Chiefs safety Sorensen personifies what enabled the Chiefs to come back, beat Texans
What some of us envisioned to be a team of destiny instantly plummeted into a 24-0 chasm on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium.
And at that point, this Chiefs postseason was on trajectory to a virtually unprecedented form of cruelty … even within their wacky catalog of playoff debacles.
With expectations seldom higher, with everything seeming to align in their favor, the precious prize just over the horizon after 50 years was fading into a mere mirage, hearts duped yet again. It was shaping up as the sort of hope-and-faith-shattering stuff that makes you want to swear off a team, if not the game itself.
Until it abruptly became just the opposite: a 51-31 victory that stands as the greatest comeback in franchise history (a rally from 21 down was the previous best). The Chiefs are now the first team in NFL history to win a playoff game by 20-plus points after trailing by 20 or more.
The victory that propelled the Chiefs into the AFC Championship Game for the second straight season, at Arrowhead next Sunday against Tennessee, will be easiest remembered for the sizzle of Patrick Mahomes throwing for 321 yards and five touchdowns and running for 53 more.
And for Travis Kelce scoring three touchdowns and Damien Williams adding three. And for Frank Clark racking up three sacks of Deshaun Watson, including running 42 yards to nab him on one dizzying play.
And Mecole Hardman’s 58-yard kickoff return that sparked the first touchdown drive in a berserk rally reminiscent of what the Royals uncorked against the Houston Astros in Game 4 of the 2015 American League Division Series — reinforcing some interesting parallels between those teams.
But the momentum from the Hardman play could have ebbed, and little of the rest may have come to pass in this budding fiasco if not for the game-changing grinding of Daniel Sorensen and two crucial special teams plays he engaged within moments of each other after the Chiefs had cut it to 24-7.
“You know, it’s football,” said Sorensen, not one to elaborate. “You see what you see, you react to it, you make a play.”
First, he sniffed out and then snuffed out a fake punt, deftly summed up by Tyrann Mathieu when he smiled and pointed repeatedly to his head at the mention of the play.
On replays, you can see Sorensen behind the line of scrimmage mirroring Houston’s Justin Reid as Reid tried to casually drift from left of center to right just before the snap on fourth and 4 from the Houston 31-yard-line.
Then Sorensen plowed him over short of the first, exposing a brutal call by Houston that would have been forgiven if it had worked.
“Hat’s off to 49 (Sorensen,” Houston’s Reid said. “He did a great job making the play.”
Three plays later, it’s just a 24-14 lead after Mahomes’ 5-yard touchdown pass to Kelce. Presto, the complexion of the game had changed, almost tangibly.
On the ensuing kickoff, Sorensen jarred the ball loose from DeAndre Carter and Darwin Thompson recovered and it’s 24-21 on another short Mahomes TD pass to Kelce. Shazam, the Chiefs are on their way to a 28-24 lead at halftime … and maybe this one was over then after, uh, appearing otherwise.
“It’s a mindset, one play at a time,” Sorensen said. “You can’t go back and change what’s happened. You just stack positive plays together, and we were able to do that. We were able to shift some of the momentum.’
And for all they have in their arsenal, all the points the offense might have put up anyway, the tide of a game can’t be reversed without plays of that magnitude.
“Without a doubt,” said Mathieu, who appreciates Sorensen’s versatility on defense and special teams.
Clark called him “one of the best special teams players in the world, and he has been for most of his career. What else do you expect from him? I don’t expect anything but greatness from him?”
For his part, Sorensen hesitated to say whether he thought the Chiefs would have won without those plays. Or even if he’d ever seen a turnaround like that.
“I don’t know as I can say that, but it’s football and things happen,” he said. “You might start off slow, but we finish fast.”
The same might be said for Sorensen, signed as an undrafted free agent coming out of Brigham Young in 2014.
He’s had ups and downs along the way, including being among the defenders nearby when Marcus Mariota threw a touchdown pass to himself off Darrelle Revis that started to unravel the Chiefs in their 22-21 playoff loss to the Titans two years ago.
So perhaps there’s something particularly apt in Sorensen coming through now, standing strong this season after a purging of the defense from last season and always playing like the guy who broke his helmet in his first scrimmage at BYU.
Standing in the Chiefs locker room after his pick-6 in 2016 helped defeat Drew Brees and the Saints, Sorensen smiled at the thought of the bent face mask and helmet that became “kind of was a little lopsided” and obstructed his vision.
“In everything I do,” he said then, “I try to give everything I’ve got.”
That day, Sorensen swooped in to pluck a ball that was tipped several times. It was testimony to something more, Brees suggested.
“It’s up in the air,” Brees said then, “ … and it gives time for another guy to come over that’s in the right place at the right time.”
Just like he was on Sunday when the Chiefs needed him most, in a turnaround that may be best remembered for others but might well never have happened without him.
This story was originally published January 12, 2020 at 8:23 PM.