SPchief
01-01-2007, 02:36 AM
Decent article from Merrill
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/16359884.htm
Chiefs wonder about ‘outside forces’ as they get a little help and new life
By ELIZABETH MERRILL
The Kansas City Star
Herm Edwards went home, kept the TV off and played with his little girl Gabrielle on the floor. If the last piece fell into place Sunday night, and if slim-to-none turned into an improbable playoff berth, somebody would call.
Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt had to watch. He wondered whether outside forces were at work. It started with a field goal that hooked right in Cincinnati, was kept alive with Kansas City’s wild 35-30 win over Jacksonville and ended with another field goal in another time zone at Denver.
The Chiefs are going to the playoffs for the first time since 2003, and nobody — not the players, the Arrowhead Stadium employees who huddled around the TVs or the soggy collection of about 60,000 fans — thought it would happen.
Some of them still aren’t sure it actually happened.
With the season still in doubt, president/general manager Carl Peterson took off on a plane to a bowl game and was flying over Denver when the pilot told him the Broncos’ game had gone to overtime. It was that kind of a day. But Hunt passed by a TV about 3 o’clock Sunday, when the Bengals missed that field goal, and began to believe.
“I’ve had some people in the locker room,” Hunt said, “suggest that maybe my father had a hand in that.”
Eighteen days after the club lost founder Lamar Hunt to cancer, two weeks after Kansas City limped home from San Diego after its third straight loss, the Chiefs hastily made plans to play at Indianapolis at 3:30 p.m. Saturday. The locker-cleaning that was planned for this morning would wait. And one of the worst months in Chiefs history ended with a few gifts from some AFC rivals.
Edwards arrived at the stadium early Sunday and told his team it couldn’t control the outside factors, whether the Steelers could beat the Bengals, the Patriots could beat the Titans and the 49ers could beat the Broncos. He didn’t even tell them that all those teams would have to do it on the road.
The only thing the Chiefs could control was a 60-minute tug-of-war that was played through rain, then snow, and was rife with drama and fisticuffs and boos and controversy.
“It was just that kind of game,” guard Brian Waters said. “We knew it was going to be physical. That was just two teams that were really frustrated about their situation and wanted to win the game.”
The day was a microcosm of Kansas City’s 9-7 season. The Chiefs seemed to be at their best when things looked the worst. Trent Green had three turnovers and was booed. The defense bent, twisted and nearly broke.
They couldn’t even rest after an 18-point second-half lead because another backup quarterback — this time an unknown named Quinn Gray — was running and passing at will. No, it wasn’t over until Jaguars defensive end Bobby McCray was called for being offside with 1:16 to play, and Green could take a knee and run the clock out.
And then it wasn’t really over, anyway.
Larry Johnson ran for 138 yards and three touchdowns and broke an NFL record with 416 carries on a season, and when he slipped out of the locker room late Sunday, he no doubt thought he’d be in for a long winter’s rest.
Green thought the same thing. He spent roughly 30 minutes in a rare, candid postgame chat with reporters, and talked about how he was undaunted by the boos and was looking forward to coming back next season. At one point during the conversation, a room next door erupted in hoots and hollers when the 49ers made a play in Denver.
Green stopped for a moment and said he wanted to go watch the game somewhere.
“It’s very frustrating,” he said when asked how tough it would be to not go to the playoffs again. “But if you look at the last two seasons, we’ve done it to ourselves. You can say we played 16 games like everybody else. We don’t have anybody to blame but ourselves.”
For the second straight year, Peterson gave the scoreboard operator the directive not to flash any scores from Cincinnati or Tennessee during the game. He wanted the team to stay focused.
But the press box at Arrowhead turned rowdy in the waning moments, and at one point, PR director Bob Moore had to tell a gaggle of people pressed against a wall and fixed on the Bengals’ game to keep it down.
It almost seemed as if the game on the TV was more intriguing than the one on the field.
“It seemed like we always had the game in our hands,” defensive end Jared Allen said. “They weren’t beating us with plays; it was like schoolyard ball.”
As confident as Allen was with what they did against the Jaguars, he wasn’t so sure about the 49ers. He glanced at the TV after receiver Eddie Kennison grabbed a remote and flipped on all the televisions in the locker room.
“Hopefully we’ll get some blessings from heaven,” Allen said.
The Chiefs had experienced their share of final-week heartache. Last year, they won 10 games but couldn’t get in after the Steelers hung on to beat Detroit.
Edwards wasn’t in Kansas City that day, and he didn’t want to hang around the TV on Sunday night waiting. He feared if he turned on the game, he might change the 49ers’ karma.
But his wife, Lia, was watching in another room, and every time she hollered, he asked, “What are you screaming about now?”
“Then she told me it was in overtime, and I said, ‘Well, we’ve still got a chance,’ ” Edwards said. “Obviously, when I heard her scream at the end, I knew something good had happened.”
