‘The worst thing that ever happened’: Chiefs fans lament playoff loss against Bengals
With six minutes left in the fourth quarter of the AFC Championship Game, Kansas City Chiefs fans were anxious.
Those nerves didn’t settle as the Cincinnati Bengals led 24-21 with the time running short. Crowds watching the game from bars, venues and living rooms across Kansas City held their breath.
The Chiefs forced overtime again in their quest for a third consecutive Super Bowl appearance, this time against the Bengals. They failed, however, to pull it out in the end. Fans were crushed.
Iibis Ervin, 19, was among the stressed fans.
“They’ve been known to come back,” he said, trying to reassure himself as he watched from KC Live! in the Power & Light District.
He wasn’t the only one. Phones were held aloft as those crowded into KC Live! recorded the last few tense minutes. As the game neared an end, Chiefs fan placed their hands on their heads — nervous to see what was to come.
Kicker Harrison Butker’s successful field goal took the Chiefs to their second overtime playoff game in a row. A winning coin toss gave new life to the downtown crowd as memories of the previous week’s Chiefs overtime win against the Buffalo Bills clung close.
But that hope was quickly extinguished as the Bengals intercepted the ball and subsequently marched down the field. At the end of the day it was a field goal that sent the Bengals to the Super Bowl.
After a game that by most predictions had the Chiefs favored, Christina Cruz, 23, who recently moved to Kansas City, Kansas, was upset. Standing with friends who were visiting from California, Cruz said the Chiefs were “supposed to win.”
As they left KC Live!, some Chiefs fan kicked beers cans on the ground and threw their hands into the air in frustration.
“So, now we just gotta go to work tomorrow?” Mayor Quinton Lucas wrote on Twitter.
“If this game drove you to drink, don’t drive,” the Clay County Sheriff’s Office tweeted alongside a dog decked out in Chiefs gear.
Trever Guzzo, 22, said he felt like he was going to be sick when the final score came in.
“That was the worst thing that ever happened,” he said.
But some fans are already hopeful for next season.
The Chiefs will do fine, Guzzo said, as long as #15 — Quarterback Patrick Mahomes — is “at the helm.”
This story was originally published January 30, 2022 at 6:14 PM.
