About Marcus Peters, the Chiefs’ remarkable cornerback and ad-lib punter...

The Marcus Peters-iest play of all the Marcus Peters-y plays you’ve ever seen comes with 29 seconds left in the fourth quarter. Already by now, he’s strutted and danced and been hurt and come back and defended some passes and extended an eventual touchdown drive with a penalty and allowed another touchdown to a receiver who beat him by a few steps.

It’s a full day’s work for most guys, maybe all guys, but Peters isn’t all guys. One of the planet’s biggest receivers is running directly at him with the score tied, and it should not surprise you that the Chiefs’ cornerback is only focused on stripping the ball. Peters must be tired, diving in at the monstrous Cam Newton’s legs, chasing around some of the league’s best receivers.

But here it comes, in a blink, the moment that will change a game in a league where seasons change on single games. Panthers’ receiver Kelvin Benjamin has a first down, and if he just goes down, his team has a real chance at a winning field goal. But Peters is quick to the moment and grabs Benjamin with his left hand, which knocks the football loose.

Peters yanks it out with both hands, snatching the ball away before Benjamin is ruled down. He makes it a few steps before being body-slammed to the ground, and here is where the moment rises to Peak Peters: he immediately gets off the ground, and on his sixth step, before he even reaches the sideline, punts the ball impressively high into the stands.

It is the defining moment in both the Chiefs’ 20-17 win, and for their wildly talented cornerback, and we use both the adverb (wildly) and adjective (talented) intentionally.

“I took it from him,” Peters said. “You know how you go to the store, and you want something, and your mama tells you you can’t have it?”

In this analogy, Peters is presumably Benjamin’s mother. It gets better. This is the second straight week Peters punts a ball into the stands. Last week, in Kansas City, he got away with it. This week, every referee in the Eastern time zone threw a flag. After the game, a reporter gave Peters an out, asking if it was just the excitement of the moment that made him punt again.

“Hell no,” Peters said. “I wanted to do that. I did that last week. I’m auditioning for second-string punter.”

Now, Peters was joking, and did mention that he won’t punt the ball into the stands anymore. He was the punter back at McClymonds High in Oakland, after all, but most cornerbacks are not asked about punting footballs into the stands. Chiefs coach Andy Reid — whose burst off the line of scrimmage is, let’s just say, limited — said he would try to block Peters’ next punt.

It’s all jokes when you beat a good team on the road, and fly back home 7-2 as the AFC’s current No. 2 seed.

But, about that penalty. Peters returned the ball to the 24, with 20 seconds left, which would make for a 41-yard field goal if the Chiefs didn’t gain another yard. But after all those flags, unless you are an NFL rules wonk, you probably thought a 15-yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty just pushed the Chiefs out of field goal range.

Except, well, here comes referee Carl Cheffers and he’s calling ... a five-yard delay of game?

So the Chiefs get it at the 29? Still in field goal range, with a few snaps and timeouts to get closer?

(Insert cartoon animation of K.C. Wolf slowly backing away, whistling, nothing to see here ...)

As is often the case, the officials appear to have made the correct call on a bizarre rule. According to Section 6, Article 5, Line E of the NFL’s rule book, a five-yard delay of game penalty should be called for “spiking or throwing the ball in the field of play after a down has ended, except after a score.”

Maybe they need a Peters amendment here, to add “punting,” but still. Seems legit.

“I’m not going to lie,” Travis Kelce said. “I thought it was 15.”

He’s not alone. In an informal survey of 14 Chiefs players — OK, fine, I just asked everyone I saw — none said they thought Peters’ punt would only be a five-yard penalty.

“I just found out it was five today,” Ron Parker said.

“Personal foul,” Kenneth Acker said. “That’s what I thought.”

Per usual, Eric Berry was the voice of reason in all of this. He had his own game-defining moment, that pick-six of his childhood rival Newton, and after Peters’ pick-punt, Berry put his arm around his friend.

“I just want to get him to think a little bit further than in the moment,” Berry said. “I want him to think about the consequences, or what happens after that.”

It was, essentially, the same talk he gave Peters last weekend in Kansas City, so who knows if those words — or any of the words another teammate or coach will offer Peters this week — will stick.

The reaction to these things tend to be results-based, so a punt after what was basically the game’s winning play is digested much differently than it would be in a loss.

But with Peters, all of the rules are a little different. This has always been his way. He was kicked off his college team, and otherwise would never have been available to the Chiefs with the 18th pick of last year’s draft.

The Chiefs have, mostly, gotten the best of Peters. Some of this is a strong coaching staff, some is a strong locker room, and some is that his “issues” were probably overstated in the first place. He is obsessed with his craft, and his biggest problem seems to be that he cares too much and sometimes loses track of what’s beyond the moment. As far as faults go, that’s not the worst thing.

At some point, Peters may make a mistake that costs the Chiefs a game. That could’ve been Sunday. Like presumably all of his teammates, Peters did not know that punting the ball into the stands would only be a five-yard penalty, and even if he did, that calculus would not have informed his decision.

But you know what else? He would not have been in the position to punt that ball, and the Chiefs would not have been in position to win that game, if Peters did not make the spectacular play we are all talking about here.

He is, in other words, the NFL’s ultimate risk-reward player. He will give up a touchdown, but will defend against others, and has intercepted more passes than any player in history through this point in their careers.

He will make a brilliant play, one that requires guts and preparation and precision and strength, the one play that finally, after taking it off the jaw for most of four quarters gives you a chance to win ... and then he’ll turn into a teenager, punting the ball in the stands, again, even though you spent much of the last week telling him not to do exactly that.

And it will all be worth it.

This story was originally published November 13, 2016 at 7:05 PM with the headline "About Marcus Peters, the Chiefs’ remarkable cornerback and ad-lib punter...."