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http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/16359884.htm
Chiefs wonder about ‘outside forces’ as they get a little help and new life
By ELIZABETH MERRILL
The Kansas City Star
Herm Edwards went home, kept the TV off and played with his little girl Gabrielle on the floor. If the last piece fell into place Sunday night, and if slim-to-none turned into an improbable playoff berth, somebody would call.
Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt had to watch. He wondered whether outside forces were at work. It started with a field goal that hooked right in Cincinnati, was kept alive with Kansas City’s wild 35-30 win over Jacksonville and ended with another field goal in another time zone at Denver.
The Chiefs are going to the playoffs for the first time since 2003, and nobody — not the players, the Arrowhead Stadium employees who huddled around the TVs or the soggy collection of about 60,000 fans — thought it would happen.
Some of them still aren’t sure it actually happened.
With the season still in doubt, president/general manager Carl Peterson took off on a plane to a bowl game and was flying over Denver when the pilot told him the Broncos’ game had gone to overtime. It was that kind of a day. But Hunt passed by a TV about 3 o’clock Sunday, when the Bengals missed that field goal, and began to believe.
“I’ve had some people in the locker room,” Hunt said, “suggest that maybe my father had a hand in that.”
Eighteen days after the club lost founder Lamar Hunt to cancer, two weeks after Kansas City limped home from San Diego after its third straight loss, the Chiefs hastily made plans to play at Indianapolis at 3:30 p.m. Saturday. The locker-cleaning that was planned for this morning would wait. And one of the worst months in Chiefs history ended with a few gifts from some AFC rivals.
Edwards arrived at the stadium early Sunday and told his team it couldn’t control the outside factors, whether the Steelers could beat the Bengals, the Patriots could beat the Titans and the 49ers could beat the Broncos. He didn’t even tell them that all those teams would have to do it on the road.
The only thing the Chiefs could control was a 60-minute tug-of-war that was played through rain, then snow, and was rife with drama and fisticuffs and boos and controversy.
“It was just that kind of game,” guard Brian Waters said. “We knew it was going to be physical. That was just two teams that were really frustrated about their situation and wanted to win the game.”
The day was a microcosm of Kansas City’s 9-7 season. The Chiefs seemed to be at their best when things looked the worst. Trent Green had three turnovers and was booed. The defense bent, twisted and nearly broke.
They couldn’t even rest after an 18-point second-half lead because another backup quarterback — this time an unknown named Quinn Gray — was running and passing at will. No, it wasn’t over until Jaguars defensive end Bobby McCray was called for being offside with 1:16 to play, and Green could take a knee and run the clock out.
And then it wasn’t really over, anyway.
Larry Johnson ran for 138 yards and three touchdowns and broke an NFL record with 416 carries on a season, and when he slipped out of the locker room late Sunday, he no doubt thought he’d be in for a long winter’s rest.
Green thought the same thing. He spent roughly 30 minutes in a rare, candid postgame chat with reporters, and talked about how he was undaunted by the boos and was looking forward to coming back next season. At one point during the conversation, a room next door erupted in hoots and hollers when the 49ers made a play in Denver.
Green stopped for a moment and said he wanted to go watch the game somewhere.
“It’s very frustrating,” he said when asked how tough it would be to not go to the playoffs again. “But if you look at the last two seasons, we’ve done it to ourselves. You can say we played 16 games like everybody else. We don’t have anybody to blame but ourselves.”
For the second straight year, Peterson gave the scoreboard operator the directive not to flash any scores from Cincinnati or Tennessee during the game. He wanted the team to stay focused.
But the press box at Arrowhead turned rowdy in the waning moments, and at one point, PR director Bob Moore had to tell a gaggle of people pressed against a wall and fixed on the Bengals’ game to keep it down.
It almost seemed as if the game on the TV was more intriguing than the one on the field.
“It seemed like we always had the game in our hands,” defensive end Jared Allen said. “They weren’t beating us with plays; it was like schoolyard ball.”
As confident as Allen was with what they did against the Jaguars, he wasn’t so sure about the 49ers. He glanced at the TV after receiver Eddie Kennison grabbed a remote and flipped on all the televisions in the locker room.
“Hopefully we’ll get some blessings from heaven,” Allen said.
The Chiefs had experienced their share of final-week heartache. Last year, they won 10 games but couldn’t get in after the Steelers hung on to beat Detroit.
Edwards wasn’t in Kansas City that day, and he didn’t want to hang around the TV on Sunday night waiting. He feared if he turned on the game, he might change the 49ers’ karma.
But his wife, Lia, was watching in another room, and every time she hollered, he asked, “What are you screaming about now?”
“Then she told me it was in overtime, and I said, ‘Well, we’ve still got a chance,’ ” Edwards said. “Obviously, when I heard her scream at the end, I knew something good had happened.”
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