Chiefs tired after nine-hour flight, but enthusiasm is up

Andy Reid wanted to keep things simple this week, a novel concept considering the planning process for his team’s International Series game against the Detroit Lions has been anything but that.

But while the coach’s decision to leave for London on Thursday night instead of earlier in the week like the Lions, who left Monday, may have been the best way to keep his team’s routine as normal as possible, the overall success of the plan won’t be known until the game is over.

By the sound of it, however, Friday’s practice — which was held at 3:30 p.m. London time, several hours after their plane touched down that morning — was a good one.

“We tried to keep it, as far as the meeting schedule goes, very similar to what we do back home,” said Reid, whose team left Kansas City at 7 p.m. Thursday. “We practiced earlier, but I wanted to make sure we got the meetings here today and not last night. It worked out well, the guys had a good practice.”

Inside linebacker Derrick Johnson agreed.

“We’re not going to make it a distraction — we had a good Friday practice,” Johnson said. “A lot of people were saying off the plane that we don’t feel as slow as we thought we would, having jet lag. We’ll get today, tonight and tomorrow to recuperate and Sunday, we’ll go out there and fight our butts off.”

Johnson’s sentiment was repeated by several players, who made it clear that they understood the importance of beating the Lions, 1-6, and improving to 3-5 before the bye week.

“The mind-set we have (is) our backs are against the wall, still,” said receiver Jeremy Maclin. “Just because we won last week, we’ve still got a big hill to climb. We have nobody to blame but ourselves. We put ourselves in this situation.”

But after a big win against the Pittsburgh Steelers last week, which halted a five-game losing streak, there is optimism that there’s still time to save the season.

Since 1990, four teams have bounced back from a 2-5 start to make the playoffs, though only two — the 2002 Jets and 2011 Broncos — came after the number of wild-card teams fell from three to two.

“As the weeks mount and the season goes on, they’re all bigger,” quarterback Alex Smith said of the games left on the schedule. “It’s even bigger for us to get a ‘W’ and go into the bye and kind of catch our breath and kind of re-examine where we’re at.

“It is big — I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t it isn’t big for us with where we’re at. Kind of dug ourselves a little hole, can’t afford much to slip up.”

But to get a victory against the Lions, they’ll first have to conquer whatever sleep deprivation was caused by their Thursday night trip to the U.K, as multiple players noted that sleeping on the nine-hour plane ride was no piece of cake.

“I’m in a bit of a fog right now,” tight end Travis Kelce said of the plane ride following practice. “I was in and out.”

“It wasn’t the best pillow in the world,” outside linebacker Justin Houston said, “but we’re here now.”

“It was rough, but we’re here now,” cornerback Marcus Peters said.

“Yeah, I tried to sleep but didn’t get much,” Johnson said. “It’s one of those things that’s going to (stink) a little bit, but we’re here and it’s great being in London.”

Maclin noted the importance of getting whatever sleep they could during the flight, especially with the Chiefs having a fairly full schedule when they landed, which included going through customs, going to the hotel, getting a bite to eat, sitting in meetings, going through practice and finally, meeting with the media.

“Sleeping on the plane is never easy, but you’ve got to do it, man, that’s business and you’ve got to do it,” Maclin said. “Some guys can definitely get it in, but obviously, it isn’t what we’re used to.”

Many players looked at bright side. Peters seemed cool with the trip, noting that he didn’t even have a passport before he was drafted by the Chiefs in the first round this year.

“It’s cool ... a lot of us wouldn’t get this opportunity to go out of the country if it wasn’t for the game of football,” Peters said. “So we took it as a blessing and we enjoyed the flight and just had fun with it.”

In the same vein, Smith and his fellow quarterbacks definitely tried to make the most of it.

“It was a quick turnaround there after that practice on Thursday, so the QBs tried to keep our routine a little bit,” Smith said. “We usually try to stay a step ahead, so we were watching red-zone tape on the iPads, which is nice — with the new technology — to be able to do that on a flight and then try to get as much as sleep as you can.”

And for those who still needed to get caught up on sleep after the long flight, the good news is that Friday night loomed as a big opportunity to do that.

“Nobody got that much sleep last night,” Smith said. “It was nice to come out here and run around after sitting on the flight that long, but I’m sure guys will crash tonight and kind of rebound (Saturday).”

That’s what Johnson was planning on.

“By the time we leave, we’ll be good and tired,” Johnson said. “We’ll be asleep here, shortly.”

This story was originally published October 30, 2015 at 4:55 PM with the headline "Chiefs tired after nine-hour flight, but enthusiasm is up."