Tyreek Hill’s return was one of the bright spots in loss to Texans

One of the few bright spots in for the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday’s 31-24 loss to the Houston Texans was the return of wide receiver Tyreek Hill, who was back in the lineup after suffering a posterior sternoclavicular dislocation (a dislocated collarbone) against the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 1.

As expected, the Chiefs didn’t give Hill too much work in his first game back. He was on the field for 27 offensive snaps — 57% of the total. In contrast, Demarcus Robinson and Byron Pringle were in on 85% and 60% of the offensive plays, respectively. But Hill made the most of the limited opportunities, leading Chiefs receivers with 80 yards on five catches from 10 targets.

Hill also scored two touchdowns in the game.

“It’s just [Patrick Mahomes] trusting me on the first one,” he told the press after the game. “The second one was [Mahomes] creating opportunities and me just finding the open seams in the zone.”

On the first touchdown, the Chiefs were at third-and-21 at the Texans 41-yard line — and Mahomes knew he had a free play.

“We had an offside play,” the quarterback explained to reporters, “and instead of going for maybe trying to get the field goal range, knowing I had the free play I put it up there for Tyreek — and he made a great play.”

“I was just making a play for my quarterback,” Hill said. “I’m going to do whatever it takes to make him look the best. That’s my dog; that’s my boy. If he throws it up, I tell each and every one of the receivers: that’s our ball. It doesn’t matter if there are five people around us, four or one: we are going to get the ball. We’re taking the ball.”

Double-covered by the Texans secondary on his first touchdown catch, Hill timed his leap for the ball perfectly and hauled it in three yards short of the goal line — and then dragged three defenders into the end zone with him.

“It felt amazing,” Hill said. “Every day I thank God that I’ve been put in this position to be able to play the game that I love, take care of the people that I love, and I’m thankful to be back on the field. It’s not the result that we wanted, but I’m thankful to be back on the field.”

With regard to that result, Hill remained positive.

“We just use this as one of those adversity moments,” he said. “We’ll just build off of this. We will continue to build throughout the season. We are going to bounce back. We are the Chiefs — that’s what we do. We’ve got the MVP quarterback, we got the best tight end in the league, we have the best offensive line in the league, in my opinion. We are going to keep building off of it.”