Chiefs HC Andy Reid encourages his players to come up with new plays

Reid’s reasoning for getting Chiefs players involved in play-design is pretty brilliant.

The last time the Kansas City Chiefs were on the football field they dazzled with a play that was designed in part by starting QB Patrick Mahomes.

When Chiefs HC Andy Reid spoke to the media on Monday, he confirmed that “Ferrari Right” wasn’t the first player-designed play that Kansas City has used and it won’t be the last one they use either. Reid was specifically asked about the trust involved with Mahomes to allow him to design that play and whether he’d brought any more plays to Reid’s attention.

“So far that’s one,” Reid told reporters. “He’s had ideas, we’ve used other players’ ideas and I’m free game. If you got a good one, let’s go. If you got one, bring it on, we’ll take it. I’m easy that way. If they look good, we’ll try it on and see how it works, but I think it’s healthy. I think it’s healthy for guys. They’re thinking football which is important, and you hope that your guys are in the frame of mind to do that.”

The idea behind encouraging and trusting players to develop plays is truly a brilliant one. It gets the team thinking about football on a fundamental level. It’s fostering a love for the game and creativity that maybe wasn’t there with Chiefs teams of old. Consider that Mahomes had to actually seek out guidance from TE coach Tom Melvin on the rules of the pre-snap motion in “Ferrari Right.” That’s a pretty unique thing that you don’t hear about often.

It also gets players personally invested in the offense to have a part in some of these unique plays, whether it’s in the design or just some guys getting an opportunity to get their number called. Think to Mike Remmers who suffered a rib injury in Week 9, he later came back into the game on a play where he’d declared eligible from his right tackle spot. He was coming free as a receiver on the play and forced a hold by a Panthers defender. Everyone is seemingly getting a chance to put their stamp on the offense.

Reid has fostered a culture of football intelligence and creativity in the Kansas City locker room. As a whole, they’re all committed to coming up with new exciting ways to score points each and every week. What’s coming next is still to be determined, but you can bet they’ll have something special in store for the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 11.

[vertical-gallery id=80600]

Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes mastermind behind ‘Ferrari Right’ play design

Mahomes now can add play design to his incredible resume with the Kansas City Chiefs.

[sendtonews_embed video_id=”TJXfuB3rZK-1030531-7498″]

Kansas City Chiefs OC Eric Bieneimy assured reporters following Week 3, when Eric Fisher and Anthony Sherman caught touchdown passes, that the team still had an entire arsenal of unique plays available. Well, he wasn’t lying.

In Week 9 against the Carolina Panthers, the Chiefs took the Ferrari out of the garage and debuted a brand-new play. The play featured a unique pre-snap jet motion and counter from Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes. The result, of course, was the first Kansas City touchdown of the game, thrown to WR Demarcus Robinson in the back of the endzone.

The play was appropriately named too.

“It’s called ‘Ferrari Right’,” Mahomes told reporters following the game.

When the play happened, many took to Twitter to praise Chiefs HC Andy Reid, who is known as a guru when it comes to unique play design. As it turns out, Reid wasn’t the mastermind behind this play, he was simply the one who made the decision to actually install it.

“Yeah, so the last three weeks Pat’s been messing around with it, so I told him, I said, ‘We’re going to put it in,’ and he looked at me like I was crazy,” Reid explained. “But he had been doing it and it looked good, so, I said, ‘If it looks good, let’s try it,’ and so we tried it. He goes down there during special teams and he was messing around with a couple of things, so we put it in, and it worked.”

It started off as just a way for Mahomes to get his legs warmed up ahead of practice, but after some development, it ended up becoming a touchdown scoring play for the team.

“Yeah, so you see me in training camp and before practice, taking snaps with centers, and so obviously, I’m doing formations and stuff like that and I started going in motion,” Mahomes explained. “After that, I had to go to Tom Melvin our tight ends coach and ask if it was legal for me to be in motion and he said as long as everyone was set. Then after I got that, I took it to special teams and started working with Trav (Travis Kelce) and Tyreek (Hill) on these different plays we could run from it and I had to start throwing little hints to Coach (Andy) Reid that we needed to try it out and finally got it in and it worked out well.”

A lot of research and practice went into this becoming a successful play for Mahomes and the Chiefs. But not everyone anticipated that this play would work out as well as it did.

“You know what, the crazy thing is, I really didn’t think that play was going to be put in,” Chiefs WR Tyreek Hill told reporters after the game. “But it’s Patrick Mahomes, so. There was one day at practice where he was like, ’10, 10, 10, come over here I’ve got a play for you!’ And I saw him do his counter jet (motion) and I was like, ‘Bro, what are you doing? Why don’t you just line up and snap the ball?’ But it turned out to be a great play.”

While Hill was shocked to see the play installed, he wasn’t exactly surprised that the play came from Mahomes. In addition to growing as a quarterback these last three years, Hill has seen Mahomes’ creativity grow under the tutelage of Reid and Bieniemy.

“His creativity — just him being around Coach Reid,” Hill continued. “Coach Reid is wearing off on Pat, just the creativity and the ideas that both of them have. It’s just collaborating and EB (Eric Bieniemy) too, EB’s right there in the mix too, so it’s just crazy.”

And for all the fans worried about the team debuting yet another unique play in a midseason non-conference game, don’t worry. Hill expects more creativity on the way from his QB and coaching staff.

“I know we’re going to have something fun after the bye week.”

If history is any indicator, the team still has plenty of unique play calls available and more soon-to-be installed in the playbook. Perhaps we’ll even get another variation of this play using the pre-snap motion from Mahomes.