The Chiefs’ locker room remained eerily quiet following the team’s 31-9 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Players were absorbing the reality of the defeat, Patrick Mahomes said, a bad feeling none of them wanted to experience again.
“Then it just turned,” Mahomes said. “We’re going to get back. We’re going to be back in that game.”
Other players shared similar sentiments after the game Sunday night. Wide receiver Tyreek Hill tried to put the loss in perspective: “I’m breathing, I’m living, I feel great, man.”
“We’re going to bounce back, everybody is going to work during this offseason and we’re going to come back strong and better,” Hill added. “That’s what the great teams do.”
Safety Tyrann Mathieu also looked optimistically toward the future.
“We’ve got a young football team, and I think the most important thing for us is to learn from this, to grow from this,” Mathieu said. “To come back next year with our hair on fire and really do what it is that it takes to win every football game. We’ve got a great football team, we’ve got great coaches. It was just a bad day for us.”
Mahomes plans to start his Super Bowl LVI campaign immediately by reviewing Sunday night’s loss and seeking solutions to the game plan implemented by Tampa Bay defensive coordinator Todd Bowles.
“Obviously with our offense and the success that we’ve had, when teams that the defensive plan they had and how well that it worked they’re obviously going to try to do the same thing,” Mahomes said. “Try to find ways to combat that and kind of evolution our offense. We’re going to have to do better things and be more efficient. That really goes with me and not always looking for the big play but just finding ways to move the ball downfield.”
“It’s not the end of something, it’s going to be another chapter, another chapter where we’re going to have to continue to drive to make ourselves better so that we’re back in that game,” Mahomes said,
