The Chiefs are 6-7 entering Week 15 and the outlook is not positive for the defending AFC champs. Injuries to Kansas City’s offensive line have proven mighty difficult to overcome, and overall the roster has simply not played to the standards we’ve come to expect from a Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid-led roster. Time is running out to right the ship with only four games remaining in the regular season.

On Sunday, amid discussions about the Chiefs’ dwindling playoff hopes, NFL insider Ian Rapoport shared Reid’s motivational message to his team entering the home stretch of the season. It was fairly simple, too: anything can happen in the National Football League.

“Here’s my understanding of what it looked like this week in a must-win week for Kansas City,” Rapoport said. “First of all, sounded like a pretty good week of practice from my understanding. Especially, the leaders like Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce and Chris Jones kind of took it upon themselves to make sure their team was focused on the right things.

“As far as how Andy Reid specifically is managing his team through these tough times, from what I am told his message to his team was, anything can happen in this league. Anything. He has seen it all. His goal was to get the players to understand how much is in front of them and keep their energy up.”

It’s a good message for a head coach to deliver to a team, but it’s also the only one Reid can really offer as things stand. A few paths remain for the Chiefs to squeeze into the bottom of the AFC playoff bracket but even if they take care of business on their end there’s still a good chance they miss on the postseason entirely for the first time in the Mahomes era. Which would be an undeniable disaster.

Kansas City isn’t in control of its own destiny at this point. A belief that anything can happen in the NFL is one of the few remaining bastions of hope for the Chiefs faithful. Sunday’s contest against the Chargers is a must-win.


More NFL on Sports Illustrated


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Andy Reid’s Motivational Message to Chiefs Revealed Ahead of Crucial Week 15.