One week after Kansas City's loss to New England in the divisional round of the playoffs, Chiefs coach Andy Reid is still insisting that his team did everything right during in the clock management department over the game's final 6:30.
Let's do a quick rehash of the situation: With 6:29 left in the game and the Patriots leading 27-13, the Chiefs got the ball at their own 20-yard line, needing two scores to tie the game.
Since they were trailing by two touchdowns, you'd think the Chiefs would be in a hurry, but they weren't.
For instance, on their very first play, Alex Smith scrambled for two yards and after the play, the ref blew his whistle with 6:21 showing on the clock. The Chiefs didn't get their next snap off until the 5:58 mark though, which burnt 23 seconds.
The same thing happened a few plays later after Chris Conley made a 16-yard catch on third-and-8. The ref blew his whistle with 5:45 left and the Chiefs didn't get their next snap off until the 5:20 mark, which wasted another 25 seconds.
The ugliest sequence in the game though probably came at the 3-minute mark after Smith threw a 19-yard pass to Albert Wilson that took Kansas City down to New England's one-yard line.
Getting a touchdown before the the two-minute warning would've been huge for the Chiefs, but that didn't happen. Instead, the Chiefs only got one play off between the 3-minute mark and the 2-minute mark, and that play was a run for no gain.
Even more baffling, on the other side of the two-minute warning, the Chiefs huddled after a Jason Avant catch with 1:54 left.
This is pretty much Andy Reid's coaching career in one photo. #KCvsNE #Chiefs pic.twitter.com/cEoAe8p4vo
— John Breech (@johnbreech) January 17, 2016
Kansas City wouldn't get its next snap off until the clock was down to 1:27, which wasted 27 pivotal seconds.
What makes things worse is that Reid said that hs team's clock management was "handled right."
"I think clock management's very important," Reid told KCSP-AM, via ProFootballTalk.com. "Every situation's different. It's a fluid situation on the spot and you've got to go off of feel ... this situation, I think, was handled right."
The reason the Chiefs were huddling when they probably shouldn't have been is because Reid wanted to get the best play call in.
"At that point it really didn't matter to me. I wanted to make sure we were calling the best plays," Reid said.
Reid then admitted that his entire late-game plan hinged on the Chiefs doing something that almost never happens: They had to recover an onside kick.
"You give us a minute on the clock and three timeouts, we feel like we can move the ball pretty good," Reid said, referring to what the Chiefs would've had to work with if they had recovered the onside kick.
Former Chiefs offensive coordinator Doug Pederson said that Kansas City was slow and methodical because they didn't want to give the ball back to Tom Brady.
"It took so long because number one, did not want to give Tom Brady the ball back. We knew we were gonna score," Pederson said this week after he was hired by the Eagles.
To be fair to Reid and Pederson though, there were at least two plays where Chiefs players could've have easily gone out of bounds, but they didn't. For instance, on Wilson's catch that took Kansas City down to New England's 1-yard line, Wilson was right next to the sideline, but didn't go out of bounds.
It's almost baffling to think that the Chiefs made so many blunders down the stretch.
In the end, the Chiefs' final drive took 5:16 off the clock and left them with just 1:13 remaining. It was one of the most baffling late-game sequences in playoff history and it reminded many people of another baffling late-game sequence in Super Bowl XXXIX that also involved Reid.
