Willie Gay Jr., Kansas City Chiefs Linebacker

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And learn how to manage them. Listen and subscribe to Your Weirdest Fears on the Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Willie, first off, appreciate the time. How you been? Good, man.

Thank you for having me. It's been pretty good. So, Bengals week, I know you guys lost to them twice last year, one obviously in the AFC title game. Is this just another game or is there some extra motivation trying to give them a little payback for last year?

Definitely a little payback in that, man, somewhere. But, you know, we're treating it like it's, you know, just trying to go, want to know this week. We're not making it bigger than what it is and treating it like every other week.

But it's now. So it's the most important week. So we're not looking ahead, not looking behind, just trying to take this week and do what we can to get a win. How long did it take to move on and kind of put the loss against the Bengals in the AFC title game in the rearview mirror and advance to this season for this year? Oh, man, I did think about it a while during off season. And knowing that you lose to a team twice and then the second time being in that big setting to go to the Super Bowl, you know, it's gone for a while, man.

But we used it as fuel to the fire. And we're definitely looking for payback, a little payback in this game. Willie Gay here with us from the Kansas City Chiefs. How do you view Joe Burrow as a quarterback? Because he's really taken the league by storm the last three years. Oh, yeah, man, it's nothing I feel like he can't do as a quarterback.

You know, he runs his team well and runs his offense, you know, like the vet that he is. And we just have to prepare and do everything we can to slow him down. What's been the big point of emphasis this week in your preparation meetings with Steve Spagnoli, your defensive coordinator, about going up against Burrow? Definitely stopping their key guys.

I mean, we know who heard us the first meeting, which is Jamar Chase. He heard us our first meeting and just trying to do whatever we can on defense to slow the offense down. So we know they are going to make plays. They will score a touchdown, hopefully just once, you know, but I mean, because they are a good team, good offense.

So our thing is just try to slow them down as much as possible and get stops and let our offense roll. Their offensive line last year was not good. They still got to a Super Bowl this year. They brought in a lot of new pieces.

It's been up and down. Last week had their best effort against Tennessee. When you watch their offensive line on film, just what are you seeing out of that unit recently?

Definitely a lot of vets that they did when it go and pick up. So it's definitely helping them a lot, I feel, and definitely something that I feel like was a good move for them to, you know, to go into this season, but we definitely got to try to do what we can to, you know, make them average, you know, so execute our calls and our plays and try not to let that be a factor in the game. Willie Gay from the Kansas City Chiefs joining us right now, as you do have Chiefs and Bengals coming up on Sunday in Cincinnati, a rematch of the AFC title game. Where's your defense at? What type of unit do you think this defense can be this year? Oh, man, we can be as good as we want to be. We got guys all at every position, man, from the back end to the front.

And then me and Nick and all the other guys in the middle. There's nothing I feel like that we can't do. We just have to. Only thing is, man, it's just execution. And, I mean, one person in the wrong gap and it's a touchdown, you know. So it's a detail that we are still ironing out and just trying to be a better unit and better defense as a whole. And once we do that, man, I feel like we can stop anybody. When you get back to this offseason, Willie Gay, and you find out that Tyree Kill got traded, how did you kind of process that?

Where were you and how did you react to it? Oh, man, I didn't care honestly. I just, you know, I do my job and I worry about the defense and, you know, I just move on. It didn't hurt me at all, you know what I'm saying? Of course, it was a big piece for the team, but like I didn't sit around thinking about it, you know, that makes sense. There still had to be a great belief though, because I find it comical. All throughout this offseason, people were saying the Chiefs won't be that good.

They lose Tyree Kill. There was questions about Mahomes and Andy Reid. Like, did you hear any of that? And you just had to probably laugh at it, right? Oh yeah, definitely laughed at it, man, but whenever I did hear it, I just shut it down instantly, you know, because I don't get into all that stuff. People gonna say what they think, man, and you know, that's their opinion, but we don't want to go to the field that's playing.

We don't want that putting in all the hard work, other people just outside looking in, so we don't worry about any of that. He looks like he's the MVP of the league right now. How do you describe the season that your quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, is having? Oh, it's nothing that he can't do on the field, man, and he's showing it every week, so we know that offense is going to continue to roll through him and all the key guys over there, Trav and all that, just everybody on the offense, man, and keep putting up those points so they're having a great year so far, and I know it will continue.

Wrapping up with Willie Gay from the Kansas City Chiefs. Playing for Coach Andy Reid, being in that locker room the first three years of your NFL career so far, how would you kind of describe the experience playing with one of the all-time great coaches? Man, it's really a blessing for me coming in as a young guy, getting with a coach like Coach Andy Reid. He loves his players, man. He treats us all the same from late round guys to undrafted to first round guys, so he cares about us, man.

He really shows us respect as players and as men, and when you have a coach that treats us like the way he does, it translates over to the field, and we play hard for him. Where do you think your game is at individually now, as year three is well underway now, 13 weeks in? Man, I feel like definitely I'll never be complacent and never feel like I'm where I want to be, but I'm definitely way better than I was last year and the year before that, obviously, and I'm just steady growing, man, taking everything day by day, week by week, and fixing what I can improve on and trying to be the best that I can be, you know, to help my team. It's such an adjustment going from college football to the NFL, but the last three weeks, you know, now in your number three, you've had 24 tackles the last three weeks, two sacks. Does it feel like the game is starting to slow down a little bit? Oh yeah, man, it's slowing down a lot, you know. Last week, we played the Rams with it.

It had their issues on offense, you know, without Stafford playing, and so it's kind of, they was just playing kind of wing it football for us, so, you know, we had to make plays wherever we could, but this week, we got offense that can do it all, so it's gonna be fun getting back to playing real football again, if that makes sense. Well, Willie Gay, good luck. We appreciate the time, and best of luck against Cincinnati.

Thank you, my man. or wherever you get your podcast from. The Dixie Mafia. Available now on the Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts. Throughout the 60s and 70s, cops hunted down key figures of the Dixie Mafia, including its enigmatic ringleader, Kirksey Nix. Fifteen years into Kirksey's life sentence, the Dixie Mafia was practically folklore, but that would soon change. I'm Jed Lipinski. This is Gone South, a documentary podcast from C-13 Originals, a Cadence 13 studio. Season 2, The Dixie Mafia. Available now on the Odyssey app, or wherever you get your podcasts.