We Need To Pump Up Trent Green Pt. 9: Bend the Knee
Our old, tired, and injured gunslinger gets one final chance at Peyton Manning.
Why can’t anything just be easy?
It’s week 13 of the 2006 NFL season, and we’ve gotten ourselves embroiled in a razor thin race for the AFC’s final playoff spot. Again. In some conferences and some seasons, our 7-4 record would mean we are free and clear to a playoff position, but not in the 2000s AFC West. Nothing is safe here.
A 7-4 record does have us tied for the final playoff position with our eternal rivals, the Denver Broncos, but as we saw last time, we have vanquished the Broncos forever. Their season is going to fall apart from here. They will take three more losses in their final five games before the season ends. They will not be our main competition.
Luckily, there are two wild card spots open, because the 2006 season features no division with two elite teams in it. Unluckily, this means we have a lot of competition for those two positions. We do have a head start on all of them, as they are all one game behind us at 6-5, but our tie break situation (with all four of our losses coming in conference) is not looking favourable, so being one game ahead for us is not much different from being tied. We do not have to win a straight fight against all of these teams, only two of them, but since none of them play each other, we must stay vigilant in order to avoid falling out of the playoffs again.
The most intimidating of this competition is the Cincinnati Bengals, who got the head to head win over us in the game that ended Trent’s prime all the way back in week one. They are 6-5 right now, compared to our 7-4, and are looking ice cold, having lost three of their last four, but this one game advantage must persist, as we will lose any tie break involving Cincinnati.
The next team in competition with us is the New York Jets. This is a good team, featuring the best non-2002 season of Chad Pennington’s Jets career, and they’re on a hot streak right now, having won four of their last six to arrive at their current 6-5 record. What makes this team so intimidating is their paper thin remaining schedule, having already played all their games against teams with winning records.
The best team we’re going to have to maintain an advantage over is the Jacksonville Jaguars, who upon finally realising they need to make the QB switch from Byron Leftwich to David Garrard midway through this 2006 season, are growing into the contenders they could’ve been this entire time. It’s only a stretch of very poor one possession game luck that has them at 6-5. Luckily for us, they have quite a difficult remaining schedule, including a crucial week 17 game against us which, if things fall the right way, has the potential to be the most important game remaining in this entire Trent Green serial.
We’ll see.
As far as our situation, on paper we have a one game lead to play with, but in reality we don’t. In addition, our remaining schedule is brutal, with games remaining against each of the two best teams in the AFC, the 9-2 Chargers and the 9-2 Ravens, in back to back weeks, with the final game against Jacksonville a couple weeks after that. However, there are at least a couple easy games, the first of which occurs in week 13, on the road against the 3-8 Cleveland Browns.
Despite 2006 Charlie Frye being one of the most interesting statistical seasons in NFL history (which is absolutely getting its own article imminently), nobody cares about the 2006 Cleveland Browns, which explains why we go into Cleveland as four point road favourites. Not a prohibitively big spread in favour of the road team, but one big enough to definitively state who the better team is.
However, this is the Trent Green story. If you are shocked by Trent having to fight to the death to get wins against really bad players, you haven’t been paying attention. The Browns are here to play, and they prove that by coming out and punching us in the mouth on their first touch, scoring an immediate seven points. I mean an easy seven points. Seven such easy points that you could convince me we’ve jumped in a time machine and gone back to 2002-2004 again.
Maybe on defence it reminds you of the old days, but our offensive possession of two unproductive Larry Johnson touches, an incompletion, and a punt reminds me that, unfortunately, this is indeed 2006. We are facing Charlie Frye though, so the defence is able to get us the ball back this time with no points allowed. Our offence does open up with two unsuccessful Larry Johnson runs again, but Trent is able to complete a 15 yard pass to Eddie Kennison on third and ten, and we’re off to the races.
It’s Chiefs’ harmony, as we pick up 42 yards through the air and 43 on the ground en route to Trent finding an open Eddie Kennison, who runs into the end zone to tie the score at seven. Due to all the rushing success, that is the end of the first quarter, and as the second opens up the Browns are forced to punt again, which gives us the chance we’ve been looking for.
The rush game is still sputtering just a little bit, so Trent is given the chance to throw the ball seven times on this drive. Six of those passes are completed, five of them to Tony Gonzalez, including the nine yard touchdown pass that ends this drive with a 14-7 Chiefs lead.
