Highlights

HERM EDWARDS: “As far as Buffalo, they started off real hot, I believe 5-1. Then they’ve kind of hit a streak of turning the ball over and losing some games that went down to the wire. They’ve lost four in a row.

“It’s a fairly young team with a quarterback who’s only started 18 games. I think they’re living through his trying to play quarterback in this league. They’ve got some weapons in receiver and running back. The runners are both good. The thing that’s really scary is their special teams. They’re really good on special teams. Their return game is really good. Their punter and kicker are very good. The kicker is seven for 10 from 40-49 yards. Their special teams are what sets them apart from a lot of teams.

“Defensively they’re big up front, pretty athletic at linebacker and corner. They play hard to the ball and don’t give up a lot of points. On offense they have a lot of explosion players, players who can make big plays whether it be the runners or wide receivers. Lynch probably had his best night last night (MNF vs. Cleveland). They’ve got a big offensive line.”

Q: Has your team forgotten how to win?

EDWARDS: “I think this team is trying to learn how to win. I don’t know if it’s forgotten because there are so many young guys. It’s up to the players at the end of the day and you know that. The coaches put them in position and from there they’ve got to go on and win. They’ve been in position the last couple of weeks and we haven’t found a way to do it.

“It just comes from putting them in position. In the last four weeks we’ve done that; we’ve been in position to make some plays in either phase of the game and we haven’t quite done it. The players have to do that. The coaches can make a call and put them in position but they have to pull the trigger and do it. They’re getting closer.”

Q: The more distance that comes between that win in the Denver game and whenever does it make it that much harder?

EDWARDS: “I think it puts pressure. I think guys try and I think that sometimes it will happen to us a little bit. Guys are pressing and you can’t do that. It has to be one of those things where you get it done.”

Q: How much of it rears itself in the second half when you kind of get close?

EDWARDS: “I think the quarter that’s hurting us is the third quarter, for the most part when you watch us. It’s coming out of the locker room and not getting things going. You look at our third quarter and it hasn’t been very good point-wise or allowing points. We’ve given up 65 points and had only 16 points. The fourth quarter is a little bit better. The third quarter something is happening to us as a football team. That’s the quarter we’ve got to get over. I don’t know if we exhale and then all of a sudden things happen to us and we’re behind. Most of the time we’ve been behind.”

Q: Is it something that comes from experience or does it affect everybody?

EDWARDS: “I think experience has something to do with it, but not all of it. It’s just a matter of making the plays, the little things, the little plays, the things that get you off the field on defense or continues the drive on offense.

“It’s not always the most obvious plays but the plays that happen along the way that you don’t quite get done. We talked about it Monday when we came in. I kind of went through the last game of what took place. It wasn’t the obvious plays but the plays that go unnoticed that kill drives. Whether it’s a penalty or a dropped ball or a missed tackles, they all creep into the game and that you can’t let creep into the game, especially for us. We don’t have a lot of room for error and our last four games have been really, when you think about, they have all gone down to a one-possession game in the fourth quarter, a one score game. You’ve got to score or prevent them from scoring to win the game. It’s been a one-score game and you want to be in that position in the fourth quarter, but you’ve got to close it out. It’s a mental thing and the more you’re involved in it the more it’s going to turn for you and you’re going to win one.”

Q: Have you thought about your half time routine?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, if we had a dome on this thing we probably wouldn’t go in. Just sit out and then continue to play in the third (quarter). No, you’ve got to overcome it.”

Q: Is it possible other teams make adjustments at halftime?

EDWARDS: “All teams make adjustments and I don’t think it’s that so much. I just think it’s kind of what’s happened to us, whether it’s a mindset or whatever. If I knew we’d try to fix it.”

Q: Can losing become a habit?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, sure can. It can get to a point some bad things start happening and you say, ‘oh, here we go.’ You hate to say that to yourself but I think that’s a part of questioning yourself and we can’t question ourselves when we get in those situations. We’ve got to have a mindset where that just happened to us but we’re going to rally and come back. Been very competitive but we’ve got to find a way to get over the hump. When you do it just clicks. That’s the one thing you understand and when you get in that situation again you will be able to overcome it. But right now we haven’t been able to overcome those situations.”

Q: Psychologically as losses pile up does overcoming it become more difficult?

EDWARDS: “It becomes hard. You look at Buffalo and they’ve sort of been in the same mode the last four weeks. They’ve been in the game at the end, at the end, at the end, and then all of a sudden something happens. They started out 5-1 and all of a sudden they’ve hit a little lull. They couldn’t quite…. Turnovers have hurt them some and I know coach he’s probably preaching that to them. It just happens and hopefully you’re able to overcome it.”

Q: Special teams have been a problem as you’ve said with new personnel. At this time of year when coaches start cutting down practice time to keep people healthy, do you give any thought to increasing special teams’ allotment of practice time?

EDWARDS: “I do a pretty good job of allotting a lot of time for special teams. When I first came to the league my first special teams coach was probably one of the better guys in the league and I learned from him how you prepare special teams and how to practice. That was always big and it’s big here. Our problem is we’ve had a lot of guys in and out and a lot of young guys playing special teams. Every week it seems like there are some guys changing in and out. There probably will be some more changes this week. You never get the same group of guys. That’s always difficult, especially on coverage teams. That seems to raise its head. If you look back at our (last) four games special teams seem always to be involved. They’re a big part of the game. As I’ve said, special teams plays somewhere between 30 to 33 snaps. It’s not offense or defense. You only get one shot at it, only one shot at the ball and when you make an error it’s big, real big.”

