Chief’s Run Exhausts Chargers : Pro football: Vanover’s 86-yard punt return in overtime puts exclamation mark on dramatic 29-23 win.
Several dozen grown men dropped to the Arrowhead Stadium floor just before midnight Monday, sobbing and praying and beating their hands on the grass.
And those were the winners.
The play was that astounding. The results were that unthinkable.
“This,” declared Joe Phillips of the Kansas City Chiefs, “was divine intervention.”
With, of course, a little 86-yard nudge from Tamarick Vanover.
His punt return for a touchdown with 7:27 elapsed in overtime gave the Chiefs a 29-23 comeback victory over the San Diego Chargers in a stadium that may still be shaking today.
“This is like, what, the ’69 Mets?” said the Chiefs’ Derrick Thomas. “Hot damn!”
It was, like, a nightmare for the Chargers, who held a one-touchdown lead and a busloads of momentum with 1:12 remaining in regulation.
“We gave it away,” said Charger cornerback Dwayne Harper. “With a minute left, we let it slip right through our hands.”
In winning their important first meeting with their AFC West rivals, the Chiefs prefer to think that that they took it.
Steve Bono, the Chief quarterback behaved in a manner reminiscent of the man he replaced by leading his team on a 79-yard game-tying touchdown drive in that final 1:12.
It culminated with an 18-yard scoring pass to Derrick Walker and an extra point by Lin Elliott, tying the game the Chargers had only un-tied six minutes earlier.
This sent the contest into overtime, where the Chiefs were inspired by the memory of Joe Montana while the Chargers could only counter with . . . Gale Gilbert?
Stan Humphries, the Charger quarterback who had been brilliant for nearly three hours, had been slammed to the ground near the end of regulation by Chief Neil Smith. His shoulder had been officially diagnosed as bruised, although it probably is separated.
Because you don’t miss the end of a game like this with a bruise.
So the Chargers (3-3) could do nothing in their first two possessions while the Chiefs (5-1) simply waited for them to fold.
“We have been in overtimes this season [two others], and we have noticed that in each of them, the other team gets real tired before we do,” Phillips said. “That is what happened tonight.”
And the crumpling occurred shortly after Darren Bennett boomed a punt to Vanover on the Chief 14-yard line.
Vanover, a Canadian Football League refugee in his first NFL season, ranked 10th in the conference in punt returns with a 6.2 average. His longest had been 16 yards. He had obviously never returned a kick for a touchdown.
Yet, as the ball sailed toward his grip, he was thinking only one thing.
“I was thinking, score,” he said. “But then, every time I step on the field, I think score.”
He made the catch at the 14. He juked linebacker David Brandon at the 20. He ran left, untouched because of perfect seal blocking by his teammates, until Bennett attempted to collar him at his 40.
Bennett made a similar tackle last week in Pittsburgh. But there wasn’t as much on the line. Vanover easily ran out of his fingertips.
Five yards later, Willie Clark was waiting. But Chief Darren Anderson flattened him, and Vanover journeyed the remaining half of the field untouched.
“I fell down after the block and I saw Vanover running and I started praying,” Anderson said. “I was saying, ‘Please, please give him speed.’ ‘
Anderson was asked if he had ever seen anything like before.
“Well, uh, yeah,” he said, laughing. “A couple of weeks ago.”
He was referring to James Hasty’s 64-yard interception return for a touchdown that beat the Oakland Raiders in overtime. This is, after all, the third overtime game played by the Chiefs this year, tying a league record.
“There is something about us this year,” Phillips said of the Chiefs. “Some mental, and something physical, that keeps us going hard late in the game.”