Maybe it is the old days after all, as when Charlie Frye comes back into the game (having missed the previous series for injury) the Browns march straight back down the field to tie the score at 14 as the first half ends, letting us know that we are not going to run away with this.
This is becoming a bit intimidating. In years gone by, I would bet on the Chiefs to win a game like this every day of the week, because it’s what we do, and it is not what the Cleveland Browns do, but it’s not really what we do anymore. The Chiefs have scored 28 points in a game just four times so far in the 2006 season. Four times is a lot, but it’s not a patch on what we used to be able to do.
This game is key for us. In such a tight playoff race, we cannot afford more losses, especially conference losses. It’s easy to forget what conference the Browns are in sometimes, because it’s never been relevant to any playoff race, but they still do count as an AFC loss for tie breaking purposes. That means we really cannot afford to lose this game, but I’m not sure if we’re built to win it anymore.
To Herm Edwards’ credit, the play distribution in this game (12 runs, 12 passes in the first half) is much more sensible than it has been in the previous two, but in order to pull off the win against a Cleveland offence that is not slowing down, we’re going to have to throw it back to 2002, back to an era when we used to do this all the time. It may not be Trent’s bread and butter anymore, but this week 13 shootout is one final chance for our 36 year old gunslinger to show that he can still do this, and prove the time tested adage:
Trent Green may not be as good as he once was, but he can be as good once as he ever was.
The opening play of the second half is a 39 yard bomb to Eddie Kennison, immediately getting us off on the right foot. The next two plays are two negative rushes from Larry Johnson put us in a poor third and 13 situation from the Cleveland 32, but it doesn’t matter. Trent finds us a first down anyway, and finishes this drive with a TD pass to Kris Wilson for a 21-14 Chiefs lead.
A fumble on the ensuing kickoff return gets us the ball back deep in Cleveland territory again, but this possession ends in an end zone INT. This is one of the more acceptable INTs Trent has ever thrown, as he’s always been known to trust his guys, and throws a 50/50 ball into the corner of the end zone. It just happens that this time it isn’t Eddie Kennison or Tony Gonzalez he’s targeting. It’s Kris Wilson again. Even with one on one coverage on the outside, this is perhaps not the best choice, as the CB wins the fight for the ball, and it’s a turnover, but if we’re indeed throwing it back to 2002, we must take the bad with the good. I don’t blame Trent too much for this one.
In the interim, Charlie Frye has gotten himself injured again, so this game morphs into a shootout against the very first passes of the NFL career of Derek Anderson. Once again, if you think this is going to make things easy, you are sorely mistaken. Cleveland marches all the way to our 38 before punting, meaning we must start with the ball on our own one yard line.
Herm Edwards gives up before we even start, calling four straight handoffs, but Larry Johnson (even in a relatively poor game) is such a beast that this is able to get us off our own goal line, and Trent takes over from there. Unbelievably, once we get to our own 21 and off the goal line, we play the trump card.
Completions of nine, 18, seven, eight, and seven yards, all with the benefit of one solitary rushing yard from Larry Johnson, do the heavy lifting to get our man in position to throw a 23 yard touchdown pass to Tony Gonzalez, which boosts our lead to 28-14.
This is making me a bit sentimental.
I never thought I would see the Chiefs pull the Trent Green trump card ever again. This isn’t just a Herm Edwards thing. It wasn’t done very much in 2005 either, likely in an effort to take some of the load off an aging star QB who had just put up the most touches in the NFL in almost every drive being the Trent Green trump card in the second half of 2004.
Nevertheless, right when his team needed it, there it was, in all its glory.
This is a great moment for our aging protagonist, but somehow, some way, Herm Edwards finds a way to mess this up too. As our defence cannot even stop Derek Anderson in his first career game, and give up a TD to allow our lead to drop to seven points at the nine minute mark, how do you think Herm and OC Mike Solari respond?
True to form, we curl up into the fetal position, and just hope that nothing will go wrong, calling four handoffs for Larry Johnson, and punting the ball back to Cleveland.
If you think calling off the dogs with nine minutes left and a seven point lead when your QB is playing his best game all year is a bit premature, you’re absolutely correct. I just don’t understand what could’ve been running through the minds of the offensive play callers. Our defence has had no success at any point all day, yet our coaches elect to put the game in their hands, by intentionally neutering our own offence.
