TROPHY’S RETURN TO KANSAS CITY ‘LONG TIME COMING’
Chiefs believe this is the season they slay ghosts of playoffs past, says Les Carpenter.
For 35 years now, the NFL has presented to the winner of the AFC Championship Game a gleaming hunk of silver and wood known as the Lamar Hunt Trophy. The award is a massive thing with a great metal nameplate, gigantic letter “A” and a mural of faceless players locked in an eternal clash at the line. And for 35 years, jubilant players, coaches and owners, headed to the Super Bowl, have hoisted the Lamar Hunt Trophy without much thought to the man for whom the trophy is named.
They likely don’t know that Hunt, the co-founder of the Kansas City Chiefs, is credited with inventing the name “Super Bowl,” or that he helped invent the American Football League, or, in what must seem like a huge cosmic injustice, the Lamar Hunt Trophy has never been awarded in Lamar Hunt’s Arrowhead Stadium.
“It’s one of the goals I put out for our players at the beginning of the year ... we want to win that Lamar Hunt trophy,” Hunt’s son Clark said Saturday evening after the Chiefs’ 31-13 division round playoff victory over Indianapolis. The win ensured the Chiefs will host Sunday’s AFC Championship Game against New England — meaning the Lamar Hunt Trophy will finally come back to Hunt’s stadium. This fact seemed to move Clark Hunt as he walked the corridors beneath Arrowhead Stadium. After all, the franchise he has controlled since his father’s 2006 death has defied any reasonable calculation of fortune, having turned numerous brilliant regular seasons into January disasters. Since winning Super Bowl IV in 1970, Kansas City has won just five playoff games and only played for the Lamar Hunt Trophy once — losing to the Buffalo Bills on Jan. 23, 1994. Given the number of times the Chiefs have been to the playoffs, they should have played for the Lamar Hunt Trophy at home more than this once.
“It’s a long time coming,” Clark Hunt said, before adding: “It’s something that as an organization we feel we should have accomplished in recent history.” Six times in the last nine years, Kansas City has won at least 10 games, booming into the playoffs with a belief that each time was the time, only to stumble into a frigid, dispiriting winter. The failures have been so routine, they’ve been dismissed as: “Oh, it’s just the Chiefs.” Or: “Once again, coach Andy Reid can’t win the big one.”
But something has felt different about this Kansas City team. Maybe it’s Patrick Mahomes, the dazzling 23-year-old quarterback who blew apart the league with 5,097 passing yards and 50 touchdowns this regular season. Or perhaps it’s the fact that the mighty Patriots were more vulnerable — at times — than in recent seasons. Or it might be the way the Chiefs took apart the Colts, who are the kind of tough, efficient team that has given Kansas City trouble in post-seasons past.
After the game, the Chiefs players talked about the confidence they felt on Saturday, the belief they had in Mahomes, and how prepared they were to handle the nagging doubts that come when a game goes wrong. Backup quarterback Chad Henne said the coaches had noticed, on tape, that New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning had drawn the Colts defensive players offsides. The coaches worked with Mahomes — who already is one of the league’s best at luring defences across the line of scrimmage early — to do the same on Saturday. Five times he pulled Indianapolis offside, prolonging drives and slowly breaking the Colts. “I’m like the team — I don’t really associate our playoff history with the opportunity we had today,” Hunt said after the game.
“Every year is a new year, so many of the players turn over, you have new coaches, the opportunity (against the Colts) was completely unique.”
But then he said what everyone around the Chiefs had to be thinking the last few weeks, as Kansas City lost two of its last three and stumbled into the
It’s one of the goals I put out for our players at the beginning of the year ... we want to win that Lamar Hunt trophy.
playoffs after starting the season 11-2.
“It’s great to get that talking point behind us, though,” Hunt said. “There was a lot of noise out there about it. The fans had a lot of anxiety about it. That’s all in the rear-view mirror.” These Chiefs have done something that none of the Hunt family’s Chiefs teams have done in the past, brought their patriarch’s trophy back to his stadium. Holding it aloft on the field outside doesn’t feel as farfetched as it has for many years now.
CANADIAN COMES OFF IR
The Chiefs are healthy, and they got some good news on Tuesday as they activated starting offensive lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif off injured reserve. The Canadian had been out since Week 5 with a broken leg. He’s been practicing since Dec. 26 and now could be available against the Patriots. Whether he starts remains to be seen; Andrew Wylie has played quite well in his place.