It’s still jarring to see the Chiefs as a sterling NFL franchise. Long after Hank Stram urged his team to matriculate the ball down the field and Len Dawson smoked a butt on the sidelines (during the first Super Bowl!), the franchise was inept.
Digging into the depleted funds of my memory bank, I find a solid decade of Marty Schottenheimer playoff bungling, drafting Todd Blackledge in 1983 over Dan Marino and Jim Kelly; the whole Scott Pioli disaster, more proof that Bill Belichick’s coaching/management tree is a sad, wilted fern. The off-the-field tragedies — Jim Tyrer, Derrick Thomas, Jovan Belcher — remind us that the heroes in this game are human.