Andy Reid was largely criticized for his clock management during the Chiefs’ 27-20 AFC Divisional Round loss against the New England Patriots, and rightfully so.
Recently hired Eagles coach, and former Chiefs offensive coordinator, Doug Pederson defended Reid’s clock management, saying that the Chiefs did not want to give Tom Brady the ball back, via ESPN:
“It took us time because, No. 1, we did not want to give Tom Brady the ball back,” said Pederson, the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator for the past three seasons before being hired by the Eagles. “We knew we were going to score. We knew we had timeouts and time. We were also limited with the number of receivers. Jeremy Maclin was out of the game at the time. We were down numbers. We felt like at that point (it would have been a mistake) to give the ball back to Tom Brady.
“We still had timeouts and time even with the onside kick to put ourselves in a position to win the football game.”
Reid did the same in an interview with KCSP-AM Thursday.
The Chiefs took more than five minutes off of the clock before scoring a touchdown that brought them within one score of the Patriots, but it was too late. But Reid still feels that the Chiefs handled it right.
He points out that they still had all three timeouts, and were hoping to recover the onside kick.
“I thought we handled it right,” Reid said. “You give us a minute on the clock and three timeouts, we feel like we can move the ball pretty good.”
Sure, recovering an onside kick with three timeouts and a minute left on the clock would be ideal, but recovering an onside kick is a very low percentage play. It doesn’t happen often, and that’s why people get so excited when it actually works. But Reid said he wanted to run the best plays possible.
“At that point it really didn’t matter to me. I wanted to make sure we were calling the best plays,” Reid said.
The Chiefs weren’t exactly expected to beat the Patriots, but it sure has to be aggravating for fans of the team when you seemingly come so close only to fall short because of your coach’s poor decisions.
Football is somewhat a game of odds, and Andy Reid played the lowest ones that the Chiefs had.
