Andy Reid’s conservative turn cost the Chiefs their last chance against the Packers
By the time Green Bay had methodically, exasperatingly and somewhat predictably drained out the clock Sunday night to seal a 31-24 victory over the Chiefs, chants of “Go, Pack, Go!” reverberated through Arrowhead Stadium.
Meanwhile, Chiefs fans all over the region were relegated to muttering their own words, one way or another cursing a decision that kept the team from getting a last chance when coach Andy Reid opted to punt on fourth and 3 from his team’s own 40 with 5 minutes, 13 seconds left.
“At the end, of course, (Green Bay) just ran the ball to get the time going,” linebacker Anthony Hitchens said, adding, “We call that the four-minute (situation); we all know they’re going to run the ball.”
Even if the Chiefs had indeed kept it to a four-minute drill, the proposition would have been problematic.
But they never got the ball back, the sort of thing that might be expected when a future Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback is at the helm and facing a defense that still can’t stop the run when it matters most.
The decision to punt just didn’t compute. And it’s all the more confounding coming from Reid — an absolute offensive genius whose game plan helped 35-year-old Matt Moore throw for 267 yards and two touchdowns in place of reigning NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes.
“Some of it is feel, some of it is momentum and all those things that you look at,” Reid said. “Listen, it didn’t work out. You can be questioned either way with it, and I chose to do what I did there. I thought it was the right thing to do at the time, and it didn’t necessarily pay off the way I was hoping.”
This was a calculated gambit by Reid, not a surrender, as some are exaggeratedly suggesting. And who knows if the Chiefs would have scored or won even if they did.
Trouble is, the maneuver had the same galling ultimate effect as conceding. And it would be easier to swallow this loss if it really came down to the fact that you couldn’t pick up 3 yards when you had to.
Instead, it was the exclamation point on the Chiefs’ third loss in four games, all at home. And like every win or loss, this was enabled by many factors and will lend itself to perhaps-rash conclusions about the root cause and its cosmic meaning.
There is a lot to unpack, in a manner of speaking, about how this came to be and what it says about where the wobbly Chiefs (5-3) stand now and might be headed as they try to tread water waiting for Mahomes to return from the dislocated kneecap he suffered Oct. 17 at Denver.
But it’s first worth noting they didn’t lose because Mahomes was out, considering that in his place Moore completed 24 of 36 passes with no interceptions and was generally sharp after the first quarter in his first start in two seasons.
More would be expected from Mahomes, of course, but Moore was no liability, either. And if Travis Kelce could have held on to his third and 3 pass deftly broken up by Chandon Sullivan, there wouldn’t have been a decision about whether to punt in that final scenario.
(After the game, Kelce blamed himself for not catching the ball, but replays showed Sullivan playing it almost perfectly to jar it loose.)
This also might well have turned out differently if not for LeSean McCoy’s ghastly fumble, his second costly one in the last four games.
This time it came early in the third quarter, just after the Chiefs had a vestige of momentum when Emmanuel Ogbah’s third-down sack of Rodgers meant Green Bay’s endless 8:33 drive ended with a field goal to tie the game 17-17 instead of a go-ahead touchdown.
On the next play from scrimmage, McCoy fumbled, leading to Rodgers’ amazing and ridiculous 3-yard touchdown fling to Jamaal Williams that he may or may not have been throwing away and may or may not have intended for Jimmy Graham.
“Listen, he’s a future Hall of Famer with a couple Hall of Fame throws,” Reid said. “I don’t know how a couple of those got in there. (Defenders’ hands) were right there, and the son of a gun got (the passes) in there.”
Which seemed like just another reason not to simply put the game back in Rodgers’ hands in the waning moments, when the Packers mostly ran but needed his third-and-5 pass to Aaron Jones for 8 yards to put it away on the first play after the two-minute warning.
It’s hard to know exactly what went into Reid’s decision, and let it be said that he knows a lot more about the factors than any of us — and we’d love to have heard more on it.
And who knows how much in his head that failed fourth-down conversion attempt from their own 34 against Indianapolis remained, the one on which Justin Houston (albeit unblocked) blew up Damien Williams for a 1-yard loss with just over 5 minutes left to pave the way to a pivotal field goal in the Chiefs’ 19-13 loss.
As it happened Sunday, Reid initially got exactly the scenario he might have wanted out of this decision: a terrific 58-yard punt by Dustin Colquitt downed by Rashad Fenton at the Green Bay 2-yard-line.
“It was a phenomenal punt, and we backed them up,” Reid said. “Our defense had been playing well throughout the night, and I had confidence in them that we would get the ball back in good field position.”
Alas, he was wrong.
His decision didn’t cost the Chiefs the game.
But it cost them a last chance — and a chance to at least go down swinging instead of helplessly watching the clock turn to zero.