KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The ideal script served up on a gold-plated platter with a glowing bow wrapped around it, this one was.
This was the moment for the Chiefs to seize, the time to change everything, the game that makes you say, “If not now … when?”
Instead, it turned into a soul-gouging fiasco for the Chiefs on Thursday night at Arrowhead Stadium.
The Chiefs mangled a 14-0 lead and lost to Denver 31-24 on a freak 21-yard fumble recovery for a touchdown by Bradley Roby with 27 seconds left as the Chiefs were just trying to run out the clock with Jamaal Charles to send the game to overtime.
This is a play that will take its own special place in tortured Chiefs lore.
And the result was all the more piercing because of the anticipation entering the game and the crackling atmosphere as it began before a crowd of more than 76,000 fans and members of the Chiefs’ two Super Bowl teams.
From an elegant rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” by the Kansas City Symphony to the thunderous greeting of safety Eric Berry in his first regular-season home game since returning from cancer, the scene was set at Arrowhead — proud home of the world-record outdoor loudest crowd roar of 142.2 decibels.
From a Chiefs offense that found its crucial missing piece in the offseason in the form of Jeremy Maclin to a defense revitalized by the return of Berry, Derrick Johnson and Mike DeVito, the pieces were in place.
In fact, it’s hard to conjure a scenario in which everything could have seemed more aligned for the Chiefs to finally purge themselves of their reigning nemeses, Denver and Peyton Manning.
Only … they didn’t, making this perhaps the low point among low points.
The Broncos came to Arrowhead having won their last six against the Chiefs, each engineered by Manning — whose 13 wins in 14 career starts reflect some combination of physical and psychological mastery over them.
But Manning is 39 now and by all indications something between a shell and a shadow of himself in the twilight of his career.
That was only a sliver of the reasons that made this night seem like it would be the end of that era — and, with that, maybe provide a portal to the start of a new reality for the Chiefs:
To shrug off their recent past and, ultimately, become the sort of team that can win a playoff game for the first time in 22 seasons, defying Denver’s dominance of them may not be a prerequisite.
But it sure would help redefine the narrative, wouldn’t it?
That was where this was headed from the get-go on an opening series that ultimately synthesized this whole scenario and, in fact, determined it.
The Broncos yanked out the hearts and minds of Chiefs fans in the process.
