Larry W Smith/EPA, via Shutterstock
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The stories passed down about the Kansas City Chiefs’ playoff malfunctions might sound apocryphal, as if embellished over a game of telephone, but they’re not. Really.
The fans who jammed Arrowhead Stadium on Saturday can recite detail after grisly detail. So can those who roamed Kansas City’s sideline: Many of them added to to the misery last year, two years ago, three years ago, five.
One player changed the calculus. His ascension terminated an era of despair. His quarterbacking brilliance inoculated the fan base. In his grand playoff unveiling, Patrick Lavon Mahomes II purged a quarter-century of Arrowhead futility.