Kansas City, Mo. – For much of Sunday afternoon, Arrowhead Stadium, the normally raucous structure that hosts the Kansas City Chiefs, may as well have been Kauffman Stadium, the sleepy adjoining baseball building where handfuls of residents alight during Royals games every summer in an attempt to get away from it all.
Almost three quarters of play between the Chiefs and Oakland Raiders had yielded but five field goals; in the ennui-inducing opening 40 minutes, only one offensive play gained at least 20 yards.
However, the final 20 minutes more than made up for it, the ending providing another stirring chapter in the ongoing saga of the fierce AFC West rivals.
When Chiefs running back Larry Johnson dived over the Raiders’ defense and into the end zone on a 1-yard run on the final play to give Kansas City the winning touchdown in a 27-23 victory, it was hard to tell who was more excited: the 79,000 in the stands who finally were rewarded for being forced to sit on their hands all day or the Chiefs’ players, coaches and officials.
Actually, there probably was little difference between them, the recurring theme being, “It’s great to beat the Raiders!”
Pointing to gentlemanly team owner Lamar Hunt in the winning locker room, president Carl Peterson gushed, “He would never say it, but I can: There’s just nothing better than beating our old friends from the Left Coast.”
Meanwhile, Oakland was left to curse the fates – or at least the NFL and its evil emissaries – the officials who flagged the Raiders for a crucial penalty in the closing seconds.
“A judgment call, huh?” Oakland defensive tackle Ed Jasper asked sarcastically. “That’s why every other week we get a letter in the mail from the NFL, saying, ‘Sorry, that was a bad call.’ I don’t know what it is, but it seems to happen to us a lot – more than any other team I’ve been on.”
The Raiders, league leaders in penalties, had overcome their mistakes as well as the considerable bias against them to win three of their previous four games. That run was borne, in large part, because of a newfound offensive patience that again manifested itself Sunday.
Trailing 20-9 with 12:50 remaining, the visitors didn’t panic, marching 71 and 84 yards for two touchdowns and a two-point conversion to take a 23-20 lead with 1:45 remaining. If that wasn’t enough to make Oakland think its recent bad luck against the Chiefs – Kansas City had won the previous five meetings by a combined 24 points – was over, the deal certainly seemed to be sealed when defensive end Tommy Kelly sacked Chiefs quarterback Trent Green at his 40-yard line with 34 seconds left.
As the Oakland sideline erupted in celebration and the players extricated themselves from the pile, the yellow flag fluttered to the ground. Jasper was called for tripping, the penalty giving the Chiefs a first down. On the next play, Green threw to former Broncos receiver Eddie Kennison for 13 yards, then dumped a pass over the middle to Johnson, who scampered 36 yards to the Raiders’ 1.
The Chiefs took their final timeout. There were only five seconds remaining; the conservative thing to do would be to kick the game-tying field goal and go into overtime.
Instead, coach Dick Vermeil didn’t hesitate, calling Johnson’s number.
“Wow, was I scared, but I just figured, ‘I’m too old to wait,”‘ said the 69- year-old grandfather of 11. “You can’t do everything by the book all the time. … The last two times they had the ball they went down the field and scored. I figured if we lost the coin toss (in overtime) and kicked off, they might win the game, and I didn’t want to give them that opportunity.”
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-820-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