Remember back in 2003, when I said that you find out who a team really is when their season is on the line? Back then, when the Chiefs needed to score desperately to keep their season alive, they gave the ball to Trent, and told everybody else to stand back. It’s not even been three years since then, but the change is stark.
We got over our fear for the entire game, and as a result had the best offensive game we’ve had all year, but in the key moment, when we really need to score to keep the Browns off us in a conference game that we cannot afford to lose, our offensive coaches elect to simply run some clock, give Cleveland the ball back, and hope they leave us alone.
That is no way to win a football game.
The perpetual fear that is constantly evident in this new offensive coaching staff is ludicrous. It makes no sense. I have no respect for it, and it’s incompatible with the team these coaches are coaching. Maybe the 2000s Ravens can win this way, but the KC Chiefs cannot, and when the Browns get the ball back, the inevitable occurs. They march right down the field and score on us, just as quickly and just as easily as they want to, tying the score at 28 and leaving us just 30 seconds to try to kick a game winning FG.
Instead, Trent takes a sack, and fumbles the football. Thankfully, our defence is able to clutch up, so nothing comes of it, and we go to OT, but our chance has passed. In the end, the Browns kick a FG to win this game 31-28, and put a great deal of hurt on our playoff chances.
I know what Trent’s season ending stats for 2006 are, and you do too, but games like this are why I write this series. They make me wonder if he was ever really past his prime at all. Perhaps he merely spent the last days of his fantastic KC tenure buried under the weight of an offensive system that was both asking him to do too much and not allowing him to do enough at the same time. Even in the best called game the Chiefs will have all season, the play distribution is still just 35 passes to 31 rushes, with 16 of a precious 30 first down plays being used on rushes, with only five of those being successful.
This insistence on always being behind the chains is what I mean when I say an offensive play caller puts his QB in a position to fail, and with the 2006 Chiefs this is constant, only worse. I’m using this Cleveland game as the representative example because in this game, Trent was able to overcome all that, and have (by EPA/Play) the eighth best game of his NFL career, with an outstanding 0.530.
He picked a great time to do it too, stubbornly standing as the only thing between his team and a blowout loss to the 3-8 Cleveland Browns, something which could’ve killed the whole season. It’s difficult mentally to come back into a playoff race after getting blown out by the Cleveland Browns. Trent ensured that nobody would have to go through that.
For one final time, he was the Trent Green we remember him being.
And yet, he lost.
That’s the Trent Green story.
I said last time that Trent’s 45-42 loss to Jake Plummer in 1998 is the defining game of his career and I stand by that, strictly because of who the opponent was, but to sum up the story of Trent Green’s Chiefs tenure, nothing does it better than this December 3, 2006 game on the road in Cleveland.
The Chiefs had a leg up in the playoff race, but have frittered it away by allowing an astonishing 0.83 EPA/Play to Charlie Frye, two clutch fourth quarter TD drives to a QB seeing his very first NFL action, and losing despite scoring at least 27 points for the 11th and final time in Trent’s KC tenure.
For reference, Tom Brady became the starting QB for the Patriots at exactly the same time Trent became the starting QB for the Chiefs, the beginning of 2001. As of December 3, 2006, Tom has lost while scoring 27 points in a game once (I covered it last week). That’s one time in 90 starts (1.1%), compared to Trent’s 11 times in 84 starts (13.1%). In fact, if you add up Tom Brady’s entire Patriots career, he loses while scoring at least 27 points just ten times, still not catching up to Trent’s 11, despite having a decade longer to rack up games.
Remember this graphic I showed you in 2004:
Stats like the one I just told you are why everybody else on that list, in the eyes of the average NFL fan, are GOATs of the game, and Trent Green is just Trent Green. It all comes down to games like December 3, 2006, where the Chiefs could’ve won with even a bad (instead of untenable) defensive performance, but lost.
They lost despite their QB generating 0.53 EPA/Play. This is the best Trent will ever play in a loss. It’s one of the best games any QB will ever play in a loss, and puts Trent in a group of a select few QBs (one which Josh Allen just joined) to have one of their best ten career games come in a loss.
Nevertheless, does anybody remember that?
Of course not. They remember that the Chiefs choked a 14 point fourth quarter lead and lost to, of all teams, Cleveland to squander their lead in the playoff race already. It’s a shame that this is what gets remembered, because for a team and an era defined by shootouts, we’ve just seen the final one.
