Being a Kansas City Chiefs fan continues to be a struggle

Another year, another embarrassing loss in the playoffs for the Kansas City Chiefs. Fans of the team have seen this story unfold in different ways nearly every year. Will it ever change?

I’ve taken a few days to sit back and reflect on what I witnessed at Arrowhead Stadium on Saturday evening. The Kansas City Chiefs had every opportunity to win their first home playoff since the Joe Montana era, but they faltered once again.

Ahead 21-3 at half time, the Chiefs would fail to score again for the rest of the game while the Tennessee Titans went on a 19-point run to close out the game. It felt like the Chiefs didn’t even have the ball in the second half and when they did, nothing positive happened.

Heading into this game, I had the mentality of: “Should the Chiefs win? Yes. Will they? Probably not.” and as sad of a thought as that was and as much crap as I got, I hit the nail right on the head.

This isn’t a post to boast about my negative predictions coming true, but rather about how little faith I had in this team heading into the postseason, even when I shouldn’t have been feeling that way. The Chiefs looked good to close out the regular season yet I just knew something bad was going to occur in the playoffs, just like it always does.

Even sitting in the nosebleeds at Arrowhead on Saturday, I was never confident in Kansas City to close this game out. The crowd was rocking, but I was still skeptical of the 21-3 lead heading into the half.

When Marcus Mariota scored on a touchdown where the ball was batted back to him, I turned to my brother and said, “Here we go.” In that moment, I knew that play was the game changer. We were about to witness yet another implosion in the playoffs and that batted ball right into Mariota’s hands was the turning point.

It wasn’t Travis Kelce going down with a concussion. It wasn’t Harrison Butker missing a field goal. It wasn’t the fact that the Titans took up half of the third quarter on one scoring drive. It was Tennessee getting a touchdown on a play that shouldn’t have happened.

The Chiefs are the ultimate heartbreakers, but I’ll always come back to them.

It was third down on that batted ball pass and had the Chiefs just knocked the ball to the ground, Tennessee might have just opted to go for a field goal. That touchdown gave the Titans momentum and they never looked back.

I was born and raised in Kansas City and therefore, grew up as a Chiefs fan. I watched those rough playoff losses in the 1990s (though I was pretty young and didn’t understand sports all that much) and the no punt game in 2003. I watched the Chiefs get destroyed by the Ravens in the 2010 playoffs and blow a 38-10 lead against the Colts in the 2013 season. I was there for all of it, my friends, just like most of you.

The fact of the matter is that while I enjoy watching the Kansas City Chiefs and have had a lot of fun during this “run” with Andy Reid and Alex Smith, sometimes I wonder why I put myself through this every year. I’d love to be the optimistic fan who thinks the Chiefs are going to win the Super Bowl every year, but until they prove me wrong, I’m just not sure I’ll ever be in that mindset.

I’m sure the comments will be filled with people calling me an idiot, a traitor, telling me to “go to hell” or “root for a different team then, you band wagoner!”, but if you haven’t thought the same thing, you’re lying to yourself. This is a team that has allowed two of the biggest playoff collapses in the last four years and that’s downright embarrassing.