OPENING STATEMENT: “I don’t have any injuries for you, the guys are coming in now. I had a chance to go back through the tape and evaluate it. Like I mentioned to the team, there’s some good things in there that are going to help us. We’re getting better in some spots, but we’ve got to clean up some things, the penalties, the drops offensively, and then obviously the scores early on the defensive side. We’ve got to take care of that, so we’re not playing from behind there. Some of that was also turnovers on the offensive side, and that added up to it. With that, I know what I said about the officials yesterday or – insinuated about the officials. Listen, there are no excuses for this thing, that’s not what I’m saying. I’ve always had a good working relationship with these guys, and that’s the important part. They know when they tell me something with a guy that I’m going to address the guy, like right now, and make sure that it gets changed – when you’re talking about inches you know those types of things. Those happen in the game. I mean, I’ve been doing this a long time, so this isn’t an excuse or a blame on the officials for blowing the game. That’s not what it is, but it’s that working relationship. That part is so important in this thing because you can see it on both sides. Whether it’s a defensive end been lining up in the neutral zone at times or that, just you give the head coach a heads up and then in our case, we tell them. Then if they get called, listen, that’s – you were warned, so that’s how it’s worked over the years. That’s what I was really trying to get across, and I take a lot of pride in taking what the officials give me and going to our players and telling them – like immediately telling them and giving them that and telling them, ‘Hey listen they’re giving you a warning, if you don’t do it that’s on your plate.’ That’s the important part that I was trying to get across, but probably not very well after the game. Anyways, with that we’ve got to do better just all the way around. That’s what we’re striving for, but at the same time, we’re getting better and it’s so close it’s crazy and I think the guys understand what we’ve got to get done. With that, time’s yours.”
Q: It looked like there were some positive offensive signs later on in the game. What offensive breakthroughs did you see?
REID: “I thought we had a good blend of things going, that’s what I thought. Of the run, the screen, the quick screens, the pass, we were presenting a lot out there for a defense to have to defend. We were doing that with accuracy for the most part. Listen, there were a couple that we’ve got to work on, you come out of every game like that, but you know we had a lot of yards and that was a positive thing. I thought the guys came out with the right intent. They were playing their tail off, aggressive, hard football, both sides of the ball and on special teams. We’ve just, we’ve got to clean up some of these self-destructive things, and whether it’s the penalties, whether it’s the drops, whether it’s the turnovers, we’ve got to clean that up and we’ll be ok. We have to be consistent with it.”
Q: With Justyn Ross coming back, what is your expectation for Justyn Ross?
REID: “We’ll just see kind of where he’s (Justyn Ross) at physically and – it’s hard to be gone that long and just kind of jump right back in. We’ll just have to see where he’s at.”
Q: Regarding the offsides call on Kadarius Toney, how do you address this with him?
REID: “Listen, normally he (Kadarius Toney) looks over to the sideline and just gets an okay and on that one he just happened not to, so that would be the coaching point. Make sure you check with the guy on the side just to see if you’re aligned. He’s not lining up offsides on purpose. Listen he was two inches away from or an inch away from being legal so you can always – like I said, you can argue both sides for both teams. There were things that happened where people – it happens like that. I guess the league is trying to clean that up from what I heard by one of the broadcasters last nights but whatever.”
Q: Are you getting to a point where you think Kadarius Toney needs a little more coaching before he gets more playing time?
REID: “Well, the thing I know is he (Kadarius Toney) makes plays. He makes plays when the ball is in his hands, and that’s the important part. He’s a young guy. I mean, he’s not coming to us with a ton of experience, but I think he’s getting better every week. This is one of those things. I don’t see that as being a negative. I look at the things he produced on too.”
Q: Have you heard through any other avenues that offensive offsides is a point of emphasis for the officials this season?
REID: “I guess maybe they mentioned it to us somewhere – this was one of the officials saying it on the broadcast. I’m sure that they probably mentioned it somewhere.”
Q: Was offensive offsides not a point you got in training camp and went over with the team?
REID: “The officials give us everything. Everything has been covered.”
Q: Patrick Mahomes was frustrated after the game, how much of that frustration do you think is carry over from how the team has played in the past several weeks?
REID: “I think what he said was pretty accurate – and you know this – we put so much time and effort into it, both physical and mental effort. You don’t want it to come down to that. That ends up being the frustration. It’s not what happened before, you know what you’ve heard before and you put that in the memory bank on how things are normally handled. When something changes like that in that type of situation with two really good football teams playing against each other and you’re down to a minute and a half or a minute and 50 seconds, all of a sudden, you’re right there and have a big play. I think anyone would say that’s a little bit frustrating. You just spent a whole week in preparation for an hour game, you put hours into this thing for it to come down to that inch. Do we need to line up right? Yeah, we do, yeah we do. We’ve got to take care of that and not put it in the officials’ hands, that part we have to do. The frustration comes in with the other part that you spend so much time doing that thing. I don’t see it as a thing that has happened in the past and this or that. It has been the past couple of weeks but it’s one of those things. I don’t think that’s where the frustration was at that time though.”
Q: How is the mood of the locker room?
REID: “It’s week-to-week in the league. I think our players understand that. They’re together, if that’s what you’re asking. They know what they need to do. We just have to get it done. We know we are playing a good opponent this week; we talked about that after the game. They know they have to be focused in and ready to go. In this league it’s a matter of getting those things straightened out, and when you do, and you’re in a good position health wise, you giddy up and you go. That’s how I think they’re thinking.”
Q: How frustrating is it that it’s minor things that are hurting you and how do you fix those things?
REID: “We’ve got to take care of that business there of the penalties and the detailed things. It’s getting done 90% of the time, but you have to keep it right the whole time at this level. That’s what we’re working on. I get paid to teach, so I’m going to continue to teach, the players are going to continue to work and we have to get ourselves ready to go up and play in New England.”
Q: With your post-game comments did you feel you needed to send a message to the team or anyone else?
REID: “I was just speaking what I thought was the truth. My intention was – I’ve been doing this a long time, I think I have a good relationship with the officials, and I had no communication, that’s all. That’s really where I was coming from, I was disappointed in that part. I know again how much time and effort goes into it. I know how much I have to sit in front of the media. I know how much our players have to sit in front of the media and answer these questions. We try to make it the right way, try to do it the right way. That’s where I was with it, I was just speaking what I thought was the truth.”