Trent Green will never lead the charge in a shootout wearing the KC Chiefs’ colours again. Of Trent’s 88 starts as a KC Chief by the time 2006 ends, 42 of them, an absolutely ridiculous 47.7%, feature both teams scoring at least 20 points. There is one more of those left to go, but this is the final one in which Trent individually generates positive EPA/Play.
I hope we’ve all taken the appropriate time to appreciate these games while they lasted, because they’re gone, and they’re never coming back.
The sense of finality runs deep, as each of our next two games are the two aforementioned games against the juggernauts of the conference, at home against Baltimore and on the road in San Diego. There used to be a time when we could win these games. That time is gone.
Neither of these games go very well. They are not just losses but brutal losses. We don’t generate positive EPA/Play in either game, and even while Philip Rivers inexplicably has the worst performance of his entire NFL career, generating -0.76 EPA/Play against our horrendous defence, we still cannot beat the Chargers, as even with no threat of the pass LaDainian Tomlinson still kills us, and our offence cannot move the ball.
This means we have now lost three games in a row. One in classic Chiefs’ fashion by three points in Cleveland, but two multiple possession losses to the AFC’s two top contenders. This has dropped us all the way to 7-7, and with all seven of our losses being AFC losses, this has almost entirely dropped us out of the playoff race.
Of all the teams I mentioned before, all are now ahead of us, having each moved to 8-6 in this three week stretch. Even Denver is ahead of us. They’re dropping like a stone also, having fallen from 7-2 to 8-6, but that’s still better than where we are. We’re even beginning to fall into the clutches of some of the third tier teams in the conference, like Pittsburgh and Buffalo.
This is pretty much it for us, as with a head to head loss against Cincinnati, and a hopeless situation in the second tie breaker (AFC record) against the New York Jets, both of those teams are now an effective 1.5 games ahead of us, with two games left to play. We can catch Jacksonville with the head to head matchup left on the schedule. That will be one, but remember to find ourselves in a wild card position we had to defeat two of these teams. This means that to find ourselves in the playoffs we must win each of our two remaining games, plus hope for one of these two teams to lose each of their remaining two.
However, because this is the Trent Green story, it cannot be even this simple. In their final two games, the New York Jets are playing Miami and Oakland. It’s a fat chance they’re going to lose either of those games, let alone both. Let’s exclude them. For any of this to matter in the first place, we must eliminate Jacksonville ourselves in the final game of the season. We can exclude them too. This leaves us looking at the Cincinnati Bengals.
We need them to lose each of their two remaining games, but these two games are against the Denver Broncos and Pittsburgh Steelers. Denver is 8-6, meaning we can’t afford them winning both of their final games either. If they do, they will finish 10-6 and beat us. Pittsburgh is 7-7, meaning if they win their final two, they will finish 9-7 and win a tie break over us.
Thankfully, due to the head to head situation, the Denver Broncos are the only team in this whole conference we can win a tie break against, which means our path to the playoffs is not dead, but, with all the irony in the world given how this series has transpired so far, the only path for Trent Green to get the always elusive second career playoff start depends greatly on the actions of the Denver Broncos.
Here is what needs to happen:
We must win each of our final two games. Without this step, nothing else matters.
The Pittsburgh Steelers must lose their week 16 game against Baltimore
In the week 16 game between the two teams, Denver must defeat Cincinnati
Cincinnati and Denver must both lose in week 17
That’s what it is. In the event that these four steps happen, this would put us in a 9-7 tie break with Denver and Denver only, which is the only tie break we can win. A small chance is better than no chance at all, but this is six total results that need to go our way, in six total chances, with a lot of those results being dependent on a Denver Bronco team that’s done nothing but ruin our playoff chances for half a decade now. The chances of this are a thousand to one. A million to one. It doesn’t matter what the chances are. This is the Trent Green story. They won’t go our way anyway.
In 2002, we needed one result to make the playoffs, and couldn’t find it. In 2005, all we needed to do was make a FG, and even with that missed FG in Dallas, we needed one loss over the span of three weeks out of either the Jacksonville Jaguars or the Pittsburgh Steelers, but all we could do was watch as each team won their final three games and made the playoffs instead of us. That’s six tries for one result that wouldn’t come through for us. Now we need six distinct results in six tries.
