Andy Reid got the quarterback sneak he’d spent all week hearing about, and the result was exactly the kind of mess that tends to shut down a debate.
On Sunday against the New York Jets, the Kansas City Chiefs finally tried the play that had become such a talking point after last week’s loss to the Denver Broncos. Reid put backup quarterback Justin Fields in for a sneak early in the game, but it went sideways fast. Fields was stopped short on 3rd-and-1, then the Jets challenged the play and it was ruled a fumble.
That was enough for Reid to have a little fun with the people who had been pressing him for the call all week.
“You guys asked for it,” Reid said, via Awful Announcing. “So we gave it to you, and you know, it didn’t work. How’d you feel?”
The room laughed along with him, but Reid didn’t leave it there. He also explained why the sneak can be such a tricky call to execute cleanly.
“Yeah, so listen, we’ve got to make sure, those are hard to practice live,” Reid said. “The quarterback sneak is hard to practice, unless you do it in a game. We’ve just to get those two on the same page on it and make sure we get the ball up first in the quarterback’s hands, and we can roll from there.”
The whole issue had been simmering since Kansas City’s 28-24 loss to Denver last Sunday. The Chiefs looked like they had scored the winning touchdown from the 1-yard line, but a false start on right tackle Jaylon Moore erased it, and Patrick Mahomes was sacked on the final play.
That penalty sparked plenty of frustration, though Travis Kelce later said it was the right call. Still, the bigger complaint from fans and analysts was the same one that kept surfacing: the Chiefs never seem to use a quarterback sneak in those spots.
Mahomes hasn’t run one since he dislocated his kneecap on the play in October 2019, and that has put Reid under heavy criticism from both fans and the media.
In the end, the Chiefs didn’t need the sneak to beat the Jets anyway. Kansas City rolled to a 35-12 win to move to 6-2, and Reid’s little exchange with the media ended up being just that - a joke after a play that didn’t change the outcome.
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