Steve Spagnuolo, Eric Bieniemy and Andy Heck explained what went wrong in Week 5.
The Kansas City Chiefs suffered their lone loss of the season in Week 5 against the Las Vegas Raiders.
On the defensive side of the ball, the coverage on the back end failed, surrendering a number of long touchdowns to various Raiders receivers. When Chiefs DC Steve Spagnuolo went back to review the tape and adjust, he didn’t identify a specific problem. Instead, he identified a number of things that snowballed into the most points ever scored on his defense in Kansas City.
“It’s a little bit of everything,” Spagnuolo explained. “It wasn’t one specific item. I told you guys this before, after the game, I hold myself personally responsible for at least one of them because I just didn’t think it was a good call and I put CW (Charvarius Ward) in a bad down. But look, if that was nine plays, 214 yards if I remember correctly, and it kind of changed the whole game and it did not help our football team. So, the emphasis has been not to allow explosive plays, it’s that every week. I’ve got to be a little bit smarter with the calls that I make and everybody’s eyes and what they’re doing, and everybody does their job a little bit better and hopefully, that doesn’t happen.”
This time around the goal is for the defense to not allow those explosive plays. It’ll take a combination of Spagnuolo doing a better job calling the defense on a play-to-play basis, but he also challenged his players to improve as well.
On the offensive side of the ball, the Chiefs allowed 22 total pressures against the Raiders in Week 5. It’s the single most they’ve allowed in a game all season. Chiefs OL coach Andy Heck explained how his group felt after the game and how they’ve prepared ahead of this game.
“With regards to the game against the Raiders previously, we came out of that thinking, ‘We’ve got to do a better job. We’ve got to put our nose to the grindstone and get to work,'” Heck said. “We got outplayed there. Those guys got the win. They did a nice job. It’s a young, aggressive, talented, well-coached group and they came to play. They played the game the way it was supposed to be played and they got us that day. We know the challenge that’s in store for us. We know what we’re capable of. We’re working our tails off to go out there and compete and get a win.”
Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy was a little blunter with his comments on Week 5, but no one would expect anything less. He says that this game will be all about his players being better prepared, mentally and physically.
“Well, I just thought it was obvious, they played better than what we did,” Bieniemy said. “And at the end of the day, kudos to them. They did an outstanding job of coming in here and doing what they needed to do. I’ve said this before, we got exactly what we deserved. Now it’s up to us to make sure that we’re mentally and physically ready for the battle in which we’re about to face.”
One common thread between all of the Chiefs’ coaches — no one was content with the performance from their unit during the Week 5 loss. That fact alone has been a source of motivation from the coaching staff heading into this pivotal Week 11 rematch with Las Vegas.
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