You got the win you wanted and you guys did your part. How disappointing is it that you're not getting ready to play your first playoff game? "Yeah, I mean it's very disappointing. When you go out and you take a look at the entire season, we were 7-3 at one point sort of got in a little slide on the backend of the season. Uncharacteristic of us as a team and what we believe in, but at the same time you end the season on a high note with a victory. You have a winning season. You're not 8-8. You build momentum going into next year. We definitely look at that as a plus, but there's some disappointed guys in that locker room and they should be. If you just take a look back overall this season, we didn't play as well as we should've bottom line."
What was your reaction to finding out you were going to be starting?"Let's go. Let's play. It's what a backup quarterback is supposed to do. It was exciting for me. I wasn't nervous at all. I've started before, same situation last year Week 17 playoffs on the line, but to come back here at Arrowhead in front of our fans was awesome. Got to practice on Friday with the ones, rolled with them. Friday is our sort of review of everything so it was good to get some base passing in, some nickel pass, goal yard to goal line, get a feel for the game plan. So, yeah it was good."
When you came in at halftime in the smartphone world, did you know that maybe things were going to work out?"Nobody knew. No one wanted to know. We were focused at the game at hand, task at hand and I think that speaks volumes about our team to say 'hey let's go take care of our business, handle what we can control and what we can control is how we prepare, how we go out there, how we play against a potential playoff team and let the rest take care of itself. Obviously it didn't, but we won the football game."
As a quarterback, what's it like to watch Justin Houston rack up sacks and break Derrick Thomas' single season sack record? "The guy's a freak. They're trying to chip him out there, trying to double team him and he played with a vengeance today. Like I said a little bit earlier, Justin is one of our leaders if not the leader of this football team. Not only by his play on the football field, but by his words in the locker room. He's a very special person. He's an even better person than he is a player, there's no doubt about that. To have him on our team, we're very lucky." How do you feel about your performance? You had some red zone issues like this team had last week."Well, I'm my toughest critic on myself so I think that's pretty known out there. I thought we started the game pretty well. I thought we moved the ball and I loved our first 15 that we scripted. We scored on three out of the four drives in the first half so I think that momentum was great going into halftime and I thought the Chargers made excellent second half adjustments. I thought we put ourselves in some bad situations. I thought we weren't as efficient in the red zone as we should have been, I thought we weren't efficient with our downs as we should have been and quite honestly, my play stunk the second half. I didn't play like I wanted to and that falls on me. So overall, it was great. It was good to get out there, play. I felt like I took some completions early and I just couldn't buy a couple completions in critical moments in the game in the second half. But like I said, what matters is that we won. We won against a great San Diego team and like I said, that's going to push us into next year."
