Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid met with the media over Zoom conference call Monday following the team’s 43-16 win over the Denver Broncos.
Watch the full presser above or by clicking here. Here were the most significant takeaways:
Reid noted how difficult it is to play such a strong game in all three phases, as the Chiefs did Sunday.
The Chiefs scored against Denver several times on offense, on defense with Daniel Sorensen’s pick-six and on special teams with Byron Pringle’s kick-return touchdown.
“It’s a tough thing,” Reid acknowledged. “You normally say if two [phases] out of three are a top-five, caliber whatever it is — whether it’s offense, defense, or special teams. If they’re top five in the league, they have a pretty good chance of striking and having a good year and getting the ultimate trophy that everyone is striving for.
“If you get three phases that are kicking in, that’s hard to beat. That’s tough. I’m giving you more history than not but if you go back and look at teams that could put together all three phases and roll with it, your percentages of winning are way, way up there.”
Reid discussed what the Chiefs have in Byron Pringle.
In addition to his 102-yard touchdown return, Pringle has three receptions on the year on all three of his targets, including two third-down catches that went for first downs against the Las Vegas Raiders and Buffalo Bills.
“He just needs to keep being him and stay healthy doing it and roll,” said Reid when asked about more potential playing time. “We’ve seen him periodically throughout – either in the preseason with his return game, we saw it in college at Kansas State there – and so we were kind of banking on that without a preseason here, banking on what we had seen before that he could, that and it would pull off a little bit of the play time for Mecole (Hardman) but Mecole has increased play time in the offense and still return punts there at the same time.
“I think as far as working in the offense, he is there, just don’t have enough spots. Going to have to kick the tight ends out of the game plan or the running backs, but when given the opportunity, everyone has trust in him.”
Reid addressed Harrison Butker’s extra point issues.
The Chiefs kicker has missed an extra point in five of the last six games.
“They’re working everything through with the holding and the kicking and angles of the ball and all those things,” Reid said. “It just comes with time. They’ll be fine as it goes on. I’m not that concerned about that. Knowing both guys, they’ll figure all that out.”
Replacing punter Dustin Colquitt with Tommy Townsend meant a new holder in Townsend for Butker, which could be playing a role in the issues.
“Yeah I think the more they do it, the more familiar they’ll be with it and all the little angles, I mean there’s so many little angles that go on according to the wind and all those things, what hash you’re on and so on. I mean you work through all that and get it right and so that’s what they’re doing, and I think we’re going to be ok. I’m not really worried about it, but I think we’ll be OK.”
Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub speaks to the media on Thursday.
Reid described what he saw from the running back room after taking a look at the game film.
Running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire broke several tackles en route to his 11-yard touchdown.
“The yards after contact are nuts and so you got a chance to see that,” explained Reid. “I don’t know how many snow games he’s played in his life coming from LSU there, so I don’t know how much they play or had the opportunity to jump in the snow there and play. I think he’s done a good job on contact. I think we got to see it even up another notch and it was great for him to have that reward of him scoring there.”
Sunday’s game offered some clues as to how the Chiefs plan to use Edwards-Helaire and newcomer Le’Veon Bell, but limited offensive snaps impacted their usage.
“I came in and just reviewed the tape one more time here and really there were like 40 real plays, when you look at it, before we got into our four-minute operation,” Reid said. “We lost snaps in there with the turnover where Dan (Sorensen) returned for a touchdown and the kickoff return. The defense’s snaps were way up, and the offense’s snaps were way down. I think we weren’t able to get the whole game plan going the way you necessarily wanted to do or get into that rhythm by the time you’re up by quite a few points, which is a great thing. That makes the head coach very happy.
“That cuts down on opportunities for some of the offensive guys to do their thing. I would say in that case, with Le’Veon, just doing both, rotating with Clyde (Edwards-Helaire), it’s already cut in half there with that and having the number of plays cut back. We had a pretty healthy load for him in there as we went. You saw the two-back set where we shifted both of them out. We had a couple of other things in there that we can utilize his skill and Clyde’s.”