| How long do you think they’ll be talking about last weekend’s instant classic between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills? Will they ever stop? Can you imagine that enough time will ever pass in football history where that game won’t feel significant, or when the sport will forget the new meaning of 13 freaking seconds? Would you be surprised if, 50 years from now, football fans of the future are still watching highlights on their — I don’t know — retina-implanted entertainment devices? Point taken, the divisional round masterpiece from Arrowhead is a memory that is here to stay. And yet, for the victorious Chiefs, necessity has caused them to take a different tack. They’re trying to forget all about it. Kansas City marches to the tune of twin pipers in head coach Andy Reid and quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and both set the tone in the immediate aftermath of one of the wildest finishes the sport has ever seen. As Arrowhead exploded with delight and the NFL universe lost its collective mind, there were Mahomes and Reid, trying to calm everything down. Mahomes first broke away from the frenzied on-field celebration to run across the field and console Bills QB Josh Allen, who, of course, contributed so much to the incredible contest. Then, in the locker room, the 26-year-old actively sought to add some perspective to the understandable exuberance, addressing the team to remind them that the job, in his words, “ain’t finished.” Following that it was a quiet meal with his family, by which time he was already thinking about the Cincinnati Bengals and the AFC Championship Game this Sunday. Then it was film study on Monday, and, by the time he spoke to the media midweek, there was no desire to look backward at all. “I turned the page quickly and I’m ready to go,” Mahomes told reporters. “You celebrate with your family and everything, that big win and awesome game that we will remember forever. We are not done. We are trying to go out there to win [the] AFC and go to the Super Bowl. “If we don’t give everything we have in preparation during the week, then we are not going to win at the end of the week. We don’t want to come up short.” Having made it to the Super Bowl in each of the past two seasons, it shouldn’t be any surprise that the Chiefs would act with professionalism and calmness. But if there was ever a forgivable exception it would come after such an epic contest. The nature of the outcome has served to give the Chiefs an invincible aura. Buffalo played a near-perfect game, went ahead with just ticks on the clock remaining, and it still wasn’t enough. The Chiefs are a heavy favorite on Sunday, with FOX Bet putting them at -350 on the money line, with the spread at 7. They are also overwhelmingly the shortest price to win the Super Bowl, at +125. Cincinnati, with Joe Burrow having continued to blossom under center all season, should not be underestimated, having knocked off the top-seeded Tennessee Titans on the road. And respect for the Bengals is part of why Reid also shifted his thought process swiftly away from Sunday’s theatrics. According to The Kansas City Star’s Sam McDowell, Reid went directly from the Arrowhead tunnel to the team’s practice facility in order to begin preparations for the Bengals showdown. “This has become customary for him, particularly on weeks with tight turnarounds — after prime-time games or ahead of a Thursday game, for example,” McDowell wrote. “But it felt especially necessary this week.” With the Bengals having won in Nashville in Saturday’s early game, Cincinnati coach Zac Taylor and his staff had a head start on preparations for the AFC decider, even though they didn’t know who their opponent would be. Reid didn’t want to get left behind, so he worked deep into the night. But if he had any concerns about his players’ minds lingering on what had just happened, he needn’t have worried. “They were all saying it after the game,” Reid said. “They were excited, but they were saying, ‘We’ve still got another game here that we’ve got to get ready for.’ So, (it was a case of) enjoy the moment but we’ve got to move on. “It wasn’t just me saying it, it was Pat and (other guys), they were all speaking it when they came in here. They know this thing moves fast, and you’re on to the next one pretty quick.” The story going into this weekend has a touch of David vs. Goliath about it. No one is sleeping on what the Bengals, with Burrow, are capable of in the coming seasons. At the same time, you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who thinks they can get the job done this weekend against the Chiefs, who are looking like an unstoppable force. To Burrow’s credit, he is refusing to play into the one-sided plotline. “I’m tired of the underdog narrative,” he said. “We’re a really, really good team. We’re here to make noise.” It’s the right thing to say and the right thing to believe. But thinking you can beat the Chiefs and actually doing so — as Buffalo found out — are two different things. |