Two of these results are quite likely. Asking the 11-3 Baltimore Ravens to defeat the 7-7 Pittsburgh Steelers is not a big ask, and it comes to pass rather easily, as Baltimore takes that win 31-7. Also, even though we’re not what we once were, it is not a big deal to require that in week 16 we defeat an Oakland Raiders team primed to select JaMarcus Russell in the upcoming Draft.
This result also comes with ease, as we take a quick seven point lead and never give it up, eventually defeating Oakland 20-9. That’s two of our six required results. This Oakland game is played Saturday night, December 23. That frees up all the time in the world on Sunday afternoon, December 24, to watch the TV and do the unthinkable.
We must cheer for the Denver Broncos.
Thankfully, we mustn’t cheer for Jake Plummer. I don’t know if I would’ve had the stomach to do that, but things have gone so South in Denver that they’ve switched to rookie QB Jay Cutler in the middle of a playoff race. He’s awful, but thankfully for us, they still have that same great Denver defence they’ve always had.
The two teams come out of the first quarter with a 7-7 score, and out of the first half with a 17-14 score in favour of the Bengals, but in the second half that Denver defence that we’ve grown to know and loathe over the years switches it on. Cincinnati can score no points as Jay Cutler leads the Broncos down the field for first a 21-17 lead and then a 24-17 lead. This all culminates in Cincinnati getting the ball back one final time, with four minutes remaining.
Chiefs fans everywhere are biting their fingernails as the drive begins with a 26 yard pass to TJ Houshmandzadeh right in Champ Bailey’s face, but it gets better as on a second and five, there is a four yard loss on a very bad rush attempt, leaving the Bengals in a third and nine. An incomplete pass leads us to fourth and nine, and this is it. For both the Bengals’ season and ours.
Chiefs fans perk up as we see that Carson Palmer has elected to throw the ball at Champ Bailey again, but sink into despair as the ball comes down into TJ’s arms for a 22 yard gain and a first down. The Broncos are just broken after this. They provide no further resistance as Cincinnati marches into the end zone for what should be the game tying touchdown.
This is it. Just like old times.
It’s slightly different now, but the Broncos have ruined our playoff chances again. I can’t believe after allowing no points for a whole half that they’ve just rolled over and died like this. Now barring a miracle we’re going to have to stake our playoff hopes on a 50/50 OT coin toss.
There’s a reason they bar miracles from statements like that.
The KC faithful leap in adulation as the long snap for the extra point try is wide. It’s a Christmas miracle. Something has finally gone right for us in one of these playoff chases, as the Bengals can’t get the hold down. It goes in the books as a failed two point conversion attempt, and the Denver Broncos win this game 24-23.
Hallelujah. We’re halfway there. We’ve gotten three of the six results we need.
Now the pendulum swings back to us. I told you that this week 17 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars could possibly be the most important game remaining in Trent Green’s NFL career, should things fall the right way, and now that we’ve made it, they have absolutely fallen that way. By this time, things have fallen so far that everybody pretty much knows that this is going to be Trent’s final regular season game as a KC Chief. The only question that remains to be answered is whether it will be his final game as a Chief period.
Something I’ve neglected to mention throughout this series (but you would’ve noticed if you were paying extremely close attention) is that, until the embarrassment against Baltimore a few weeks ago, Trent Green had not lost in Arrowhead Stadium in December. Ever. He had lost in January of 2003, when Mother Nature, normally a great friend of the Kansas City Chiefs, betrayed us and decided it would be a great idea to host dome QB Peyton Manning for a playoff game on a 51 degree day with no wind, but normally, Kansas City is a prohibitively difficult place to play once it gets late in the season.
Today is no different, with temperatures approaching freezing, and the warm weather Jacksonville Jaguars are not accustomed to this. The come out acting like it’s really cold, which is comical when contrasted against the KC Chiefs, most of whom are playing without sleeves.
Things start well, as the defence forces a three and out to begin the game, but on our offensive possession, things are a little rocky. On a second down play, Trent finds a wide open Samie Parker, who can run for as long as he wants to, but who drops the ball, relegating us to a third down situation, and as has become somewhat common in this final stretch of games, Trent tries to force the ball where it doesn’t belong, and throws an interception.
More an arm punt than anything, this doesn’t hurt the team too badly, and in fact Trent’s defence helps him out, blocking a punt, scoring a touchdown and netting us a 7-0 lead. This isn’t the only help the KC defence is providing our offence today, forcing yet another three and out, their third of just the first quarter, and letting our offence touch the ball, but just look at the sequence of plays that our geniuses elect to call.
