5 takeaways from Chiefs HC Andy Reid’s Monday media availability

The Kansas City Chiefs were thoroughly dominated in their Week 7 loss against the Tennessee Titans, falling to a 3-4 record on the year. Andy Reid spoke to the media on Monday, providing no excuses for the voluminous number of issues plaguing his team. He says it’ll take both collective and individual effort to correct the “obvious” things, but what else did we learn from the head coach?

Here are some quick takeaways from what Reid had to say:

Mahomes in the clear following injury scare

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If you had any concerns about Patrick Mahomes after he left the game on Sunday afternoon, Chiefs HC Andy Reid alleviated those worries on Monday.

Reid reiterated that Mahomes had cleared the NFL’s concussion protocol and that it was his decision to keep his star QB out of the game.

“Patrick did — I mentioned last night — Patrick did pass the concussion protocol,” Reid told reporters in his opening statement. “It was my decision not to put him back in at that time.”

Asked about any concussion symptoms or concerns that Mahomes wouldn’t be able to play in the upcoming game, Reid assured the media that he didn’t anticipate any changes to his status.

“Yeah, I haven’t met with the doctors (yet),” Reid said. “But no, I don’t anticipate that. I would have most likely heard that by now.”

Thankfully, the hit that Mahomes took during the game looked worse than it was and he seems to have come out on the other side of it healthy.

The team responded directly after the loss

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It’s a long week for Kansas City with the New York Giants coming to town for “Monday Night Football.” Asked about whether there was a positive to the guys having an extra day to rest and prepare, Reid segued into a positive that he saw in the near-immediate aftermath of the game.

“On the plane, you know, all the guys have these IPad’s now,” Reid explained. “So on the plane, they all had the game on. They were all looking at the game. There wasn’t the loud music or whatever, you can perceive that goes on in the back of the plane. This was focused on trying to get better and looking at it. (The players were) curious to see what went wrong. So I can handle that. That normally tells you that you’ve got a pretty strong locker room.”

With that extra day, it was good to see that the focus after the game was immediately on getting better for next week. Reid felt the team needed that type of approach in order to correct the issues moving forward.

“We need that right now, that’s what we need,” Reid stressed. “We need strong coaches and coaching and we need a good, solid, strong locker room. Guys want to do the right thing, we just have got to make sure we’re putting them in the position to do it and then when they’re put there that they execute it the right way and make a play.”

Titans had a good game plan to disrupt Mahomes

AP Photo/Wade Payne

Mahomes was under siege for a good portion of the game. A lot of that had to do with the Chiefs playing from behind, needing to throw the ball for basically a full four quarters of football. Reid said that the Titans had a specific game plan built to disrupt the offense in those situations.

“Yeah, so they had a good plan on us,” Reid said. “They pushed the pocket on the right side on the quarterbacks throwing arm and they worked at times 10 to 11 yards around the corner, which once you work the quarterbacks throwing arm, he can’t step up so now he’s deep around the corner. That’s a couple that Orlando (Brown) got beat on there, deep and around the horn. We got to go back and make sure we handle the on side right and Orlando can do some things with his set to make it even better there.”

It seems like both Orlando Brown Jr. and Mike Remmers could have done a better job keeping Mahomes upright. It’s safe to say that teams will try to replicate this type of pass-rush plan if the Chiefs get down big and are forced to throw in the future.

Chiefs still finding their identity on offense

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The past three seasons the Chiefs have been known for an explosive, downfield passing attack. Prompted to assess the identity of his offense, Chiefs HC Andy Reid gave a concerning answer.

“I think we’re still working through that right now,” Reid said. “We’ve got to form that identity here. We’ve got these remaining games to do that. We’ve got to make sure that we get that together.”

It feels like this team thought they could simply pick up where they left off on the offensive side of the ball, even with the changes they made. They added a new offensive line, geared toward a power running attack, but they’ve struggled to use it effectively. The team wants to push the ball down the field, but they’re not doing anything they need to do to create those opportunities for themselves. It is, in part, why they’re lacking an identity seven weeks into the season.

Reid unwilling to address some obvious effort issues

AP Photo/Wade Payne

The Chiefs had some obvious effort issues on the defensive side of the ball on Sunday, especially early on in the game after the team got down. Asked about what he saw from the team effort-wise, Reid said he felt it was good.

“That was one thing I thought was good,” Reid said. “We’ve seen a lot of teams just take it in the second half. I didn’t see that. I saw guys busting their tail to get the job done. We were just off. When you’re playing a good football team, you cannot be off. That’s the bottom line. We have to figure out a way to do that. That’s what we’ve done in the past, we’ve been able to do that and so we’ve got to keep urgency up in practice and the right frame of mind when we’re playing the game to get that done. That again, comes back to what you’ve got cultures and what you’ve got in the locker room, but that urgency has got to be there.”

Is this a case of blissful ignorance or a coach unwilling to throw some individual players under the bus? You make the call.

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