Arrowhead Pride
When the Kansas City Chiefs look back on Monday’s 31-28 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars — a game they once led 14-0 — penalties will be an obvious area of concern. On a night the team outgained Jacksonville by more than 150 yards, fouls cost Kansas City 109 yards.
“We obviously had 13 penalties to their four,” head coach Andy Reid noted after the game. “Whether I agree with them or don’t agree with them, it doesn’t matter. They called them — and when you have that many penalties, you give up field position. You can out-stat them to death, but it doesn’t matter. It’s the score that matters, and we’ve got to take care of business there.”
Star defensive tackle Chris Jones wasn’t happy, either — but believes the team can still move forward.
“It’s hard to win a game when you shoot yourself in the foot like that,” he admitted from the postgame podium. “It’s tough. We got a couple [of penalties] on all phases. The sloppy play and the forced errors by us? I think that we can get back on the right track.”
Jones thinks that some of the experienced defenders who drew flags — such as defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi and cornerback Jaylen Watson — will be motivated to do better.
“It can be soft,” Jones remarked. “I think Derrick Nnadi had a penalty on holding. That’s something where we’ve got to get our hand placement right. Holding on No. 35? Little things like that — eyes, discipline, fundamentals? I think we harp on that. I think those guys are going to take that to heart and fix it.”
Kansas City players also made mistakes. In the third quarter, quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw a red-zone interception that Jaguars linebacker Devin Lloyd returned 99 yards for a touchdown.
“It kind of just talks about our whole entire season,” he told reporters afterwards. “I feel like we have the guys — and we’ve executed at certain points in the game and looked really good. Then we crush ourselves with penalties and mistakes and interceptions and fumbles — or whatever that is. We’ve done that to ourselves all year long. It’s one guy here and there.
“In this league, it’s so close that those change games. So we’ve got to be better. We’ve lost too many games already, so we’ve got to find a way to be better as a team.”
The Chiefs will also need immediate improvement on their special teams unit, which accumulated three penalties on kickoff returns — including two on reserve linebacker Jack Cochrane — that pushed drive starts deep into its own territory. Cochrane’s second call negated a kickoff return to the 34-yard line on the final drive, when the team needed only a field goal to tie and had all three of its timeouts available with 16 seconds remaining. The penalty pushed the Chiefs back to their own 17, effectively eliminating any realistic chance at overtime.
Without singling out Cochrane, Reid noted...
