AFC Notes: Chiefs AFC Championship, Jets, Pete Carroll, Raiders

Chiefs

The Chiefs are back to the Super Bowl after its narrow 32-29 win over the Bills in the AFC Championship game. CB Trent McDuffie said everyone around the team trusts Patrick Mahomes to execute in the most intense moments.

“No doubt,” McDuffie said, via Albert Breer of SI. “Everybody around here will tell you when it’s a tie game, at the end of the game, if Pat has the ball, there’s nobody believing that he won’t get the job done. It’s been great to be on the opposite side and watch, but also learn about how they do their things. Being able to practice against Pat and Travis [Kelce] and pick their brain, it’s helped our defense so much. You can see the confidence flowing out of everybody.”

Mahomes explained HC Andy Reid has always shown trust in their players.

“[Andy Reid] trusts us,” Mahomes said. “That’s how we’ve built this thing that we’ve built. It’s all about trusting the players to go out and make the plays. We’re conservative in certain moments, we play by the tempo of the game and then we decide. It’s a lot of trust on offense, defense and special teams. That’s what makes us so great, is it’s not just one guy, it’s everybody.”

Chiefs DC Steve Spagnuolo drew praise for Kansas City’s final defensive stand against Buffalo. LB Nick Bolton compared Spagnuolo to a pitcher setting up for a curveball.

“I say all the time, Spags is like a pitcher always setting up his curveball,” Bolton said. “Throughout the game, we’re trying to present different things, see what they’re going to do. It was one of these critical downs, we dialed up the pressure and got home.”

Jets

• Regarding his time as the Jets interim HC, new Falcons DC Jeff Ulbrich admitted fault in his lack of delegations: “There is an element of a failure for myself in that way because I didn’t delegate it, I didn’t. I just took it all on myself. In my mind’s eye, I was trying to create continuity and I didn’t want to fracture the staff… I thought the best thing for me to do at that point in time was just try to keep everybody in the same role that they had just so we could keep things rolling — and it wasn’t the right thing to do.” (Richi Cimini)
• He continued: “As I look back, I should have delegated, I should have given the defensive coordinator responsibilities to someone else and because it’s just, in my opinion, it is too hard, especially when it’s thrown on you in the middle of the season.” (Cimini)
• Ulbrich was asked what he learned during his time in charge where he could see how the team ran from a different lens: *“I learned even more than I knew the value of truth tellers on your staff. I think sometimes as an assistant coach you take it as, ‘I’m going to eliminate every problem...