FOXBORO, Mass. — Unsurprisingly, Bill Belichick has spent the first few days of AFC Championship week heaping praise on the Kansas City Chiefs, whom the New England Patriots will visit this Sunday.
While he’s lauded the likes of Patrick Mahomes and Justin Houston, Belichick’s highest compliments have been reserved for the man in charge of Kansas City’s operation, head coach Andy Reid.
“He’s done a great job of that,” Belichick said Wednesday when asked about Reid’s ability to integrate concepts from different levels of football into Kansas City’s offense. “Probably as good as any coach that I’ve seen. He does a great job of taking new ideas, new concepts and utilizing them in a productive and efficient way, depending on what he’s working with and how they fit into what he’s doing or his personnel.
“I’d say he’s very creative. He’s got a lot of new ideas or takes on new ideas, new concepts and develops them in the framework of his system to just create more problems for the defense.”
Utilizing an RPO-heavy scheme filled with frequent misdirection and pre-snap motion, the Chiefs boasted the NFL’s highest-scoring offense by a significant margin during the regular season while also leading the league in total yards and yards per pass attempt.
Led by Mahomes — who became the third quarterback in NFL history to throw for 50 touchdowns in a season — and superstar pass-catchers Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, Kansas City has scored 30 or more points in 14 of its 17 games, including a 43-40 loss to the Patriots in Week 6.
“He does a great job of that,” Belichick said. “You see it every year, and he continues to — even over the course of the year, from when we played him in October, has come up with more things to create more of a problem. He’s always tough to go against.
“He does a great job of game-planning. He does an excellent job of developing an offensive system that’s very hard to defend. And they’ve got great players doing it.”
