The Kansas City Chiefs had the Baltimore Ravens on the brink. Trailing by a point with under 1:30 to play and the ball at the Ravens’ 32-yard line, the Chiefs were in position to beat the Ravens again, looking to run down the clock and have Harrison Butker kick a walk off field goal.
Kansas City took the ball out of Patrick Mahomes‘ hands, giving a late carry to Clyde Edwards-Helaire in order to chew some game clock. Edwards-Helaire fumbled and the Chiefs never got the ball back, as Lamar Jackson sealed the Ravens’ 36-35 victory with a first down carry on fourth-and-1 just four plays later.
A mistake Edwards-Helaire knew he couldn’t make, but his teammates won’t let the miscue haunt him.
“We’ll need him the whole entire season,” Mahomes said after the loss. “Don’t let one play define you. It’s a long season. Obviously, we lost to a good football team, and we played at their place. It’s a long season, and if we want to be great and have a chance to have another run at this thing, he’s going to be an important part of it.”
Edwards-Helaire finished with 13 carries for 46 yards, as Kansas City only rushed for 62 yards and averaged 3.4 yards per carry in the loss. Handing the ball off was perplexing, even though Chiefs head coach Andy Reid had all three timeouts and was trying to make sure Jackson and the Ravens didn’t have the opportunity to get the ball back.
“From a naked eye, it looked like he didn’t have it all quite tucked in,” Reid said. “I don’t know if that was an exchange problem or what happened. [I’m] not worried about him fumbling because that’s not what he is.
“Turnovers will kill you in this league, and we had two of them down the stretch. We have to do better and learn from it. We have to tackle better on the defensive side, and we’ll work on that and get better. The guys played hard. They took advantage of the turnovers.”
Like Mahomes and Reid, Kelce isn’t going to let Edwards-Helaire dwell on his mistake. This Chiefs’ loss was just one game in a long season. There will be plenty of opportunities to amend the error.
“Man up. Man Up. It is what it is, and that’s not just to Clyde; that’s anyone in the building and in the locker room,” Kelce said. “We will never point fingers and say it’s just one person’s loss. That is not how we roll at Kansas City.
“We’ll fix it in the four quarters of football. We’ll fix it.”
