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Adam Teicher, ESPN Staff WriterNov 10, 2024, 06:32 PM ET
- Covered Chiefs for 20 seasons for Kansas City Star
- Joined ESPN in 2013
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Patrick Mahomes wasn’t optimistic the Kansas City Chiefs would block the field goal attempt with one second remaining that would have given the Denver Broncos a victory on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium.
But Mahomes was comforted by one fact: The Chiefs this season had won three different games on the last play, so he didn’t close his mind to the possibility.
“If anyone’s going to do it, this team’s going to have a designed rush or designed way to get a hand on it,” Mahomes said. “You’re obviously worried. It’s out of your control, but at the same time, I’ve trusted my teammates that they’re going to go out there and make a play.”
Sure enough, linebacker Leo Chenal got a hand on Wil Lutz’s 35-yard try, blocking it to give the Chiefs a 16-14 win and preserve their undefeated season. The Chiefs will take their 9-0 record to Buffalo for a game against the Bills on Nov. 17.
The Chiefs weren’t surprised it was Chenal who came up with the big play. He blocked a point-after-touchdown try in Super Bowl LVIII, a game the Chiefs went on to win in overtime.
In some ways, Chenal said, Sunday’s block was bigger with the result of the game depending on it.
“The moment is heavy,” he said. “You feel the weight of the moment.”
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He said the Chiefs crashed the middle of Denver’s line thinking the Broncos would give a lot of attention to teammate Justin Reid, who was rushing from the edge. Chenal was one of a gang of Chiefs who broke through up the middle, and he blocked it with the palm of his left hand.
“A lot of times they’ll go out there and leave openings down the middle,” Chenal said. “We’ve been talking about it for awhile and we did it in a big moment.”
Andy Reid, in his 26th season as an NFL head coach, said he has never won a game with a blocked kick on the final play.
“We work on that block like crazy but it doesn’t normally work like that,” Reid said.
Chenal, the Chiefs’ third-round draft pick in 2022, has filled a variety of roles in Kansas City. In addition to playing linebacker, he’s lined up as a defensive lineman and as a blocker on offense.
Mahomes said Chenal is one of the strongest players on the Chiefs.
“You don’t want to be that guy when he’s working out,” Mahomes said. “We call him John Cena.”
Chenal’s blocked kick didn’t hide the fact that the Broncos for much of the game outplayed the Chiefs. Denver scored a touchdown early in the second quarter to take a 7-0 lead and held an advantage until Harrison Butker’s third field goal of the game put the Chiefs ahead 16-14 with six minutes left.
“We outplayed them,” Broncos coach Sean Payton said.
Mahomes didn’t disagree. The Chiefs played two similar, low-scoring games against the Broncos last season in which they scored a total of one touchdown and 28 points.
“They play extremely hard,” Mahomes said. “They’re well coached. They do a good job of mixing coverages and then they make you execute throughout the entire field.
“There are chances, but if you don’t hit those, the drives stall out. They continue to play hard and so you’ve got to execute on those chances in order to beat a good football team. We didn’t do that today and we got lucky and found a way to get the win in the end anyway.”
The Chiefs also had walk-off wins this season against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 1, Cincinnati Bengals in Week 2 and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 9. Mahomes said the Chiefs would rather win all of their games in a more comfortable manner, but they’ll gladly endure the extra drama to get the W.
“You live for these moments,” he said. “When you grow up playing football, you live for the walk-off, whatever it is.”
ESPN’s Jeff Legwold contributed to this story.
