Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid wasn't happy with his team after their first preseason game. 

Specifically, Reid wasn't happy with the Chiefs' starters after Kansas City's 26-24 loss to the New Orleans Saints on August 13. 

According to Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, Reid felt like the "young guys" played better than the starters against the Saints. 

Reid's talk with Kansas City's starters clearly worked because the Chiefs handled business in their second preseason game, defeating the Arizona Cardinals 38-10. 

"Coach Reid said one thing, and everybody knew we needed to have better urgency," said Mahomes after KC's win against Arizona. "He just came in and basically said that. He said that the one’s didn’t play well last week and the young guys played well. So the young guys gave us a challenge that we needed to go out there and play better football from the get-go."

"Just having that urgency, we know it’s the preseason that the games don’t necessarily count, but you want to have that momentum going into the regular season," added Mahomes. "I think Coach Reid is pretty adamant about that and the guys responded well."

While the Chiefs handled business against the Cardinals, things didn't necessarily start off smoothly for Kansas City's starters thanks to some early penalties. 

Mahomes, however, told his teammates that the offense needed to find a way to get into the end zone if they wanted to get out of the game early. Otherwise, Reid was going to keep the starters in until they scored. 

"I was telling the guys, if we don’t want to keep playing we better score," said Mahomes. "Because Coach Reid is going to keep us in this game until we score. And so we had some mistakes early in the game. Obviously, the penalty, the OPI (offensive pass interference) which kind of goes here-and-there. The holding penalty got us out of rhythm. Some little stuff here and there that we have to correct. But I thought the guys did a good job playing hard, playing fast. We’ll continue to get better and better and try to build until this regular season game."

These are the little things that championship-caliber teams do on the regular. 

It would be easy for Reid to take it easy on his team ahead of the start of the season — but that's not how Reid operates (check out this great story from The Athletic's Nate Taylor about Reid's famously tough training camps for an example of how the legendary head coach operates). 

Reid wants to make sure his team starts the season with a sense of urgency. He wants to make sure that the correct intensity is there from day one. And he accomplished that by getting real with his team after the first preseason game. 

Having Mahomes is a bit like having a cheat code. But not every coach knows how to properly utilize that cheat code. Fortunately for the Chiefs, Reid knows exactly how to get the most out of Mahomes and the rest of the roster. 

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