Chiefs coach Andy Reid moved swiftly to replace

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KANSAS CITY Josh Oliver Jersey , Mo. (AP) — longtime defensive coordinator Bob Sutton after his underperforming group allowed Tom Brady and the New England Patriots to run roughshod over them in the AFC title game last month.Reid moved just as swiftly in completing a massive staff overhaul.The first big piece was the hiring of Steve Spagnuolo to serve as coordinator, while the rest of the pieces fell into place Tuesday night. That’s when Reid issued a statement announcing the hiring of four new assistants and new responsibilities for three coaches kept in the fold.The biggest coup may be Brendan Daly, who was plucked from the Super Bowl champion Patriots after four seasons in Foxborough to handle the defensive line. Daly worked under Spagnuolo when the latter was the head coach of the Rams, and he has also spent time with the Vikings.Perhaps the strangest recruitment came with Matt House, who had been serving as the defensive coordinator at the University of Kentucky. The Chiefs wanted to hire House to handle linebackers, but the SEC school made a strong pitch to keep him in Lexington.Ultimately, the sides were able to work out a deal on House’s buyout at Kentucky.The other new assistants are Dave Merritt, who worked under Spagnuolo with the Giants before spending last season as the Cardinals‘ defensive backs coach, and longtime NFL cornerback Sam Madison, who will help with the secondary in his first full-time coaching job in the league.Madison played three seasons with the Giants, his tenure overlapping with Merritt and Spagnuolo.“All of these coaches are familiar with Steve, love the game and are good teachers that have had success in their careers Deandre Baker Jersey ,” Reid said in a statement. “I’m looking forward to working with this group.”The rest of the staff also will have new responsibilities.Britt Reid will help with linebackers after working with the defensive line, Terry Braden will move into the defensive quality control role, and Alex Whittingham will remain a defensive assistant.Sutton had been the defensive coordinator since Reid arrived in Kansas City prior to the 2013 season, and his staff had mostly remained intact the past six seasons. But after a couple good years, it seemed as though the rest of the league figured out Sutton’s bend-but-don’t-break scheme.The Chiefs, who went 12-4 last season and won their third straight AFC West title, ranked near the bottom of the league in just about every defensive category. The failures on that side of the ball were thrown into even sharper focus given how productive Reid’s offense was under first-year starting quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who walked away with the league’s MVP award.Spagnuolo is expected to shift the Chiefs from the 3-4 defense Sutton employed to a 4-3 system, so the turnover in assistants was widely expected. Among those who departed was Hall of Fame defensive back Emmitt Thomas, who retired after 51 seasons as a player and coach in the NFL. Derek Carr‘s No. 1 receiver has been traded just weeks after the Oakland Raiders dealt away another cornerstone player in Khalil Mack. Carr has just one win, has struggled to adjust to coach Jon Gruden’s offense and has taken more of a physical beating than he has at any time during his five-year career.As if that wasn’t enough, he also has had to deal with reports that unidentified teammates have lost faith in him and his toughness has been questioned.“I don’t are some of the guys that texted me yesterday, saying, ‘Don’t worry about this bull.’ That kind of stuff. I can’t tell you how many texts I got from former teammates, teammates I have now and all of these things that when you’re losing, (bad stuff) happens.”Tight end Lee Smith gave a long statement defending Carr in what was otherwise a mostly empty locker room during the open media period. He called a recent report that the locker room is fractured over Carr “comical and laughable” and said Carr remains the leader of this team.Smith said it’s a “joke” that Carr has to deal with this criticism, including that it looked like he was crying after injuring his left arm in a loss to Seattle in London on Oct. 14.“He’s a human being,” Smith said. “We’re human beings. We’re not robots. He has a 1-5 record as a starting quarterback for the Oakland Raiders. That’s hard enough on him. Much less him worrying about his two sons happening to see an article that he’s not tough. It’s ridiculous. Of course it would bother him. He’s human.”Carr’s play has also not lived up to expectations as he has been hurt by a banged-up offensive line that got him sacked six times in the loss to the Seahawks.Carr has thrown more interceptions (eight) than touchdown passes (seven) so far this season and was unable to get the ball downfield at all in the game against the Seahawks when he threw just one pass more than 10 yards downfield and gained 140 of his 142 yards after the catch.“I think Carr is going to be fine,” Gruden said. “We have a lot of moving pieces now on offense. It’s tough on a quarterback. In the first year of a system it’s doubly tough. I’m going to keep supporting him. I know I believe in him. I know he’s going to be a great player. You watch and see, he’ll play just fine on Sunday.”A season that began with optimism with the return of Gruden as coach has gone off the rails quickly. The team traded Mack to Chicago just over a week before the start of the season for a package of draft picks and then dealt Cooper to Dallas on Monday for another first-round pick.The trades give the Raiders three first-round picks in 2019 and two more the following year but none of that will help win games now for the players still here.The Raiders (1-5) have been outs ow I work. I still have a job to do. It’s going to be harder without Coop, it’s going to be harder without Khalil, we knew that. It’s not going to make it easier, especially for us, for a quarterback and things like that. But that’s no excuse. We need to go perform and we need to go win games and that’s my mindset.”NOTES: LG Kelechi Osemele has not returned to practice from a knee injury that has sidelined him the past two weeks and his status for this week remains in doubt. … S Karl Joseph (hamstring), OL Jon Feliciano (ribs) and DL Frostee Rucker (neck) were all back on the practice field.
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