 background as a player, having played in Kansas City, played in games like this, how much do you maybe draw on that? Or is it your coaching experience at this point that matters as you go to this leg? I mean, I think there's always experiences that you try to draw from. And as a player, and that's what I have. I spent 14 years in the National Football League. And I don't even know how many playoff games. But those were good experiences about preparation and really focusing on what got us to this point. From where we were at different points in the season. And then there's also things that I have to do as a coach to make sure that we're ready. You see, Derek Henry, having so much success against eight in a box. What is it that makes your unit able to find that success? Well, I think the guys try to finish. I think they're playing with a lot of confidence. I think our receivers are willing to go in there and get that extra player. There's different ways to run the football against post-safety defense. And so we'll continue to try to do that. We'll continue to try to stay balanced, to try to throw the football. But I think everybody's buying in that it takes all 11 to run the football, whether that's the quarterback. Executing the call at the line of scrimmage to give us the angles, to get us in the right play, to give us the angles that we need. The line working in unison to get to the second level. And then certainly the receivers, Corey, Tajé, AJ, to go in there and dig out the guy that we got to get dug out. Since Ryan's been the starter, the Red Zone offense has only come up without a touchdown, something like four times. How's that been possible? And how's the variety of what you do down there been sustainable? I think the players have a lot of confidence down there. I think we've been able to get the ball into a lot of different players, which makes it exciting for them to be a part of the plan. We've been able to run it in. We've been able to throw it. Some plays that we've been running since April 15th when we were here for OTAs that the players are comfortable with, that they've run against a lot of different coverages. And then there's been some scheme plays that we've added each and every week. And I know Arthur and his staff and I enjoy that process of coming in and looking at the Red Zone every week, because the players have done such a good job of focusing on it. And it's helped us. They haven't that wall since they left here. What have you seen the biggest improvement from them? I mean, they've given up 14 points a game defensively. Spags has them playing very well. They've been able to turn the football over, create short fields for their offense, which is explosive. They're playing with the lead, which then they can blitz. They can pressure. They can make life miserable for the quarterback when you're trying to come back in those games. How much of a difference does Chris Jones make when he's in the lineup? He's a fantastic player. He's a big athlete. He's not just a grinder, a guy that just goes in. And he's going to try to go down the middle of you. He'll make you miss. He'll swim. And I also think he's very instinctive. When you watch him play in the run game and have an idea of where the ball's going, he's not just a guy that runs up the field, which I can appreciate. Just trying to get sacks all the time. I think he's an instinctive football player for a defensive lineman. And I know that I've talked about Jarrell in that regard. You just don't normally get those defensive linemen that have an idea of maybe what a run scheme is or how the blocking scheme is going to work. I think he's athletic. I think he's accurate. I think he's prepared. I think he's a really good leader. I think that the guys, he's been able to hold players accountable in his own way. I think that's the whole process of what we've been trying to do. I certainly have a style. My job is to hold everybody accountable. Arthur, Dean, and Craig have a style. But our players have to have styles to be able to hold each other accountable and not get our feelings hurt. What is the balance? Oh, I just try to be honest. I'm not, again, I'm not trying to be friends with them. But I have to have a relationship with 63 players on this team and coaches. And sometimes those relationships are better than others. That's the reality of it. I try to be honest. I try to not waste a whole lot of time. We don't have a whole lot of time to hymn haul around. I try to be honest, direct, clear, concise. And I think that there's a lot of trust that goes into, before you can hold somebody accountable, that they have to trust that I know what I'm talking about, that I'm putting the team first in every decision I make. And I think that the players have to trust each other so that they can hold each other accountable and say, because then if you don't trust the guy and somebody says, you need to pick it up, then guys start, there's pushback. Some of the guys said that you referred to this team as street rats. What does that term mean and how to get started? Just the type of guys that we have, that play hard. Being a relatively young coach, finished playing, got one coach in and Jim Haycock was at Ohio State and Jim has been a great mentor among other people. But my first office was next to Jim Haycock and he was the defensive