things go when you have big plays on you.”
Big plays are the bane of any defense, but they were also a big reason why Steve Spagnuolo’s group gave up 40 points, the most of his tenure in Kansas City. Two long touchdowns of 50-plus yards with Charvarius Ward in coverage were glaring. The Raiders also had a long run of 43 yards, one where Devontae Booker could have been stopped at the line of scrimmage by Ben Niemann.
All of these issues are correctable according to Reid.
“Well, I think penalties, you can correct those,” Reid said. “Then, the big plays, you can correct those. We’ve got to take care of business there. We’ve got to get in a rhythm in the second half, do a better job there, off of this game and offensively. . . . I thought the offense, we struggled just a little bit the first few possessions, and you’ve got to take care of that.”
In addition to creating a rhythm on offense, the team has to work on creating some big plays of their own. The longest rush of the day for Kansas City was 10 yards. The longest pass went for just 37 yards.
Reid anticipates that the frustration from this loss and the accompanying mistakes will boil over in the form of some good, hard work in practice this week. Hopefully, that work will culminate into a better result as the Chiefs take on Buffalo in Week 6.
“These guys, they were frustrated, they worked hard,” Reid told reporters on Monday. “They never gave up through the four quarters, they kept battling, but we just try to be as real as you can. I try to give them a real observation at the end of the game and penalties and big plays were what’s real. . . . I think if you can handle real as a coach and a player then you should be able to fix it and with some heartfelt work, and so that’s what we’ll do this next week. We’ll get ourselves together, put a good game plan together and execute it and we look forward to that challenge of playing Buffalo.”
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