The Kansas City Chiefs struggled in front of their home crowd on Friday night, losing 44-14 to the Seattle Seahawks and raising concerns about the defense as they continue to prepare for the NFL regular season. Veteran linebacker Derrick Johnson was among those concerned, and after falling behind 23-7 at the half, Johnson felt it would be hard to pinpoint any particular problems from the loss.
"This is football," Johnson said about the blow-out loss. "This is about bouncing back. It's about taking the good with the bad. This is a game of responding. We're going to have to respond quickly. We're not playing like a very good football team right now, but our job as players is to get the job done."
After such a lopsided loss, the team can learn more about themselves by how they react to the loss.
"It's hard to learn when you get beat the way we got beat today," Johnson said. "Of course, we'll go back and look at the film. I'm sure with X's and O's we can do certain things better. Penalties hurt us tonight, but as a team, it was just disappointing. We have to do better. It starts up front with me. Somehow leadership has to flow down. We have to get this thing going because the season will be here in a couple of weeks."
With rookie quarterback Russell Wilson starting for the Seahawks, the Kansas City defense focused on making him beat them. Unfortunately, the rookie responded to the challenge.
"We thought that we could stop the run," Johnson said of the Chiefs' defensive plan heading into the game. "I think we did a good job at it. The quarterback played tremendously, especially when things broke down he took off running. He threw a couple of good balls. We had a lot of penalties tonight. Seattle is a good team, and when you get penalties the way we did, it's hard to win. It's hard to be in the game."
The Chiefs get back to work this week to prepare for their final preseason game at Green Bay on Thursday.
For more on the Chiefs, visit Arrowhead Pride and SB Nation Kansas City, and for all your Seahawks coverage, head over to Field Gulls as well as SB Nation Seattle.