I hate to question Andy Reid, because he is a great coach. But why the crap would you ever win the toss and defer in this game?
We played them already once this season, got off to an extremely slow start, and had to play catch-up all game. To guard against that happening again, why not take the ball right out of the gate with your extremely prolific offense and a completely jacked stadium and try to do something with it? Instead, we deferred to the second half, kicked to them, and they promptly marched down the field on a 7+ minute drive that A) immediately tired out our defense, and B) put us behind immediately and made us play catch-up, and C) took the wind out of the fans' sails right away. Patriots wore out our already awful defense to some degree on the very first drive, it's no wonder they never had a chance in overtime and gave up multiple 3rd and 10+ conversions. Take the ball right away, let Mahomes do his thing, and rough ridin' score out of the gate. Absolutely ridiculous decision to give them the ball right away and have to play catch-up from 14 down at halftime WHEN THAT HAS ALREADY HAPPENED ONCE THIS SEASON AND IT RESULTED IN A LOSS.
what the pats do on their first possession should have no bearing on what the chiefs offense does on theirs. each team is going to get roughly 10-12 possessions by game's end. the chiefs were not pressing on their first drive of the game just because they were down 7 points. the chiefs won the toss and deferred in each of their first nine games. they allowed zero opening-drive TDs in any of those games, which includes the patriots (the chiefs deferred the prior year vs the pats, gave up an opening-drive TD and then came back to beat them by 15 points).
the first time the chiefs allowed an opening-possession TD this year was to the rams, and the chiefs bounced back perfectly fine (they tied the game at 23 at half with a TD late in the 2nd quarter, then got ball first after halftime.)
when NFL coaches first got the option to defer in 2008, only 8 percent of teams took it after winning the toss.
this past year, the number has ballooned to over 80 percent.
if you play your cards right, deferring gives you a chance to steal a possession by scoring on the final play of the first half and then again right after halftime. for a team like the chiefs, with such an explosive offense, that's a huge opportunity to open the floodgates. and unlike limited offensive teams who are not equipped to play from behind, the chiefs don't have to worry about that. so who cares.
by the way, the chiefs were not well prepared to move the ball against the pats early; it wasn't until they made adjustments after half that they started moving the ball effectively. whether they took ball first or second, there's no reason to think it would have mattered.
one reason i prefer deferring at arrowhead, beyond some of what's referenced above, is because chiefs fans never make it back to their seats by the start of the third quarter. it's always a half-empty stadium, including yesterday. half of my row was not back from concessions by the time kelce scored his TD.