Andy Reid Reflects on Chiefs’ Week 13 Loss to Bengals
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The Cincinnati Bengals had the Kansas City Chiefs' number last season, and that level of triumph has carried into the 2022 campaign. In Sunday's Week 13 matchup between the two conference foes, it was Cincinnati that once again emerged with a statement victory.
Scoring 27 points to the Chiefs' 24, the Bengals gained 431 total yards and matched the Chiefs' 6.5 yards per play on offense. Both clubs just punted the ball one time during the game and neither defense had a great answer for the opposing attack. With that said, Kansas City committed too many mistakes and a late missed field goal allowed Cincinnati to run a game-sealing drive that led to the clock running out. After the game, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid defended his team's decision to opt for a field goal instead of going for it on 4th-and-7 from the Cincinnati 37-yard line on the previous possession.
"It's very similar to what we've done before," Reid said. "That's within his (kicker Harrison Butker's) range. We've got to get a combination of the snap a little higher, the kicker a little stronger and you've got a good thing going. It didn't happen."
Butker, who sprained his ankle in Week 1 and didn't return until an Oct. 16 outing against the Buffalo Bills, has had his worst season as a professional. The veteran was 12-of-15 on field goal attempts coming into Sunday's game, including 7-for-7 in his last two games. A 1-for-2 effort against the Bengals and an uncharacteristic miss from long-range, however, played a role in the road team suffering yet another defeat to Joe Burrow and company. When asked a follow-up question about the decision to kick, Reid backed Butker while also adding that the Chiefs' other phases of the ball didn't perform up to snuff, either.
"Well if I don't think he can make it, then I'm not going to do it," Reid said. "It's pretty simple that way, but I felt like he's been in a good place and we've just got to execute better all the way around. It shouldn't really come down to that, too, but it did. We've got to make sure we do it. If you're going to beat a good football team, all phases have got to be able to take care of business."
Reid's assessment is a fair one. On offense, running the ball wasn't an issue. Kansas City toted the rock 25 times for 138 yards on the afternoon, including Jerick McKinnon and Isiah Pacheco finding great success in their combined 22 carries. Through the air, though, the trio of Reid, offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy and quarterback Patrick Mahomes was unable to decipher and crack the code of Lou Anarumo's defense once again. Mahomes had a good performance, albeit one that contained a few notable mistakes and one that wasn't to the standard of an MVP winner.
Defensively, those aforementioned 431 yards cut deep. Steve Spagnuolo's group struggled to generate any consistent pressure on Burrow, and getting stops with either sound coverage or sound tackling (or both) was also a relatively nonexistent element of the game. The Chiefs' young and inexperienced defense couldn't come up with enough stops and looked to be playing sped up all afternoon, and that was one of Reid's overarching assessments.
"I didn't think we tackled as well as we had been," Reid said. "We can do a better job with that. That's something we'll look at on tape and get fixed. It was the same way on the offensive side — we can block better and do other things on that side of the ball, too. Everybody's got a little piece of this. We've got to take care of that."
Coming up, the Chiefs have a Sunday battle in Denver against the Broncos to deal with. This certainly has the potential makings of a "get-right" game, as Nathaniel Hackett's bunch has lost four games in a row and has one of the worst offenses in the league. With that said, no AFC West game will come completely easy to the Chiefs and there are multiple things from Week 13 that need to be fixed in a hurry. If Reid's postgame comments are any indication, Kansas City may already be thinking about ways to accomplish that.
