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With four games remaining in the regular season, the Kansas City Chiefs offense needs to show some consistency over the final month to prove the team can make an extended playoff run.
Offensive coordinator Matt Nagy believes righting the ship offensively begins with the offense closing out games properly. In the losses to the Philadelphia Eagles, Green Bay Packers, and Buffalo Bills in Weeks 11, 13, and 14 respectively, Kansas City’s offense had an opportunity to win or tie the game but failed to put any points on the board late in the fourth quarter.
“I think that’s probably the biggest message is that when we have an opportunity to win a game – whether it’s in the first quarter or whether it’s in the fourth quarter to finish it,” Nagy explained during his press conference on December 14. “Whether it’s the four-minute or the two-minute, behind or winning. We need to do that; we need to finish it.
“We can get caught up in being offsides and the play that was taken back, but let’s not get caught up on second- and-15, third-and-15, and fourth-and-15,” Nagy continued. “We have a chance with a 1:12, with two timeouts down three, we’re going to at worst tie the game we need to go down and win the game. We didn’t do that, that’s the thing we have to take from this. If we want to be a championship, Super Bowl level team there’s got to be a mindset of finishing.”
Nagy: We Need to Eliminate Penalties & Turnovers
During his press conference, Nagy was asked how trailing early in Kansas City’s last three games affected his play-calling in those games.
“Yeah, you’re down 14 to nothing in the first quarter last week – I think more than anything we keep going back to reducing penalties, reducing turnovers, and watch what happens if you just do that,” Nagy explained. “We had four penalties and a turnover in the first half last week. When we didn’t have a penalty, when we didn’t turn the ball over, we were pretty effective in the red zone, good things happened. We scored, we crept back in the game to the moment we talked about when we first started in here, to have a chance to finish.
“Are we starting games, are we finishing? We’ve been doing both. Let’s put it together like we did against the Chargers. Let’s put it together like we did against the Bears, and let’s see what happens when we do that. Complement it with the defense, complement it with special teams.”
The Chiefs’ next crack at fixing their offensive woes will be in Week 15, when the defending Super Bowl champions travel to face the 3-10 New England Patriots, who rank 10th overall in defensive DVOA, per FTN.
Chiefs Week 15 Injury Report
Kansas City’s final injury report for Week 15 has been released, and the team listed two players as out for Sunday’s outing against New England: running back Isiah Pacheco (shoulder) and starting left tackle Donovan Smith (neck). Neither player practiced at all during Week 15 preparation.
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid announced on Friday that Pacheco underwent surgery to clean up his shoulder, and said the team “probably” expects him to be back with the team in Week 16. Week 15 marks the second straight game Pacheco has missed since suffering the injury in Week 13 against the Packers.
Smith suffered a neck stinger during that Monday Night Football loss to the Packers and has been out of the lineup since then.
Running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire is expected to fill Pacheco’s early-down role, meanwhile, rookie Wanya Morris is expected to start in place of Smith.
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