coordinator. I coached linebackers. Luke was the head coach. And Jim was the first one in. I mean, it was four in the morning, he would talk and I would ask him things. And he would say, the greatest compliment you'll ever get as a coach is that your players play hard. When somebody that you respect in this profession says, you know, your guys play hard. And he was right when somebody finally told me that. But those are the type of players that we want, that we need, because when things get tough, which they always do, you know, those guys find a way to compete. If you get beat, you know, you don't sulk. You make a mistake on offense. You fumble, you throw an interception. Like, we have to come back. Football versus new school football. I think you would fall in the old school category. I think the Chiefs would fall, and perhaps maybe even a bit of a new school with Patrick Mahomes. How do you see it? Do you do different things? I think when you talk about the Chiefs, I think you talk about a coach that has done it for a long time and has seen and been able to adapt and adjust to his roster. And whether you run, you know, I think this is cyclical. I think that if old school is hustling and being physical and playing hard, then that's, to me, football. And the schemes are always gonna be great. Everybody's got a great scheme, but it's the players and the teammates that make the scheme really work. When you sat down to put together your game plan for this week, did any particular message pop into your mind that you wanted to deliver to your guys? I think the biggest thing is that we can't change what we've done to get us in this position, to have this opportunity. And on October 14th, we were two and four. I was a bad coach and this was a bad team. And we tried to believe in each other. We tried to improve, try to prepare, trust each other, execute, and that's what's gotten us here. So we're not, we can't change and start to make things up now. Was there a particular game or stretch where you felt like the offensive line finally started to gel and, or there's just been a gradual process? I think it's been a gradual process. I think what happens is the runner starts running and breaking tackles and making yards and then the line starts getting excited and then the line blocks better and then maybe the runner doesn't have to run as well as he did before, but it's, you know, when you start rolling then guys wanna block better and finish longer than the guy with the ball and you start to build confidence week to week and then you build momentum through the week of practice and then into the game. You have a lot of attention on this game. How tough is it to keep players locked in? I think we're excited. I think that when I stand up here, we're excited to still be playing and practicing and locked in for a new challenge. Every game you win, the next one gets bigger. You go from 32 to 12, from 12 to eight, eight to four. I think my math's okay, but that's just where you're at and we didn't know it ain't different. We really went to Houston and we put everybody's suit in a bag and we dry clean them for the night. If we win, we dry clean them and we give everybody their suit back for the next week and we fly. We did that in Baltimore and we'll do that again this week. When you first started talking about a Dory coming back, you talked about potential third down row, then it took him a couple more weeks, but he came back and plugged in, seemed like right where he was before. Is that uncommon for an injured guy to come back and hit it right where he was? It's very difficult, and I'm always conscious of this, having, I guess, gone through injuries, which we know are a part of this game, is to try to stay engaged mentally in what your job is. When you can't do something and there's a DB, you have to be able to run and if you can't run, it's hard to practice those physical skills, and so we ask guys to stay engaged, locked in with the details, still work the game plan to be ready to go when they're healthy. How good has he been since he's come back? Well, I mean, it's been good, it's been great to see him out there, give us a little bit of speed, and we made a couple plays last week, and so, again, we're gonna need everybody's better efforts than we had last week. You guys have gotten off to really nice starts in these games on the road. How important is that good start against team like Kansas City, and if you somehow don't get it, how important is keeping your composure the other way? I mean, we've been down, we've played them pretty much both ways, and when you go on a road, you understand it's gonna be loud, it's gonna be hostile environment, the details of the game plan, and making sure that the players know exactly what we're doing early on, whether that be defensively, offensively or a special teams situation, because they're gonna be excited, they're gonna be amped up, the crowd's gonna be into it. We found that out last week, unfortunately on third down, we gotta clean up the operation, getting the play in there quicker, and making sure that Ryan doesn't have a million things to look at, we can give ourselves a chance. So, we always wanna play from ahead, I mean, who doesn't? But then, we were down against these guys in here at our place, and found a way to battle back. So, again, we're