Kansas City Chiefs fans endure long, heartbreaking road to Super Bowl

November 16th, 1998 – The Monday Night Meltdown

While most of the other stops on this long road are filled with playoff failuresm there is one regular season game that was as painful for me as any other game in Chiefs history. I loved Marty Schottenheimer. To this day he may be my favorite Kansas City Chiefs coach of all time. I wanted him to get a Super Bowl so badly. Then there was Derrick Thomas. My first Chiefs “idol”. Like Shottenheimer, I wanted him to get that moment to shine on the big stage of the Super Bowl.

Those guys were like royalty to me. As that game unfolded, ultimately ending in a 30-7 loss to their hated rival the Denver Broncos, my heart just broke. The team came completely unglued. Schottenheimer didn’t have control of the team. To make matters worse, on the famous meltdown drive where the K.C. defense had five penalties, it was Derrick Thomas that had three of them. He was out of control. I think it was the first time I remember being embarrassed by the actions of someone that I idolized.

I was 21 at the time, and it finally dawned on me that these guys weren’t ever going to get there. There wouldn’t be a “maybe next year.” These two men who were such a big part of my fandom were at the end of their run together and it was an ugly end. It still pains me to this day. Schottenheimer was gone at the end of that season and, even more tragically, Derrick Thomas would play only one more season for the Chiefs before his life was cut short.

While the Lin Elliott game made me angry, this was really when I experienced my first Chiefs heartbreak. That suffering lasted a very long time, but watching Clark Hunt hoist his dad’s trophy in Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday it felt like that long festering wound was finally healed.

While the defensive era of Marty Schottenheimer was essentially over after that game, there was an offensive era just around the corner that would be the next to crush my soul a little.