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Adam Teicher, ESPN Staff Writer
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Andy Reid said the Kansas City Chiefs won’t be giving up on wide receiver Kadarius Toney, even after he made a costly mistake late in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s loss to the Buffalo Bills.
“The thing I know is he makes plays,” the Chiefs’ coach said Monday of Toney. “He makes plays when he has the ball in his hand and that’s important. He’s a young guy. He doesn’t have … a ton of experience, but I think he’s getting better every week.
“I don’t see that as being a negative. I look at the things that he produced on, too.”
Toney was penalized for lining up offside on a play when the Chiefs scored what would have been the go-ahead touchdown with less than two minutes remaining. Toney took a cross-field lateral from Travis Kelce, who had caught a pass from Patrick Mahomes, and completed what would have been a 49-yard touchdown.
The Chiefs instead eventually turned the ball over on downs on the drive and lost 20-17, their fourth defeat in the past six games.
Asked what his coaching advice to Toney would be this week, Reid said, “Normally he looks over to the sideline and just gets an OK [from the official]. On that one he just happened not to. Just make sure you check, make sure you check with the guy on the side just to see if you’re aligned … He was 2 inches away from or an inch from being legal.”
Toney similarly cost the Chiefs in their Week 1 loss to the Detroit Lions. He deflected an easily catchable Mahomes pass to a defender, who returned it for a touchdown. The Chiefs wound up losing by one point.
Toney’s biggest play for the Chiefs this season is 18 yards. He did deliver two big plays in the fourth quarter of last season’s Super Bowl, scoring one touchdown and returning a punt 65 yards to set up another.
Reid after the game said the penalty call was an “embarrassment” to the NFL because players like Toney are usually warned first for lining up offside before being penalized. Reid on Monday said he wasn’t blaming the officials for the loss but was disappointed that they didn’t communicate with him the way he said he’s come to expect them to.
“I think I’ve got a good relationship with the officials, and I had no communication,” Reid said. “That’s really where I was coming from. I was disappointed in that part.”
Reid also defended Mahomes, who yelled at the officials as the game ended and questioned the timing of the call in his postgame news conference.
“We put so much time and effort into it and both physical and mental effort,” Reid said Monday. “For it to come down to something like that, that ends up being the frustration … That type of situation is too great for really good football teams playing each other and you’re down to a minute and a half or a minute, 50 seconds, all of a sudden, you’re right there and have a big play. I think anybody would say that’s a little bit frustrating.
“Do we need to line up right? Yeah, we do. We’ve got to take care of that and not put it in the official’s hands.”