not gonna quit because we're ahead at the end of the first quarter, or we're behind. As evident, as explosive as they are, I don't think that that's a hard message to tell our team they all watched the game of Sunday's game. When you see the Chiefs do a lot of that bunch with zero splits, why does that, and rub routes out of that, why does that make it so... Are you an offensive guy? You already know, Coach, you know. But no, why does it make it so, why is that so hard to defend? Well, I mean, you can play man or you can play zone, and if it's third and three and you play zone, there's a lot of space. And so, when teams choose to play man, you have to have answers for bodies moving in different positions. They start, one becomes three, three becomes one. Two's running a shallow cross, two's running a shallow cross, and then pivots back out. And I think they have great skill set for a lot of those routes. Kelsey, they're able to set routes up and stem them at guys, and then come underneath. So it's a great challenge. It's a very good scheme. They're well-coached. I mean, they're number one in the league on third down for a reason. What makes Kelsey so difficult as a matchup? He's athletic. I think he's instinctive. I talked about it the other day. His routes don't look like anybody else's route. I mean, the route is get open at whatever depth the quarterback wants. You know, he can freeze guys and then burst across the field. He's got great catch radius, where he's long, he's tall, he's long. He's athletic. You know, he's tough and it's a tough challenge. It's hard. You know, and he creates, you know, he runs double moves. He runs routes like a receiver. Plays well at the top of the route. Plays with good play strength. I think that's just two different weeks and two different skill sets. I mean, you know, Lamar has a certain skill set that is impressive, you know, but Patrick, you know, he's not obviously as fast, but I mean, his ability to drift away from pass rush and you pressure him and we pressured him here and you think a guy's free and he just drifts five yards and then throws a 15 yards in front of Hill and he runs underneath it. So I guess that it's just, it's pro football. You're playing the best players at their position, whether that's Deshaun or Patrick or Lamar last week. I know you only want to work knowing how Kansas City was able to take themselves out of that hole last week in Houston and even in the locker map of the game, it was obvious that it brought them together in a way that I think they're coming to this game with even more confidence than that they have. Do you concern that they're gonna have a little bit different, a different edge to them now after getting that win? You know, I think that that's a confident football team. I mean, they had won seven in a row. They're fully aware of their explosiveness and what they can do. I'd like to think that we're playing with a lot of confidence too. You know, I think that when you can run the football against the Baltimore Ravens, the England Patriots, take care of the football. You know, those are, and I want our players to play with confidence too. You know, there's a lot of ways that these games unfold. I've learned from great coaches that you have to have a game plan, but you also can't predict the way that the game is gonna unfold. And however it unfolds, you have to start coaching that way and then make adjustments. How much of that confidence do you go into, but you guys have won a lot on the road straight? How much of the confidence is built just off of going away, playing away, getting those wins in those tough times? Well, you have to be able to do things before you can have confidence. And I mean, you can't just talk about it. You have to go and do it and experience it and understand that, hey, we execute these keys and we win and we execute the game plan and the players make plays. So you have to have those experiences that you've done it to be able to draw upon it. And then the more you do it, the more confident you get. And if there's bumps along the way, you know, you can say, hey, listen, we've already done this, which is I'm sure that the mentality that the Chiefs took last week. They've been even more effective at stopping the run. What, why is that? What have you seen from those guys in the line? I think they're well coached. I think Terrell does a great job. I think they've taken a lot of pride in it. I think going back to the Colts and really when we went on the road there, what was, I saw that unit get challenged and they responded against a very good physical offensive line. And I think that that's kind of given them the confidence to continue to play great run defense with great technique, great effort, building a wall, setting edge and trying to swarm. So I can just remember going back to that game and challenging those guys. And I think it's been a group effort. Everybody's contributed. Dayquan and Austin Johnson and so. Right. How was that open? Do teams always have to prepare? Well, I mean, we have to take shots in this league. I mean, it's hard to drive it 12 or 13 plays every time. It's well called, well executed play that that was the, that was quarterback and receiver making a play. Sometimes you catch them and you run with them and sometimes you got to take them downfield. Thanks guys.