Chiefs coach Andy Reid and Patriots coach Bill Belichick both downplayed the notion that you could take much from last year’s 41-14 Chiefs victory over New England in the regular season when preparing for this week’s divisional round game, but Tom Brady picked up at least one similarity with this year’s Chiefs team while watching Kansas City roll to a 30-0 win on Saturday.
Brady said that the Chiefs defense forced the Texans into making a lot of mistakes during their win and called it the “mark of a good team.” He pointed out the way a game then “snowballs” into a blowout the way they did for Houston on Saturday and for the Patriots in 2014.
“I think exactly what I just described is how we played them last year,” Brady said on “Dennis & Callahan” on WEEI. “Exactly how they won against Houston is exactly how they beat us. They just force you into a lot of bad football, and they’ve got guys offensively that they can control the clock, they run the ball a lot, they have a very good quarterback who plays very efficiently. That’s what they did to us, that’s kind of a winning formula for them. That’s been a winning formula for a long time.”
The Patriots offense that finished the regular season looked vulnerable to that kind of defensive approach, which makes getting players like wide receiver Julian Edelman and tackle Sebastian Vollmer back into the lineup significant for their chances of getting a better result this time around.