Q: You talked on the radio about Turk McBride maybe having some broken bones in his forearm.

EDWARDS: “He’s got a thing in his forearm right now and we’ve got to see where it’s at.”

Q: Is that something he can play with?

EDWARDS: “We’ll go look and see. We’re not quite sure. We haven’t ruled him out.”

Q: Is he a possible IR (injured reserve) candidate?

EDWARDS: “Possibly, but right now we don’t know.”

Q: How serious is his shoulder that he re-injured again on Sunday?

EDWARDS: “It’s bothering him. To his credit, he went out there and played. There are a bunch of guys who are hurt. That’s the difference in this league. Certain guys can play when they’re hurt and certain guys cannot. There’s a difference between being hurt and injured. Sometimes it takes guys a while to figure that out. There are a lot of guys in this league hurting right now but that’s part of the deal this part of the season.”

Q: 18 of Tyler’s 19 completions this past Sunday were to pass catchers. Is that a difference in QB or a difference in scheme?

EDWARDS: “I just think it’s more of his confidence in what we’re trying to do, trying to push the ball down the field more. This Chiefs offense is developing as we go. Every week we try to put in a new wrinkle and see what else we can do out of it. So, it’s new. It’s really two or three weeks old.

“Last week it was trying to run the ball out of the shotgun more than we have. Every week we try to develop it because we’ve been successful moving the ball and scoring some points. We’ve got to score some more. I think Tyler feels very comfortable with it and I think the players are starting to feel more comfortable with it, too.”

Q: When you get in the Red Zone you’re limited with your creativity obviously. Is it a situation where you’re working on being more creative or just lining up and trying to get that surge?

EDWARDS: “I think as you know you can’t go down there and throw passes all the time. It sounds good and looks good but it really works against you in the fact there is no depth to throw the ball. You can line seven guys in the end zone and there are little pockets in there but most of the time you see in our league now where you’ve got a good receiver and they can throw the ball up in the air, or sometimes they double him and you have to be able to run the ball, too.

“This past week we tried to run it a couple of times and they got underneath us and we couldn’t get any surge. The one I think we might have been in (for a TD). You’ve got to run the ball down there some and we’ve got a good back that we feel can get it in.”

Q: Are you hopeful of getting some of your injured guys back that are questionable?

EDWARDS: “I would hope we would get a few.”

Q: When you look at the injury list compared to what you thought it would be does it make you scratch your head?

EDWARDS: “You don’t try to scratch your head so much as you bring in new players every week and you try to adjust to that. You’ve got to get the guys ready to play. If you do add them to the roster the first place, for us, is they’ve got to play special teams. Now you’re adding two more guys who didn’t play special teams for you last week.

“Everyone is a special teams coach. That’s great. Everyone knows how to do this and do that. (Our special teams) guy has a lot on his plate when you talk about different guys playing different positions every week. The scary part right now is kicking the ball (to Buffalo). It’s scary really scary. You almost might want to kick it out of bounds and they get the ball on the 40 and get it over with. Now you have to punt it to certain parts of the field, or try to place the ball. I mean, even when we were in New York, Buffalo was always good on special teams. It dates way back to (Steve) Tasker. It seems like they’ve always had good kickers, good punters and return guys. They’ve always done that in Buffalo and it’s been a tradition. Here again, they’re dangerous, they’re scary.

“You want to score but the problem is you’ve got to kick it to them and then you’ve got to cover. It’ll be a challenge for us this week.

Q: How do they keep it going?

EDWARDS: “For some reason it’s just Buffalo.”

Q: How has their punter stayed so long?

EDWARDS: “Obviously the cold doesn’t bother him. He’s outdoors. To kick up there you have to be pretty good. It gets cold up there now. I’ve gone up there in September and it’s been flurries.”

Q: How much of a disadvantage is it for a team to go on the road after playing a Monday night game?

EDWARDS: “It’s somewhat because of the travel and the recovery time. That’s what is always tough, especially this time of the year. What’s even tougher is a Thursday night game. With your body at this time of year you can get some guys hurt and that’s what always scares me. You can imagine what you do in practice. You don’t put pads on; you can’t because it’s not fair to the players. I know it’s great for television and all that but the ones that get in harm’s way are the players. If you’re a good team you’re going to get Thursday night games because it means you’re a winning team and people want to see you.”

Q: You talked before of the lack of a pass rush. The coaches can’t really do much about that but ask the players to execute can they?

EDWARDS: “In this league it never changes: by the middle of November it’s the players. It’s the players time to play. The players know that. Your system is basically in – now our system has changed a bit on offense – but if your football team is intact the players play now.

“You know where you’re at as a football team. You know if you have a shot as a wildcard contender or are just looking to win some games to get going for next year. Each team is in a different situation but the players have to take it over. That hasn’t changed. That was the way it was when I was in the league and it won’t change. Our guys will have to understand it and they eventually have to go do it. There is no magical play, or magical calls. You can make some decisions for them but at the end they’ve got to go play and go win. All you can do is put them in the situation and we have a lot of guys who are learning and getting better and you’ve seen it the last month. We just haven’t found a way to finish it. That’s where we’re at.”