Justin Reid is looking forward to playing his former team, the Texans, on Sunday in Houston. But the Kansas City safety can’t help but think about how far apart the two teams are in the grand scheme of things and how fortunate he is to be with the Chiefs.
“The clearest difference is right now the Texans are still in a rebuilding stage and Kansas City is in the middle of a championship run,” Reid said Wednesday. “So the pieces are a little bit better put together at this moment in time.”
The Chiefs (10-3) can clinch the AFC West division title with a win against the Texans (1-11-1), who gave the Cowboys all they could handle last week. The Broncos did the same thing to the Chiefs as they rallied from a 27-0 deficit to make it a game.
The Broncos scored 21 straight points on three touchdown passes from Russell Wilson, including a 66-yard screen pass to Marlon Mack early in the third quarter. Reid, though, said the Chiefs have worked to shore up the defense and stop those big plays.
“To take a step back and look at the big picture and really focus on ourselves and not so much on what other teams are doing but how we can get better each and every day at our technique and really tighten up the defense,” Reid said. “So those leaky yardage plays, like the screen play, just eliminate those from our game. Because as you know in the NFL, plays that you get in and you let up like that, we’re going to see them again until we prove that we can stop them.”
But Reid said the Chiefs defense has held up rather well overall, considering they’ve routinely played with four or more rookies on the field.
“The games will continue to get faster, especially as we start approaching January,” Reid said. “Still give a lot of credit to them. They’re young guys that came in, and we put a lot on their plate. To have two, three, four rookies sometimes on the field playing, that’s not an easy task, especially with the defense that we run.
“But they’ve been up to the challenge and each week they’ve gotten a little bit better. You’re going to have ups and downs in the NFL, that’s how the league goes. Offenses have firepower, too. But overall, you’ve seen that they’ve grown both mentally in the defense and also technique-wise. And as things go up and down, this trend is still heading upward. So, we’re going to need them to come through, and I expect, and I’m confident they’ll come through for us.”
