The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Colts on Sunday night, and Shane Steichen took heat for his field-goal call in OT.
The Kansas City Chiefs got a tough overtime win over the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday night, and in the process they put Colts caoch Shane Steichen in an impossible position that we’ve all seen before with quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
That position can be summed up with a single question: What do Chiefs opponents do when they’re in a tight game against a thriving Mahomes and they’re staring down the barrel of giving the quarterback the ball late with the game on the line?
That’s what happened to Colts coach Shane Steichen in overtime against the Chiefs on Sunday night, and it was a dicey situation indeed. With just under five minutes left in overtime, quarterback Daniel Jones hit receiver Laquon Treadwell to give the Colts a first down at the Kansas City 17-yard line, although the play almost turned into a fumble recovery that would have won the game for the Chiefs.
The Colts were down 30-27 at the time, and the Chiefs predictably stuffed a pair of running plays with RB Jonathon Taylor, which meant it was time for Steichen to man up and make the pivotal call.
Steichen went conservative after seeing the Chiefs' alignment and elected to get the field goal, and what happened after that was predictable. Mahomes and company drove the field before the home crowd, and the Chiefs got the winning field goal to get a 33-30 win.
The Colts coach defended his choice in a follow-up report from Stephen Holder of ESPN, saying it wasn’t conservative because he wanted to end the game with the ball in Taylor’s hands. But we’ve seen this movie before and heard these kinds of “explanations." If you go conservative against Mahomes, you typically pay the price, and electing to kick the field goal cost Steichen and the Colts the game.
What’s making this kind of call even more complicated is that there are now two versions of the Chiefs that opponents have to deal with this season. There’s the ground-and-pound unit that stomped the Broncos, 31-10, and there’s the more familiar version that featured Mahomes in the shotgun surveying the field and making plays.
The new variable is running back Kenneth Walker III, who’s played a big role in both versions so far. The Chiefs are featuring Walker as a receiver as well as a runner, and it was Walker who did the big damage in Kansas City’s final drive on a 22-yard catch-and-run to set up the winning field goal.
