I’m sure Andy Reid wouldn’t have minded seeing Sunday’s game look a little different than it did. Maybe in a perfect world, Patrick Mahomes wouldn’t have been taking big shot after big shot from Micah Parsons, the NFL’s newest freak-show defender. I’m sure he didn’t want four of his offense’s first eight possessions ending without a single first down. And the turnovers he, or any football coach, could do without.
But this is 2021, and Reid knows better than to be particular about winning right now.
“The guys did what they needed to win the game,” Reid told me over the phone, early Sunday night. “And winning games in this league right now is a son-of-a-gun, right? The parity is crazy, and you’re seeing it, you have a birds-eye view of it. You’re looking at all these different games, and it’s a different animal. And the things that Roger Goodell and the owners wanted, they’ve got it right now.
“So from a coaching standpoint, you’ve got to be on your game, and players have to stay on their game, or you get picked off. That’s how it works.”
The Chiefs entered the season as the league’s new big, bad wolf. Kansas City has its future Hall of Fame coach, and a 26-year-old franchise quarterback clearly tracking to join him in Canton someday. That quarterback’s got, perhaps, the NFL’s most feared receiver, its most feared tight end and a defense opposite him built to smother opponents after they fall hopelessly behind playing such a breakneck-paced offense.
That blueprint hasn’t failed much of late. They rode it to the AFC title game in 2018, and the Super Bowl the last two years, winning it all in Feb. ’20, and they’d be on three straight conference titles now, were Dee Ford to have lined up onside in Jan. ’19.
And yet, there Reid was after a 19–9 win over the Cowboys at Arrowhead on Sunday knowing that this meat grinder of an NFL season—one that seems to chew up and spit out each team that emerges as “elite”—has left his team still looking for its stride. Which makes the Chiefs, well, just like everyone else.
As Reid said, when the Chiefs haven’t had their game this fall, they have, indeed, gotten picked off. The Ravens and Chargers got them at the wire in September, and blowouts at the hands of the Bills and Titans made the problem look a little bigger than it actually is in October. Since, they’ve quietly rattled off a perfect November to head into their bye week at 7–4 and just game out of the conference’s top spot.
But after what it took to get there, Reid’s not making any declarations about where the Chiefs go from here. Because doing that this year, in this version of the NFL, hasn’t really worked out for anyone.
