Chiefs cornerback shares how players passed the time on plane during three-hour delay
The Chiefs players thought they’d have a chance to sleep in on Saturday, but a winter storm that pounded Kansas City changed those plans.
Initially, the Chiefs were going to leave a little later than usual for their short trip to Denver ahead of Sunday’s game at Empower Field at Mile High.
But the Chiefs pivoted as they tried to beat the winter weather. Unfortunately, a mechanical issue didn’t allow the team plane to leave earlier. When the Chiefs finally were ready for takeoff, icy weather shut down Kansas City International Airport for hours.
Chiefs cornerback Joshua Williams shared details of the plane issues.
“It was crazy,” Williams said on the “Up & Adams” show. “Originally, we had like an hour or two more to sleep in, and they told us basically that morning, ‘Hey, that hour or two is not in effect anymore. Now come back in at a normal time.’ So we come back in at the normal time, and then after we do our walk-throughs and meetings, we go back to the normal schedule, because our flight got delayed. So boom, our flight got delayed, back to the normal time. We didn’t get to sleep in.”
Things were about to get worse. The Chiefs boarded their plane but then had to wait for better weather conditions to leave.
Williams shared how players spent all that downtime on the plane.
“We get on the tarmac, and I think it’s like three hours go by, right? We’re sitting on a plane,” he said. “We’re freestyling, we’re playing chess. People are playing board games, just trying to make time pass. And you know, it took it, like I said, a good three hours for us to get off the ground and get headed to Denver.”
Williams was asked specifically what he did and he mentioned one of his favorite pursuits, which involves Chiefs safety Justin Reid.
“A lot of times I’ll sit there and trash talk J-Reid playing chess,” Williams said. “Because I don’t know how to (play chess), but I’ll sit there and trash talk a little bit, just so, you know, I can feel like I’m involved. After that, I might sit there grab some snacks, usually some gummy bears. Pass some more time doing that, and then that’s kind of where the freestyling started coming in. We had some rookies thinking they could take me on. I didn’t like that, so I had to go ahead and get them out of there.”
Williams was asked what movies Chiefs players like to watch on a team flight.
These were the top three: “Gladiator,” “Snakes On A Plane” and “Interstellar.” The latter is one of Williams’ favorite films.
This story was originally published January 7, 2025 at 1:38 PM.
