Meeting with reporters on Thursday, the Kansas City Chiefs’ defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo fielded quite a few questions about the team’s season-opening 27-21 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in São Paulo, Brazil last Friday.
He didn’t mince any words — even when talking about his own errors in the game.
“I just didn’t feel like I had one of my better games,” he admitted. “Usually when I’m making a mistake, it’s a fairly critical one because I feel like I should have called something else —
but it begins with me. If I sit there and look in the mirror — and I’ve got three or four plays — and I go, ‘No, I shouldn’t have done that,‘ that could be the difference in the game. So I want to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”
Spagnuolo also confirmed what has widely been suspected: the Chiefs expected that early on, the Chargers would establish the run — and were caught off guard when Los Angeles opened the game by going to the air.
“To their credit,” acknowledged the coordinator, “they kind of shifted gears right from the beginning. Maybe it threw us off a little bit.”
Spagnuolo recognized that the defense could have adjusted to this change more quickly — but was happy with how the team eventually responded.
“I thought we did a nice job coming out of the locker room in the second half,” he remarked. “[When] we needed a three-and-out, we got that… but there weren’t enough good plays.”
While some mistakes from the game have been highlighted — like Chris Jones’ loss of containment late in the fourth quarter that allowed Los Angeles quarterback Justin Herbert to make a game-sealing first down — Spagnuolo believes there was plenty of blame to go around.
“We all felt like everybody took a turn making a mistake — myself included,” he said. “There’s about four or five calls I would like to have back. And I think every player — to a man — said the same thing. So if we can eliminate those, we’ll be better off.”
Spagnuolo also wanted to credit Herbert for his play in the matchup.
“He beat us with his arm and with his feet,” he noted, “and because of that, I think they came out as a winner.”
But there was more to it than that. Offensive players always have the advantage — simply because they know what’s coming. On Monday, Los Angeles was able to extend that offensive edge.
“I mean, there’s an element of this in today’s football,” explained the coordinator, “where it doesn’t matter what you call — [because] they have a better play called. They had a few of those — and they had them early. It gave chunk yardage — which we don’t want. We’ve got to find ways to eliminate those.”
Spagnuolo remains focused on improving his unit’s pass rush and coverage, which must work together to succeed.
“You can’t cover forever,” he reminded his listeners. “We just need a little [pressure] to make the quarterback throw a little bit quicker — and cover a little tighter.”
