Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes discuss offensive line’s 2023 growing pains

Whether or not it has been justifiable, the Kansas City Chiefs’ right tackle Jawaan Taylor has endured high scrutiny of his play during the season’s first two games. Even though he briefly benched Taylor after he had been penalized four times during Sunday’s 17-9 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, head coach Andy Reid believes Taylor will continue to progress — along with left tackle Donovan Smith, who has also been called for multiple penalties in the first two weeks.

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“Take the penalties away from [Taylor], man, he had a really good game,” Reid told reporters before Wednesday’s practice session, “so it’s a shame that happened. He’s got to work on that — and Donovan, likewise. I mean, you’re right: Donovan’s done a nice job.”

Reid thinks that Taylor is taking the right approach, but is simply going a little too far with it.

“He works hard on getting off the snap on time,” noted Reid. “But he’s just going to have to tame that down just a little bit — [to] where he doesn’t get called on [it] — and that’s just working through it.”

But that hasn’t been the only problem on the line during the Chiefs’ perplexingly slow offensive start. Unusually errant snaps from center Creed Humphrey have been another problem — although quarterback Patrick Mahomes is putting some of the responsibility for that on himself.

“I try to go verbal on some of those cadences,” he explained during his turn at the press podium on Wednesday, “and we had a little miscommunication where I wasn’t loud enough for those guys to hear. When we’re in an away game, [I’ll] try to go back to that silent count and just work on that — instead of trying to be greedy and do the verbal stuff.”

Despite the snap miscues between himself and Humphrey to this point, Mahomes is confident things will get worked out.

“As far as the snaps, whenever we’re going back and forth, that can get a little messed up here and there,” he observed. “We’ve done it for two years — and it’s worked well — so we’ll be alright.”