Guitars and Headsets
The Kansas City Chiefs vs. the Buffalo Bills might just be the best football game I have ever seen. On January 23rd, in the AFC divisional playoff game, two young quarterbacks with their teams hitched behind them like wagons, led their squads through regulation and into overtime in one of those instant classics where neither team deserves to lose and everybody who’s watching never wants it to end. It was brawn and guts and skill and grit and the kind of competitive greatness that sits at the top of John Wooden’s pyramid. But it did end. In overtime. Final score: Bills 36, Chiefs 42.
It was brawn and guts and skill and grit and the kind of competitive greatness that sits at the top of John Wooden’s pyramid. But it did end. In overtime. Final score: Bills 36, Chiefs 42.
The made-for-motion-picture ending came packed with roars and counter roars and a whole host of magical moments that define superstars and the franchises they play for. It also came with rule controversy and coach dissection based on late game strategical decisions. It had a little something for everyone, which is often a big chunk of the lure of sports. But the debate about the squib kick is the gum I got on my shoe. Everything always looks so obvious on the backside of the play.
The Chileans have a saying: “Criticizing a musician is easy but it is more difficult when you have a guitar in your hand.” The American version might read “or a headset on your head”. After Josh Allen led the Bills down the field running only eight plays in 49 seconds to take his team 75 yards for a touchdown that put the Bills up by three with 13 seconds to play, most of the millions watching on tv and perhaps the majority of those in attendance at the game, assumed the outcome had been decided. All Buffalo had to do was kick off and keep Kansas City on their own side of the 50, safely out of field goal range (for only 13 seconds), and the Buffalo Bills would advance to the AFC championship game. That’s all they had to do. Such a tiny word to hold such a complex charge.
What happened next is where it got sticky.
Romo and Nantz were all over it from the booth, engaging in the strategical conversation before Buffalo ever kicked off in regulation with 13 seconds on the clock. Should the Bills kick it short and keep it on the ground or safely send it to the endzone? If they squib it, potentially some time ticks off the clock increasing the pressure heaped on Mahomes to get all the necessary yardage for Kansas City in maybe only one play. Without question, they agreed, the Bills should kick it short and low.
However, the squib was certainly no slam dunk. Kansas City could field a low kick and down it, giving them advantageous field position and still about the same amount of time. Or the returner could snake loose in the madness and run it back himself. It all seems somewhat unlikely now, but that’s with the aid of the glasses you get to put on when you already know how it ends.
The Bills apparently couldn’t hear Romo. The kick-off team jogged onto the field with 13 seconds on the clock, business as usual, and Tyler Bass kicked the ball through the endzone giving Mahomes and company a lined-up start from their own 25. They declined to go with the squib. Two plays later, Kansas City kicker, Harrison Butker, confidently strode onto the field at Arrowhead Stadium and nailed a game-tying 49 yard field goal to send the playoff game into overtime, where the Chiefs won the coin flip, drove the ball into the endzone and won.
But I can’t get the gum off my shoe. The argument about the squib kick could go on indefinitely and both sides would have a case. It’s impossible to predict what might have happened had Buffalo made a different call. But the sticky part doesn’t have anything to do with that. What seems to get lost in all the pontification is how the decision at that moment in that space is harder than anyone could ever know. It may look like a no-brainer from your La-Z-Boy, but it’s layered in complexity the world outside the headset can’t even comprehend. As voices flood into the head coach from talented, capable ports –a staff armed with analytics and experience and the feel they have for their players and their opponent and the air in the stadium at the time--- one guy has to make the call. And all the intel he receives must pass through his own cauldron of experience, weaving in and out and between the cautionary tales that have piled up in his head. It’s so easy to make conjectures if you’re not the guy wearing the headset at the time.
What seems to get lost in all the pontification is how the decision at that moment in that space is harder than anyone could ever know. It may look like a no-brainer from your La-Z-Boy, but it’s layered in complexity the world outside the headset can’t even comprehend.
The Chileans made a great point. We’re a little less severe with the guitar in our hands. Have you ever noticed that the people who tend to have the most advice for parents are often ones with no children of their own…and that people who never took so much as an anatomy class in school want to tell doctors how to diagnose a problem… and how people who’ve never stood in front of a classroom of kids think they know best about how teachers should teach and about how children learn. Empty hands often lead to bold conclusions that lack the context to be real or right. And even if you know what it feels like to be there, only one person is there at that moment. And every moment of weight comes with a fingerprint all its own.
I appreciate Sean McDermott, the Bills head coach who didn’t choose the squib. After the game, he didn’t try to explain away a thing the masses had no capacity to understand. He knew-- because he was the only one with that charge-- the many factors that had to be considered to make the call he made. And he knew the outside world had no way of knowing what they didn’t know. So he filed it away in the drawer in his brain that’s undoubtedly already packed with the ways things might or might not go. That’s what you do when you wear the headset. I should learn from him and go clean off my shoe.
Sherri Coale
P.S. The plays within the plays that confident players who trust each other make together …Mahomes/Kelce, a special connection