Larry Johnson for no gain. Larry Johnson for one yard. Third and nine pass to Tony Gonzalez for 16 yards. Larry Johnson for one yard. Larry Johnson for one yard backwards. Third and ten sack. Punt.
What a waste of a perfectly good offensive possession, but I digress. We must worry about the future, and scoring on offence, because Jacksonville at last finds their offensive spark. They walk down the field and score easily to tie the game at seven as the first quarter concludes, but we can’t do it, going three and out, and by the time we touch the ball again we’re behind 10-7.
At last, we begin a series with a throw. It’s not caught, but a roughing the passer penalty nets us a solid 15 yards anyway. These are the things that can happen when an offence is willing to step out of its shell even a little bit, but I once again digress. A 40 yard run from Larry Johnson gets us to first and goal at the eight. It takes all four tries, but we are able to pound it in for a 14-10 lead.
Our defence is having a fantastic day today, as the Jags again go three and out to net us the football yet again, with a chance to take a multiple possession lead. You’ll never believe it, but it seems our offensive coaches have a firm grasp on the gravity of this situation.
It’s time for the trump card.
Things start modestly, with a three yard checkdown to Larry Johnson, plus a one yard handoff to Larry on second down, leaving us in a difficult third and six situation, but as we know by now, when we’re playing the trump card, things go well for us. A 23 yard pass to Eddie Kennison digs us out of this hole. A ten yard screen to Larry follows that, taking us over the two minute warning, and on the following play, Trent finds Eddie Kennison clear behind the defence, just like he always used to do, making this a 21-10 game at the half.
A David Garrard INT to open up the second half gets us an easy TD to move the lead to 28-10, and the Chiefs have made such an important game feel very anticlimactic. Even when the Jaguars score to move the score to 28-17, this still isn’t very intimidating, but it’s just barely close enough to bait Trent into doing something he really shouldn’t.
He takes another rushing attempt.
Nothing good comes from a rushing attempt. This one is no different. The Robert Geathers hit from early in the season gets talked about a lot, but this hit from Jaguars LB Clint Ingram is in my opinion a lot dirtier, and is talked about a lot less. By the time Clint launches, Trent is clearly giving himself up already, and the impact causes his foot to catch in the ground, spraining his ankle.
Our man stays down again, but thankfully, this time he eventually gets up under his own power. He’s limping pretty badly, but is able to walk off the field on his own, and everybody takes a big sigh of relief. Damon Huard comes onto the field, and leads the Chiefs on a touchdown drive to move the score to 35-17, and end this game.
Trent does come back and play for the remainder of the game, not wanting Damon to steal his spot again, but you can tell that it is not the same. Trent’s game is off. The Chiefs still do better when we pass than when we run, but we’re doing a lot less well when we pass than we were before.
We score no more points, but we’re far enough ahead that this game ends 35-30 in our favour. The players who got off the field quickly enough might’ve got back to the locker room in time to see the Bengals miss a game winning (and playoff sealing) FG, and lose their season on a 67 yard pass in OT. That means five of the required six dominoes have fallen in our favour.
Now we wait. Our fate will be decided by the 4PM game between Denver and San Francisco.
Even after jumping through all the hurdles we’ve jumped through, this is still a very long shot, as the Broncos are massive 11 point home favourites over one of the awful Alex Smith 49ers teams, who are 6-9 and have nothing to play for. At kickoff, NFLFastR’s Win Probability model estimates that the Broncos have an 80 percent chance to end our season. Upon a second quarter Alex Smith pick six to move things to 13-0 in favour of Denver, this looks even worse.
However, in a miracle of all miracles, eight minutes into the third quarter the 49ers have shot out to a 17-13 lead. The two teams eventually go into OT tied at 23. As OT drags and drags, it looks like this game may end in a tie, which is not enough for us, but at the two minute warning of the overtime period, Joe Nedney’s FG flies through the uprights. The San Francisco 49ers have pulled off what is perhaps the biggest upset of the 2006 season, and the KC Chiefs are finally back in the NFL playoffs.
