The Kansas City Chiefs suffered a devastating loss at home to the Houston Texans last night. With the season on the line, Houston’s defense completely stifled Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense. He completed just 14 of 33 passes for 160 yards while throwing no TDs and 3 INTs. It was perhaps the worst game Mahomes has played in his career. Now, the Chiefs fall to 6-7, with their playoff hopes dwindling.
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And even though KC and Mahomes are the main national story right now, let’s push that aside for a moment and give the Texans some credit for an incredible turnaround. They started the season 3-5 and hit rock bottom when CJ Stroud suffered a concussion in a Week 9 loss to Denver. However, backup QB Davis Mills came in and stabilized the ship, and Houston has since won five straight games.
After the masterful performance against Mahomes on Sunday, one of the game’s MVPs, Texans cornerback Kamari Lassiter, joined Emmanuel Acho and LeSean McCoy on Speakeasy to discuss his mentality heading into every game.
“My mentality, honestly, is to kill,” Lassiter said. “When I go out there, man, I just want to play. I want to make every play that’s possible. Whether it’s a run, a pass, special teams, I don’t care. If I’m on the field, I’m going to make the play.”
Lassiter finished the game tied for second on the team with 6 total tackles. He also had two critical pass deflections and an interception on a Mahomes pass that was underthrown downfield. This “sticky” defensive coverage is exactly how Lassiter wanted to game-plan for the Chiefs.
“We just wanted to lock the cage,” Lassiter shared. “We wanted to be sticky in coverage. We knew that they have elite speed receivers with Worthy, Thornton… Then you got Rashee Rice, who’s a really good player. And they also got Hollywood Brown.”
Speed is indeed the name of the game for Mahomes and the Chiefs, but if a team has the personnel to shut that speed down, their receiving corps can look sub-par. That’s exactly what happened last night. However, despite the win, Lassiter refused to see it as a turning point, noting there’s still plenty to improve.
“The hay is not in the barn yet. We’re gonna go back to practice this week and look at all of the plays that we gave up. There’s so much more that we can do,” Lassiter said. “We just gotta tap in and not get complacent. Complacency is the enemy of success. So, we just gotta continue to keep grinding.”
The Texans’ star corner also added how the team approaches each game mentally: “Whenever we go out there, we go out with a different mentality. We don’t want no one in our end zone, that’s the mentality… If someone scores, that is an issue! So, that’s how we play to win.”
It goes to show how much Texans head coach DeMeco Ryans stresses defense. He came over from the San Francisco 49ers as the defensive coordinator and has continued to be defensive-minded in his approach. It’s a great strategy that has been paying off.
At the end of the day, the Chiefs and Mahomes are 6-7 because of the stifling defense they faced last night. It was a major opportunity for them to swing themselves back into the playoff hunt, but now they fall even further down the standings.
As of now, KC is in 10th place in the AFC with the same record as the underperforming Baltimore Ravens and Miami Dolphins. Hats off to Lassiter and the Texans’ defense for putting them in a tough spot moving forward. We haven’t seen the Chiefs struggle this much in a decade.
