Andy Reid spoke to the media the day after the Kansas City Chiefs playoff loss to the Steelers. It felt familiar to last year. A little too familiar. The Chifes lost to the Patriots last year in a game. While the score appeared close, anyone watchign the game knew the Patriots were on another level.
The “progress” that we saw this year is that the Chiefs divisional round opponent didn’t look light years ahead of them. They looked pretty well-matched. So, progress, I guess?
“I would tell you that there’s a certain grit that has been developed here, and I wouldn’t expect that to change,” Reid said. ‘It’s been instilled in these guys, and we just have to work out little things here. Listen, if there’s a positive here, we did better in this game than we did when we played the Patriots. We put ourselves in a position to win the game at the end, but sitting here, all of that is hindsight because I’m doing this press conference, and the other team is moving on.”
It’s true, technically. But it feels like the progress is playing a team who’s not the Patriots. I realize 15 AFC teams are building teams to beat the Patriots so the Chiefs aren’t really unique here but it remains frustrating that the Chiefs can’t get over the hump from good to great team.