Do not underestimate how unlikely this playoff berth was. At the beginning of week 16, we needed six separate results to go our way. In terms of WP at kickoff, we needed to hit each of the following: a 35 percent chance for the Ravens to win in Pittsburgh; our own 75 percent chance of winning on the road in Oakland, and 52 percent chance of defeating Jacksonville at home; a 60 percent chance for the Broncos to defeat Cincinnati at home; a 26 percent chance for Pittsburgh to win in Cincinnati, and a 20 percent chance for the 49ers to beat Denver on the road.
If any one of these links in the chain failed, either Denver or Cincinnati or Jacksonville would’ve gone to the playoffs instead of us. The combined probability of hitting all six of these results is 0.42 percent. Roughly one in every 235 tries will this exact sequence of events come off.
This is likely the narrowest tightrope any team has ever walked in the final two weeks into a playoff position, and it couldn’t have happened to a nicer team, as last season all we needed was to hit a combined 81.5 percent chance of one loss over the course of three weeks out of either Jacksonville or Pittsburgh to make the playoffs, but couldn’t do it.
The football Gods have been against the KC Chiefs for years, but for whatever reason, in 2006 they decided to look down on us and smile, securing our almost impossible bid for the sixth and final playoff position by ensuring two Cincinnati missed field goals, a Ben Roethlisberger injury against Baltimore, and the Alex Smith 49ers remembering how to play offence.
However, this grace did not come without sacrifice, as we are going into the playoffs seriously hobbled. I told you that Trent sprained his ankle in the Jacksonville game, and did not play anywhere near as well afterwards, but I did not go in deep as to just how bad it was.
Trent has not just sprained his ankle. He’s torn two ligaments, and one of those ligaments ripped off a chunk of bone as it went. While we’ve made the playoffs, and Trent, being the warrior he is, is going to play the game, he’s going in a long way South of 100 percent, and doing so against an opponent he cannot afford to do it against.
We couldn’t have picked a worse time for our final matchup with Peyton Manning.
In the two years since we’ve seen him last, Peyton has gone nuclear, completing his quest to make all other elite QBs bend the knee and swear fealty to his dominion over the AFC. Every elite QB of the 2000s AFC has fallen.
Tom Brady’s best days in his rivalry against Peyton are already gone, as from here onwards Peyton will get the measure of him, beginning with a 40-21 victory in the 2005 regular season. Peyton’s co-MVP in 2003 Steve McNair loses all credibility with a 33-7 defeat at the hands of Peyton. Jake Plummer gets humiliated 41-10 in a 2003 playoff matchup. Ben Roethlisberger takes a 26-7 loss. Carson Palmer takes a 34-16 loss. Philip Rivers got the good fortune of not playing Peyton in this nightmare 2003-2006 stretch, or Peyton would’ve got him too.
I could name every QB in the conference. I don’t have to stop at just the elite ones. 2006 is the zenith of the hunt that Peyton has been on since 2003 for the blood of every top QB in the AFC. There have been no survivors.
Except one.
Trent Green has been able to stand up to Peyton Manning in a way that nobody else has. No blowout losses. No playoff humiliations. Trent went step for step with Peyton in 2003 in what remains by EPA/Play the best offensive playoff game ever played (yes, even better than Chiefs vs Bills 2021), and came back and defeated Peyton in a revenge game for the ages in 2004, pinning a multiple possession loss on the head of the greatest QB of all time.
Trent Green has never bent the knee for Peyton Manning. Even while Tom Brady has, Steve McNair has, Ben Roethlisberger has, Jake Plummer has, and Carson Palmer has, Trent Green has not. Instead, he has contested Peyton in one of the best and most forgotten back and forth QB rivalries this league has ever seen.
That leads us to today, where the football Gods have conspired through manipulating six different results around the league, including two missed FGs and two OTs, all of which could’ve ended our season, to allow us to have one more chance at Peyton and his Colts.
Trent has worked day and night since the minute that Jacksonville game ended to get his destroyed ankle ready to play in this game. There are some that believe he can do it, especially against the league’s worst defence in the Indianapolis Colts, a group which includes all of us, but there are also a lot clamouring for Damon Huard.
They are not going to get Damon Huard. The Chiefs are Trent Green’s team to the last breath, but this is a one-legged man trying to go up against the culmination of the best stretch of football any QB has ever played.
Herm Edwards’ plan for this game is to attempt to pretend he doesn’t have any QB at all. To run the ball with Larry Johnson and hope for the best, but in practice this mostly devolves into what we’ve been seeing all season. Two unproductive touches for Larry, and crossing our fingers in hope that Trent can bail us out of third and longs.
