The Kansas City Chiefs entered Monday night’s game with the New Orleans Saints missing some key players on offense, most notably Rashee Rice who is likely done for the season after his knee got injured when he took friendly fire from Patrick Mahomes after an interception last week.
That meant the Chiefs would need to find someone else to lean on in the passing game, as Rice was their leading receiver (by a lot) through the first four weeks of the season. Unsurprisingly, the person that stepped into that role was Travis Kelce, who had eight catches for 67 yards in the first half, as he’s gotten himself much more involved the last two weeks after a surprisingly quiet start to the season.
The biggest play by Kelce in the first half came on a 3rd and 22, as the Chiefs picked up 21 of those yards when Mahomes hit Kelce across the middle and the star tight end just drifted sideways across the field to draw defenders before lateraling it to Samaje Perine, who ran close to the marker.
The Chiefs would pick up the 4th and 1 on the ground before ultimately kicking a field goal later in the drive, but given Kelce’s history of laterals, both planned and impromptu, many (including Joe Buck and Troy Aikman in the booth) were wondering if that was a designed play or some improvisation from Kelce when he saw Perine over there. At halftime, the great Lisa Salters made sure to get that answer from Andy Reid, who confirmed they work on that “every day” in practice, but will not divulge the play’s name.
Given they once won a Super Bowl scoring two touchdowns on a play called “Corn Dog,” I hope this has an equally silly name, but we won’t learn that until at least the offseason. For his part, Kelce has long been determined to make the lateral more of a regular occurrence, rather than a tool of desperation. Last year, his lateraling Mona Lisa — a TD to Kadarius Toney that would’ve beaten the Bills — got wiped out because Toney lined up offsides, but this time around he got it to work and I doubt this will be the last time we see Kelce pitching the ball mid-play this season.