Kansas City owes Schottenheimer
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — I never met Marty Schottenheimer in person, but I feel like I know him anyway. There must be thousands of you who could say the same thing.
For a generation of us, Marty defined football. Defined the Chiefs, anyway. The Chiefs played this specifically tough, disciplined and occasionally nasty brand of football for an old middle linebacker who himself played tough, disciplined and occasionally nasty.
Marty changed Kansas City. He and Carl Peterson. From the moment the Chiefs lost the NFL’s Longest Game on Christmas Day 1971 to the moment Marty and Carl arrived in 1989, the Chiefs stunk.
Seventeen years and just one playoff appearance, a blowout loss to the Jets, who themselves lost the next round to Marty’s Browns, who then lost to John Elway’s Broncos on “The Drive” in the 1986 AFC Championship Game.
Marty had the worst luck. He made the playoffs four years in a row in Cleveland, then got fired after a 10-6 season in which he lost three quarterbacks to injury. His Chiefs won more games than any other franchise in the 1990s, then the end turned ugly and he was essentially forced out. He went 8-8 in Washington with Tony Banks at quarterback, then got fired.
He had one more shot, and went 14-2 in his fifth season with the Chargers, then got fired. No one had ever been fired the season after winning so many games. Then, nobody ever won so many games as a coach without a Super Bowl.
Again, the worst luck. He was enough of a coach and then some to win a Super Bowl, and indeed four former assistants went on to win as head coaches. He was always happy for them. Not for himself, but for them.
Marty’s big win never came. But he had a million successes, a lifetime of memories that has left the football world in tears. Marty was more than the playoffs. A lot more than that to the players who loved him, the coaches he worked with, and the fans who cheered his teams.
He was a lot more than that to a lot of us who grew up in or around Kansas City in the 1990s, and fell in love with what Marty created.
Marty gave us an identity. He made Kansas City someplace. He made Arrowhead Stadium magic.
He did not do this alone, of course. Peterson made the draft picks and had a vision of turning the parking lot into America’s greatest barbecue. Marty had Derrick Thomas and Neil Smith and Christian Okoye and Tim Grunhard and Bill Maas and Albert Lewis and Will Shields and eventually Joe Montana and Marcus Allen.
Marty’s teams played a very specific way — they would run the ball at your face, throw off play action, harass your quarterback and almost always win on turnovers. They called it MartyBall,.
Thomas popularized the strip sack, Smith swung for the fences after sacks, and after being ignored for decades outside Kansas City the Chiefs turned Arrowhead into the NFL’s loudest stadium in the 1990s.
They did that by winning, yes, but more than that they did it by making us feel something.
Marty did that. He grew up in western Pennsylvania, but he became one of us. He hated the Raiders with a passion that would’ve fit at any tailgate, and his mantra that you just had to wait for the Raiders to Raider is still repeated today.
How many men can say they’ve had this big of an impact on a place?
Marty coached in four NFL cities — six if you count his time as an assistant. His time in Kansas City was just 10 of his 26 seasons as a coach, but the time changed both the man and city forever.
The Chiefs are as popular and successful as they’ve ever been, and of course that begins with Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes. But in a lot of real ways, everything positive about the modern Chiefs — the post-Stram Chiefs, let’s say — began with Marty’s heart and voice and belief.