Constantly this happens, and while our man has done a mostly okay job guiding us through this season playing offence this way, he hasn’t had to do that on one foot. While in the third quarter and beyond Herm realises he needs to pass the ball, and allow Trent to do what he’s always done against the Colts, which does get the ball moving, and does get the team within one score in the fourth quarter, it’s ultimately too little, and too late.
If only we could’ve opened the offence a little bit sooner, perhaps things could’ve been different. Even on one leg and even with no practice, Trent couldn’t have given the team any less than they got out of almost exclusively using Larry Johnson in the first two and a half quarters, but we have to dance with the date we brought. The story of the 2006 Chiefs is our constant paralysis by fear, and we went out just as scared as we went in.
Trent Green his finally been felled by Peyton Manning. The final elite early 2000s AFC QB to fall on that sword, by the final score of 23-8.
This is sad. This is cruel.
In retrospect, the football Gods were not helping us out at all in this playoff race. They knew that Trent was about to leave the KC Chiefs, and had to ensure that Peyton Manning would get the final feather in his cap before that happened. With the Trent Green hurdle out of his way, Peyton will finally go on to win his long awaited first career Super Bowl championship, but if this were just a few years ago, and Trent was still capable of putting up a real fight, this could’ve been an entirely different story.
Alas, it wasn’t.
I would’ve preferred this playoff game not happen at all. If it did have to happen, why couldn’t it have been against a team that wasn’t the Indianapolis Colts? Even though Trent is past his prime, playing on one leg, and this game shouldn’t mean anything in a legacy sense, it does mean something.
When people so brazenly call Trent Green a poor playoff performer, this is the game they’re talking about. When people think back on the 2000s rivalry between the Colts and the Chiefs, this game is a big swollen black eye sitting right on top of all the greatness that came beforehand.
If the Chiefs had just missed the 2006 playoffs, we wouldn’t have had to deal with any of these narratives. Trent as a playoff performance could’ve strictly been remembered for his otherworldly performance in the 2003 playoffs. This rivalry could’ve been remembered proudly, as the lynchpin of Trent Green’s NFL career and legacy. There would be no dilution of the great memories by lazily combining all the games against the Colts into one, with this game dragging Trent’s awe-inspiring performance in the others down.
We would’ve been left with Trent once again trying valiantly to get his team into the postseason, but primarily due to the loss in Cleveland, falling just short. That would’ve been a sad ending to Trent’s KC career, but a fitting one. Instead, because this is the Trent Green story, we got dealt a shamelessly cruel hand, with us finally winning one of these playoff races, but winding up with an ending that leaves us even worse off than if we would’ve lost it.
Trent Green was the only one who consistently stood up to Peyton Manning. Not any of the other three of the AFC’s big four. Not Tom Brady. Not Philip Rivers. Not Ben Roethlisberger, but Trent Green. The universe just couldn’t leave that alone. It waited until Trent was too old and too injured to adequately represent himself and his side of the rivalry, and only once both those two conditions were fulfilled did it tell him he had to go against Peyton one last time.
It was not a fair fight, and trying to keep up with his old rival, when he just couldn’t do it anymore, resulted in the worst EPA/Play in a game of Trent Green’s NFL career, with his -0.49 being one of the worst playoff performances by any player ever. That’s an albatross that his legacy will always have to deal with.
Who did Trent harm in a past life to be put in the position to even have to play this game? Of all the cruel twists of fate and unfair circumstances that Trent has had to deal with in his football career, I deem this to be the worst of them all. Lady luck for once claimed to be on his side, only to stick a dagger in his back (or his ankle) the instant we looked the other way.
This is the last game Trent Green will ever play as Kansas City Chief. The baggage created in the wake of such a poor playoff performance, combined with the bad blood over the issues with handling the concussion rehab, lead to the two sides parting ways in the 2007 offseason, and what a bad note for such a successful player-team partnership to go out on.
I will go into more detail on this split next time, but for now I would like to ask that you cast your mind back to the good times. Back to 2002-2005. 2006 was not a bad season by any means (Trent still had a positive CPOE as the Chiefs finished as the league’s 12th best offence through all this), but it is not the Trent Green that I want you to remember.
Let’s all make a pact to remember the good times, because it’s over. Trent Green will never win another NFL game again.
Click back next time for Trent’s final NFL action.
Thanks so much for reading.