Chiefs are in trouble, and Andy Reid’s play calling isn’t helping

Kansas City Chiefs fans are rightly worried about the ceiling of the team following a rough game against New York.

Heading into Sunday, the idea that a playoff caliber team could lose to the hapless Giants was asinine. Leave it to the Chiefs to challenge logic, as the team went into New Jersey and left with one of the most embarrassing losses the team has suffered in a while.

Kanas City lost 12-9 in overtime to the Giants. Let that sink in.

The loss has a lot of people — not just Chiefs fans — wondering what the ceiling is for this team. Once hailed as the best team in football, the flaws are glaring and things are starting to get dire. Five weeks ago Alex Smith was in the MVP conversation, now it appears he’s regressed back to the mean. The defense is a disaster, specifically the secondary that can’t seem to cover anyone.

As bad as the team was as a whole on Sunday, don’t sleep on how much blame Andy Reid deserves for the loss. The Chiefs ceiling is whatever Reid allows it to be, and right now it’s not very high.

Reid’s playcalling on Sunday was, in a word, bizarre. Twice the Chiefs offense seemed to be on the move and twice those drives ended in interceptions. To highlight the bizarreness, one of those interceptions was thrown by Travis Kelce on a trick play that predictably blew up.

Smith threw the second pick, and it came after the Chiefs running game had just started to break through and chug like a freight train towards field goal range.

Back-breaking doesn’t even begin to describe what those picks did to the Chiefs. Someone needs to create a new stat category solely so Reid can become the first head coach to be credit with interceptions. Kelce and Smith were credited for the picks, but Reid deserves spiritual credit. Both turnovers came at a time where the Chiefs could have captured momentum and scored badly needed points.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen Reid make these kinds of calls, which is the most troubling thing about this. He made a questionable red zone call against the Steelers that cost the team points and shifted momentum back to the other side of the field. His clock management is a joke among Chiefs fans, made funny only because of how true it is.

Next: Best NFL player from each state

This isn’t to say that Reid needs to be fired or that he’s Mike McCarthy. But something is going horribly wrong with Kansas City — now losers in four of its last five games — and the problems start at the top.