KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Glenn Dorsey started believing in the first half, sometime around when Larry Johnson broke a 65-yard run. Derrick Johnson started believing in the fourth quarter, when the Chiefs scored an insurance touchdown.
Coach Herm Edwards was still pacing. He was walking the sideline, stealing a glance at the scoreboard and hoping the clock wouldn’t be so cruel. Time passes slowly when you’re winning, and it moves like cold molasses when you haven’t won in nearly a year.
Edwards couldn’t believe it, even when the seconds were ticking away Sunday.
“I looked up at the scoreboard,” he said after the Chiefs’ 33-19 victory against Denver, “and said, ‘Oh, my goodness, can we really win this game?’ ”
Edwards was trying to hold back a smile during his postgame meeting with reporters. He talked about the team’s strength and the defense’s purpose, the way it all came together like they’d been saying it would.
Sunday’s victory validated Edwards’ vision, even if temporarily, and granted the Chiefs’ third-year coach a reprieve from pressure that, with each loss, was galvanizing him as an unpopular figure in Kansas City.
Edwards said after the game the victory wasn’t about him. He said the players needed it. So did the fans.
But both the players and fans got some reassurance Sunday that Edwards knows what he’s doing and that the offseason decision to rebuild the team with draft picks and young free agents was the way to go.
“All this is for Coach Herm,” said one of those draft picks, cornerback Brandon Flowers. “We work hard every day. We play hard, and when the outcome is not right, they put it all on the head coach. We just wanted to show everybody out there what Herm prepared us for.”
Edwards said he hadn’t sensed pressure. Not from frustrated veterans or impatient executives.
Edwards said he expected a difficult year, albeit not as difficult as beginning the season with three losses.
“We said we were going to rebuild with young players, and we’ve never deviated from that,” Edwards said. “That’s difficult, especially when you hit some troubled times, and if you look at troubled times and you act a different way and you let troubled times skew what you want to do, then you’re really not as strong as you think you are.”
