More than 24 hours after watching the Kansas City Chiefs beat Tennessee in the AFC Championship game, it still hasn’t sunk in yet.
I was lucky enough to nab a credential to this penultimate stop during each NFL season and this year felt a little bit different. I must say that it felt different as a fan. As a media guy, it felt the same. The excitement was there to cover an event that will go down in history regardless of the outcome.
Cody Thorn
I remember when I had the fortune to cover the 2014 and 2015 World Series when I was in St. Joseph and just felt in awe of being in the presence of some of the biggest names in journalism.
I sat next to George King from the New York Post during the 2015 World Series. In the 2014 World Series, I was star struck by the likes of Buster Olney, Tim Kurkijan, Tracy Ringolsby and John Smoltz to name a few.
I feel blessed I get to cover teams I grew up loving, but you can’t root in the press box and have to be impartial. As a fan, I wasn’t nearly as nervous facing the Titans as I was against the Patriots last year. I guess part of me felt last year we had to beat Tom Brady and we never could. Had chances but had a few things go against the Chiefs — the bogus roughing the passer call and then who could/will ever forget Dee Ford lining up offsides and wiping out a game-ending interception.
Then, we all watched as the Patriots won the coin toss in overtime and marched down and scored to win and then won the next week too.
“We weren’t happy with how the season ended last year and we were determined to go out and make it better,” Chiefs general manager Brett Veach said after the game.
He went out and got some key pieces to success of this year’s defense — Frank Clark, Tyrann Mathieu, Juan Thornill and Emmanuel Ogbah — while jettisoning franchise favorites Justin Houston and Eric Berry, as well as Ford, whose name will live in the same infamy as Lin Elliott.
Veach recalled conversations with Reid in the offseason, asking about a potential Clark trade or signing Mathieu. Reid told him ‘just go do it, I believe in your staff’ and that led to some franchise-changing additions.
Add a solid defense to the MVP quarterback it was a recipe for success.
Veach believed the season turned for the Chiefs after Mahomes was hurt in Denver. The defense started to step up more and kept performing when Mahomes returned.
I talked with a veteran writer, Bill Althaus, in the locker room after the celebration yesterday. We stood next to each other often during the Royals run and often left soaked in a combination of champagne and Budweiser. None of that happened on Sunday.
Just seemed like a normal Sunday game, except for like an extra 100 media members more than usual. Oh, and having Eric Stonestreet, David Koechner and Paul Rudd walk right up to the players and hug them and take photos was a little abnormal for a normal game but seemed very much like the Royals postseason runs. Those guys, along with Rob Riggle, were always there too.
The conversation turned to the success of the teams. The Royals were good then god awful for 29 years and then got good.
The Chiefs, for most of my life, have been a pretty good team. I grew up watching the likes of Neil Smith, Derrick Thomas, Dave Krieg, Carlos Carson, Robb Thomas, Tim Grunhard, Kevin Ross, Albert Lewis, Kevin Porter. Then, the next wave was still good under Dick Vermeil and then kind of good for Herm Edwards. There was a blip on the radar they were good under Todd Haley, but after we traded Tony Gonzalez there were some lean years and lots of losses. I haven’t been around to know how bad the 1970s and early 1980s were, but I can look at record books to see how bad they were.
Bill and I talked about how good this team was as a whole when you look at the neighbors across the parking lot. The Chiefs, since Marty-ball, have been a playoff contender almost my whole life.
I remember going to Kansas City when the Chiefs were playing the Bills in the AFC Championship game and watching it with my family in Independence. I grew up rooting for the Chiefs and Royals and weren’t really given any options.
My cousin had season tickets for the Chiefs and I spent most of my teenager years begging for her to take me one time. I remember going to my first game in 1999 vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers. After all those years watching it on TV, being there was unbelievable. It was almost a decade later before I made it back again, but I rarely missed a game on TV or the radio.
As good as it had been there are still mental scars from games many of those in Chiefs Kingdom can’t forget. Tough playoff losses during seasons you felt like it was finally ‘our’ year.
Take your pick. The no punt game vs. the Colts; the Lin Elliott game; the OT loss to the Patriots; the all field goal game against the Steelers or the Marcus Mariota throwing a touchdown pass to himself.
You begin to wonder if it was a curse or some wicked voodoo that can’t be matched. It always seemed to be something. I don’t know what was harder. A successful team that always found a way to make the playoffs and then tear your heart out or a team like the Royals that were plain terrible for nearly a quarter of century a was just and hardly a sniff of any playoff berths.
But all of that changed with the arrival of Mahomes. Althaus talked about going on road trips with the Chiefs to cover the teams in the 1980s and then covering the playoff games in the 1990s and 2000s.
Good teams but never quite good enough. We cycled through about 25 backup quarterbacks for the 49ers and some were good. Some OK. Some people still hate Elvis Grbac, knowing we let Rich Gannon walk away to the rival Raiders.
Ironically, we play the 49ers who reached the Super Bowl with a former Patriots backup quarterback and the Chiefs are the one with the ‘homegrown’ starter.
Althaus, who writes for The Examiner in Independence, pointed to one locker and said ‘that is the difference’ when comparing those playoff teams years ago to this one.
Standing only a few feet from us was Mahomes, who was posing for photos from those non-media members that were in the locker room. It was before Mahomes went to do the postgame interview with the media in the press conference room.
He threw for 294 yards and three touchdowns, while also adding a touchdown run. By the end of the game, he passed Alex Smith for most postseason touchdowns in franchise history. His 1,188 yards in four postseason games is third best in Chiefs history and he is one good game — 309 yards — from tying Len Dawson for first place in team history.
“We are blessed to have a lot of play makers,” offensive lineman Stefen Wisniewski said when asked about the success of the offense. “And we got Pat, obviously.”
If I were the Chiefs, I would invite John Dorsey to the owner’s box for this game. That won’t happen likely because of how the end of his tenure went, but he was the one that made the call to Buffalo to trade up and draft Mahomes in the first round and then sat him for 15 games. A quarterback that spent that year learning under Alex Smith and got a cameo in the regular-season finale.
Now, he’s the best in the NFL and cemented his spot as a legend in KC.