The Kansas City Chiefs as a team had a great showing on Sunday Night Football coming away with the win in Denver. Phillip Gaines was almost the goat of that game after he gave up the big nearly-game-ending touchdown to the Broncos along with over 200 yards total in the game.
In short, Gaines was torched. The Chiefs, however, think he will bounce back.
“Yeah, I think he’s fine,” Chiefs DC Bob Sutton said. “He, obviously, had a couple tough plays the other night and that can happen to you when you play out on that fast lane there – things go quickly and you get exposed quickly if you make a mistake.”
Gaines has shown flashes but the injury history combined with the ups and downs has been a problem at times this year. He’s still young enough that he can turn it around.
“We’ve seen him play the other way,” Sutton said. “He had a couple bad plays, which I’m sure he knows about. You just got to get back in. One of those things when you play out there – you hear it all the time – you can’t get shaken if you give one up or you can’t play out there. You’re going to give one up eventually, okay? You have to learn from, go on and kind of what coach Reid tells our guys all the time, ‘Hey, you play this play with everything that you got. If it didn’t work out your way, it doesn’t have anything to do with your next play.’ I think that’s great advice.”
Matt Ryan to Julio Jones might be the best combination in the NFL. The Chiefs obviously are aware that Gaines has struggled so I’m hoping they have a plan for him when Julio is lined up against him and they’re not just hoping he fixes whatever went wrong. Working in his favor will be the (likely) return of Steven Nelson.