Terrell Suggs honored by ‘lottery ticket’ opportunity with Chiefs

Terrell Suggs provided a perfect late season boost for the Kansas City Chiefs and he was grateful for the lottery ticket presented to him.

“It never gets old.”

Terrell Suggs has been down this championship road before, one of two members of the entire Kansas City Chiefs roster who had previous experience playing in a Super Bowl. On Sunday night, Suggs suited up for the Chiefs and helped a defense stave off the San Francisco 49ers for a second career title.

Suggs is a future Hall of Famer who became a household name during his long tenure with the Baltimore Ravens. This season he signed in free agency with the Arizona Cardinals in an attempt to lengthen his career closer to home—he was born in Chandler, AZ and attended Arizona State—but that didn’t even last a full season before the Cards gave him his release in December.

From there, the Chiefs claimed him on waivers but even then he wasn’t sure if he was going to accept the assignment or walk away from it all.

“I was real reluctant, real nervous about joining the team,” he told Arash Madani of Sportsnet after the Super Bowl. “I wasn’t sure I was going to fit in. Coach Reid assured me. He was like, ‘Sizzle, you’re gonna fit in here.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’ I’m just honored to be a part of the journey.”

Suggs says being able to get out from the losing culture and finish with a second Super Bowl ring in the same season might make trip more meaningful than the first he earned with the Ravens (2012).

“It feels just like the first one, y’know? Probably feels better than the first one considering how my season started. Everybody told me, ‘Yo, Sizzle, you might have got a lottery ticket. You may have picked up a lottery ticket, know what I mean?”

That lottery ticket worked both ways. For Suggs, he ended up winning a Super Bowl after starting the year for a 5-10-1 team. On the flip side, the Chiefs were able to immediately replace a starting defensive end in Alex Okafor, who was lost for the year due to injury, with a surprise acquisition on waivers.

It sounds like both teams picked up a proverbial lottery ticket given the outcome was about as good as either could have anticipated.