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Adam Teicher, ESPN Staff Writer
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Sunday’s game against the Jacksonville Jaguars can’t arrive fast enough for many of the Kansas City Chiefs’ wide receivers, Kadarius Toney in particular. Toney might have hopped the plane for Jacksonville moments after the final whistle last week, when the Chiefs lost to the Detroit Lions.
“I’m always just moving forward,” Toney said this week. “I’m thinking about the next weekend, how I can make plays in the upcoming week. I’m never dwelling on the past.”
That’s a good idea for Toney and some of the Chiefs’ other receivers after their play against the Lions. Toney was the worst offender, dropping several passes, one deflected to a Lions defender who returned the interception for a touchdown.
Toney wasn’t the only Chiefs receiver who had problems. Skyy Moore didn’t have a reception, despite getting his hands on the ball three times.
The Chiefs had seven wide receivers play against Detroit but they combined for just 10 catches and 135 yards. They are expecting a bounce-back game from all of them against the Jaguars, Toney and Moore included.
“Let’s make it end quickly,” offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said of the receiving struggles. “The way to do that is to come out this week and have a great game and put that behind us.
“You can sit there and talk about it all day long and at practice and always bring it up. That’s not what the players want, that’s not what we want. We need to be able to let them know what we expect and the standards here in this offense and the execution, details, fundamentals. All that stuff is rather simple and then they just go out and do it.”
The Chiefs were uncharacteristically out of sorts in other areas in the passing game against the Lions. They on occasion had more than one receiver in a given spot. Patrick Mahomes was 0-of-3 in the second half on plays when the Chiefs needed one or two yards to convert.
“I still think we have a great connection,’’ Mahomes said. “We didn’t execute at a high enough level, me included, in that first game, but you have to keep building, you have to try to make yourself better and I’ll try to do what I can to make it easier on them and they’ll go out there and make the plays happen.
“There were just opportunities that I missed, a couple throws here and there where I could have got it to the guy earlier, not made it so hard on those guys and I was just a little bit late on some of my reads.”
Tight end Travis Kelce missed the game against the Lions with a hyperextended knee. He returned to practice this week and is on track to play in Jacksonville.
His presence would help, but coach Andy Reid said the Chiefs wouldn’t rely on Kelce alone.
“I expect the other guys to step up and do the job and finish a game when you have an opportunity,” Reid said.
Moore said he expected he and the other receivers would improve in “every aspect.”
“We understand that that wasn’t our best performance and it needs to get better,” he said. “It sat with me a little long. We had a decent break, but I flushed it though.
“I felt like it was just a lack of focus in our room and I feel like doing the little things consistently every day is going to keep your focus throughout the week, throughout the day. We were lacking in that area.”
Toney against the Lions was playing in his first game since the Super Bowl. He missed all of training camp after having surgery for a torn meniscus and only recently returned to practice. Reid said he wanted to get Toney accustomed to game speed by playing him against Detroit, but may have rushed him.
“It [isn’t] really [an] excuse,” Toney said. “You can blame it on none of that. I told coach, I told Pat [and] all the guys, ‘That’s on me. At the end of the day, you all count on me and rely on me to make certain plays and I’ve got to be there to do that.’
“I’ve just got to put the work in — hard work — spend 30 minutes or an hour after practice catching [from the machine], from the quarterback, whatever I’ve got to do. Just got to make sure I show when it’s time.”
Reid said he had no plan to sit Toney this week, saying the best way for him to get out of a slump is to play. Mahomes told him he would keep coming his way with the ball.
“Just settle down, just be the person I am,” Toney said of what he was hearing from Reid and Mahomes. “Never try to overdo or overstep what I normally do . . . Don’t try to be a superhero.
“Both of those guys, they’ve got trust. They’ve got faith in me and I appreciate those guys for that.”