Reid, Mahomes Explain Halftime Spat Involving Eric Bieniemy
The Kansas City Chiefs' 20-17 loss to the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday featured plenty of difficult moments, and the team's inability to put some additional points up on the board heading into the halftime break led to one of them.
Getting the ball back at their own 46 with 34 seconds left in the opening half of the game, Kansas City ran just two plays and ended up losing four net yards in the process. It was apparent during the in-game broadcast that quarterback Patrick Mahomes wanted to push for a shot at a touchdown via a big play, but the duo of head coach Andy Reid and offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy opted against it.
The Chiefs instead took a conservative approach in order to preserve its 14-10 halftime lead, prompting the following exchange between Mahomes and Bieniemy that led to Reid separating them a bit:
It's unclear exactly what was said between Mahomes and Bieniemy (or Reid) heading into the locker room at halftime, but Mahomes was visibly frustrated with something stemming from the club's final offensive possession. Kansas City's offense continued to struggle to click down the stretch, scoring just three points over the next 30 minutes of game time. After the game, Reid was asked about the development between his quarterback and right-hand man but downplayed the situation.
"I'm sure that how that looked, but there really wasn't [a confrontation]," Reid said. "He (Mahomes) wanted to go for it, obviously. Not a Mail Mary, something else that we have in the plan, but I thought it was best to not do it. He's a competitive kid, he wants to take advantage of every opportunity. I thought it was best to just let that ride there. Really, if you heard the words, I don't know how it looked to you guys but that wasn't a confrontation at all."
Mahomes also gave his version of what happened, following in Reid's footsteps by explaining that things weren't nearly as heated as they appeared to be on the broadcast.
"I mean, at the end of the day, I wanted to go try to score," Mahomes said. "That's just who I am. We were in a tough situation, I believe it was second or third-and-20 or something like that, and probably the smart decision was to just take it [and know] we got the ball out of the half, let's just go into halftime. But I'm always going to be wanting to score and I pretty much just said, 'Let me have a chance at it.' He was just like, 'Let's just get back in our locker room and we'll get something going for the next half.' I don't know if that's an altercation, but that was the end of the conversation."
Mahomes's insistence on playing an aggressive style of football is well documented, as evidenced by a fourth-down play in the second half where he appeared to keep the offense on the field in an effort to keep the Chiefs' drive going. That mindset doesn't always perfectly align with those of his head coach or offensive coordinator but judging by everyone's postgame comments, there was nothing more to it. As Kansas City now shifts its focus to a Week 4 matchup against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, everyone will look to stay on the same page moving forward.
