If you know a Kansas City Chief, touch him, rub your hands gleefully and head to the boat to bet the house. The Chiefs are magic. They’re right out of the book of Blackstone. His cloaks, hats and cages of prestidigitation have nothing on the enchanted Chiefs.
Atlanta felt the lightning strike Sunday in the Georgia Dome and the burn no doubt lingers. The Chiefs won their seventh game in eight starts, 29-28, to put themselves in a good spot to fight for an AFC playoff spot.
While the Chiefs are wafting from heavenly cloud to heavenly cloud, the Kansas State Wildcats are up there some place but they are being reminded by satanic mystics of what lies before them. They will play Texas A&M in the Texas Bowl with kickoff scheduled for 8 p.m. at NRG Stadium.
The Cat fans were mighty proud of their signs extolling the Big 12 Conference sweep of the Texas schools — Texas Tech 44-38, Texas 24-21, Baylor 42-21 and TCU 30-6. Now they must face the Aggies, who left the Big 12 after the 2011 season.
But not before they inflicted the most disappointing loss ever for K-State in the Coach Bill Snyder era. In 1998, K-State was No. 1 in the country and 11-0 with talent to win a national championship. Then calamity. The Aggies rallied and won the championship game in St. Louis 36-33 in double overtime. Now, the Cats must fight off the memories and a team that abandoned the Big 12 for the SEC.
The Chiefs players don’t have much time to think about anything, negatively or positively. They must get ready to play Oakland Thursday night in Arrowhead Stadium. After weekend action, the Chiefs are 9-3 while Oakland is 10-2 after beating Buffalo 38-24 with a strong second half performance at home. Denver is 8-4 after winning at Jacksonville 20-10.
Let’s talk of more magic. Safety Eric Berry returned an interception for a touchdown, and then brought back another pick for a 2-point reversal that gave the Chiefs an improbable victory.
The Falcons, rallying from a 27-16 deficit, had gone ahead 28-27 on quarterback Matt Ryan’s 5-yard touchdown pass to Aldrick Robinson with 4:32 remaining. The Falcons went for two, wanting to stretch the margin to a field goal. But Berry stepped in front of Ryan’s pass and ran 99 yards the other way to score.
Berry was playing professionally for the first time in Atlanta, where he grew up.. Also, it’s where he was treated after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma near the end of the 2014 season.
Berry had another huge play with less than a minute to go in the first half, picking off Ryan’s pass over the middle and bringing it back 37 yards for a touchdown. After reaching the end zone, he headed for the crowd, reached up and handed the ball to his mother sitting in the stands. “I just handed it to her and told her I’d be back,” Berry said in the press interview after the game.
And he did come back.
Oh, the Chiefs had more magic. On fourth-and-2 from their own 45 early in the third quarter, they faked a punt and snapped the ball directly to Albert Wilson, who played his college ball in the same stadium for Georgia State. Wilson burst up the middle for a 55-yard touchdown that upped KC’s lead to 27-16.
KC quarterback Alex Smith completed 21 of 25 passes for 270 yards, including a 3-yard touchdown to running back Spencer Ware. Tight end Travis Kelce was KC’s top receiver with eight catches for 140 yards.
The game started with both teams clicking on offense, but the fast pace gave way to another case of the bizarre.
It has been just a week since the Chiefs last magic show. You remember, right. In Denver. Yeah. Cairo Santos’ 34-yard field goal hit the left upright and bounced through as the overtime period expired to give the Chiefs a 30-27 victory. Rookie receiver Tyreek Hill had three TD’s — on a reception, a rush and a return, something no one had done since Gale Sayers in 1965. Smith threw a 3-yard touchdown pass to Hill and a 2-point conversion pass to tight end Demetrius Harris with 12 seconds left to tie it at 24. The two teams traded field goals in overtime to set up the winning effort by Santos.
Can this continue? Oh, and against the evil Raiders.
For now, K-Staters are dancing to a lilting beat. They have won five of their last six games and, no doubt with a little bias, they believe they could be 11-1 right now and not 8-4. Stanford turned out to be beatable, although the Cardinal were more healthy for the opener. Then the Cats were unable to close out games against West Virginia — remember the holding that wasn’t called on the Mountaineers — and Oklahoma State. The Cats just couldn’t handle Oklahoma’s speed and talent.
But Saturday, they certainly put a number on TCU. The K-State defense held TCU without a touchdown and a season-low 280 total yards. Meanwhile, the offense rolled up 495 yards.
The guy many K-Staters coveted to take over the football program if and when Snyder retires lamented the loss on Saturday. TCU Coach Gary Patterson told reporters: “We have got to grow up on offense. People turn the heat up, hit you in the mouth and we don’t respond. You can’t be putting your head down and shaking your head when you get beat. That’s what 4-year-olds do. That’s not what men do.”
K-State quarterback Jesse Ertz threw for 159 yards on 9 of 21 attempts and added 170 yards rushing on 19 carries. Running back Justin Silmon rushed for 133 yards on 22 carries.
Right after halftime, Ertz threw a quick slant to Byron Pringle, who caught the ball near Kansas State’s 30 and took off sprinting down the middle of the field on the 83-yard catch-and-run score. He escaped a defender diving at his ankles before going the final 20 yards. He had 6 catches for 126 yards.
Silmon had both of his TDs after halftime, including a 5-yard score when he avoided two tacklers in the backfield and then bulled through another defender.
On defense, linebacker Elijah Lee, cornerback D.J. Reed and lineman Will Geary were outstanding.
But oh that 1998 game. Kansas State was tops. The best. The list of names for K-State, like: Michael Bishop, Frank Murphy, David Allen Monty Beisel, Aaron Lockett, Jerametrius Butler, Jarrod Cooper and Martin Gramatica.
The game was played December 5 at the Trans World Dome in St. Louis. K-State was 11-0 and 8-0 in the conference. The No. 10 ranked Aggies, coached by R.C. Slocum, were 10-2 and 7-1 in the South Division.
The Wildcats led 27-12 in the fourth quarter but the game went into double overtime with the Cats missing several opportunities to win.
Aggie running back Sirr Parker scored 14 points on a pair of touchdown catches and a two-point conversion, rallying the Aggies to a 24-point surge in the final 9:20 of regulation and the extra periods.
But the catch he made in the final overtime is what K-State fans recall. He made a 32-yard reception for the winning TD on a third-and-17 situation.
The K-State defense was solid in the first half and the Cats took a 17-6 lead at intermission. Bishop was on fire in the first half, going 8-of-8 passing for 159 yards and two TDs. Tight end Justin Swift was a favorite target as he made three catches for 47 yards and a score.
Linebacker Dat Nguyen was everywhere for the Aggie defense — he had an interception and 17 tackles.
The two teams traded field goals in the first overtime session. In the second overtime, KSU drove to the eight-yard line on four rushing plays of 17 yards. The Wildcats put one more field goal on the board for a 33-30 lead. Texas A&M then closed it out. Oh what a TD would have done instead of field goal. Oh the agony of the Cats.
That was the first time the Aggies had ever defeated a No. 1 team.
Down and distraught, the Cats lost 37-34 to Purdue in the Alamo Bowl.
They went on to lose to Texas A&M the next four years but finally came back and won three straight. Then the Aggies bailed to the SEC in 2012. The two teams haven’t met since. They have played 15 times with the Aggies holding an 8-7 edge.
They meet again. But nothing will erase the hurt from that 1998 game.