Chiefs Playoff Win - The Take, Part Two

Continuing with the 30-0 score... (Here is my take on yesterday's game, Part One. With it is an explanation of the format for this post...)

8-0. Spencer Ware scores our third touchdown in the 4th quarter, making the score 27-0. That's when I knew we had it. Funny, late in the 3rd the score was 20-0 and I thought, hmm, we are farther ahead in the score at this point in the game as we were at the same point in the Colts game two years ago. Later when we went up 27-0, I knew that was it. What a feeling, Ware's slashing run into the sweet nectar of the end zone, and it was indeed an overwhelming sweetness. When the game was finally over, 0:00 on the clock, score 30-0, we're on the plus side of that score... Just stunning.

9-0. Doesn't seem like we can beat a pro football team from Indianapolis, but Chiefs franchise teams own Houston. There was the 1962 AFL championship win when we were, yes, the Texans -- an unlikely win considering we started overtime kicking off and going against the win after Abner Haynes' "We'll kick to the clock" fiasco. Then there was the only divisional playoff game we've won since the merger, the 28-20 win over Warren Moon and that crazy Oilers team. Then after 22 years of playing teams mercilessly gripping our number in every game, we take down Houston again.

10-0. Some very interesting things on the personal front related to all this. My wife and I got married on January 22 1994, six days after the Chiefs last playoff win, and two weeks after the last first round game we ever won, against Pittsburgh at home. Stay with me now. My son got married this past October, and three weeks after that, the Chiefs started their big winning streak by beating Pittsburgh at home. The first playoff game the Chiefs win after their wedding? This one yesterday.

How about this one too. I'd been shopping for Christmas gifts for them, which we'd exchanged yesterday when we were there for the game. Looking around at all the restaurant gift cards, I'd settled on one for the Yard House. When my son opened it, he pointed out that last year after the Raiders loss we'd decided to see the movie Interstellar together, and it turned out we met up near the theater at, yes, the Yard House. I did not remember the place, but I do remember what happened there.

My son told me the news that I had not heard.

Eric Berry had cancer. There at the Yard House in the lounge we watched one of the televisions tuned to sports items showing the latest about it.

I was floored. What is crazy is just thinking about this movie, Interstellar. It is a quite novel take on time and space, purporting to be somewhat scientifically accurate. It has elements of space-time travel, and I thought of two distinctly notable things related to the Chiefs.

One, the Eric Berry thing -- he goes down for what may be his life, but he comes back, not only getting the grueling treatment and becoming cancer-free in an astonishingly short amount of time, but also working out like a maniac and coming back to play All-Pro-caliber playoff-win-quality football. I mean, what kind of time warp did he step into?

Then there's the space thing. The Chiefs last playoff win was in January 1994, at the Astrodome. Yesterday, 22 years was folded up into a city-block distance apart, and the Chiefs beat this Houston team right next door at NRG Stadium.

11-0. This is all great, and I will always want more, no question. But I feel like getting this playoff win was all I really wanted. Everything else after this is gravy. Yes, I do understand I'm saying this out loud right here in the blog to protect my emotions should we lose to New England. Yes, I do kind of feel that this kind of resignation is nothing better than what it was like being resigned to feeling we were doomed in the two Buffalo games we lost in '91 and '93. What good is that.

I do believe we have a legitimate shot at taking down New England, for many reasons everyone's already spewing about.

What's even better is that the players are not satisfied. They don't know many of us Chiefs fans are thrilled beyond belief the monkey's off our backs and ready to just be happy with what we've got. Nah, they just want to keep winning football games, and that's what matters most.

12-0. No more possibility an 8-game playoff losing streak can continue! Yay yay yay yay YAAAAY! And we will never be in sole possession of the record streak as long as we don't have another one sometime. The Detroit Lions are also holding on to an 8-game playoff losing streak -- it's still active for them and if they lose again the record will be theirs alone. Though, to be honest, I am truly rooting for the Lions to stop theirs as well. No one should have to endure that kind of thing, unless of course stopping it means you'd have to beat the Chiefs.

13-0. No matter what happens the culture is still being built in Kansas City. I am NOT saying that to make excuses for whatever could or will happen on the football field. I am reiterating it because that's the thing that gets the wins, that brings the success, that engenders the respect. And it is happening -- joyously, rapturously, vibrantly. Again, my commitment this year is to ride the arrowhead pride wave through thick and thin -- enjoy it for what it is because it is, for once, a very good thing.

Halftime! We're up 13-0! This long posting on yesterday's events is a lot of work! There is so much to write about! I'm putting away my Macbook for now, but tomorrow -- or sometime during the week -- I'm back at it! Another two touchdowns and a field goal still to go! Stay tuned!

(Here's the first part of this series, click here to get right to it!)
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