Chiefs' famed '13 seconds' actually took years to build

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The list of iconic moments in Kansas City Chiefs playoff history isn’t overly long — 65 Toss Power Trap, Jet Chip Wasp, Keith Cash's spike and now "13 Seconds."

If Chiefs Kingdom is being honest, there couldn’t have been much optimism coursing through the stands inside Arrowhead Stadium after the Buffalo Bills grabbed a three-point lead with 13 seconds left Sunday in the now-iconic AFC Divisional showdown.

There aren’t many things that can be accomplished in 13 seconds other than speeding through the alphabet, but Chiefs fans won’t soon forget all its dynamic trio of Patrick Mahomes, Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce can do in so little time.

“We had the belief that we were going to do it,” said Mahomes, who went 33 of 44 for 378 yards with three touchdowns in the 42-36 overtime win. “You have to have that belief. If you don’t go down fighting, then you don’t deserve to be here.”

Mahomes’ Grim Reaper antics and the 13-second rallying cry are forever etched in Chiefs lore, but the reality is that the moment was years, if not decades, in the making.

“You’ve been to training camp, so you guys know we spend a lot of time on different situations,” Kansas City coach Andy Reid said. “We continue that through the year, so every week we’re working on something like that. You don’t get to use it very often, but when you do, it’s good to be prepared and good to have the guys that we have and the coaches that all work together to help get the right plays in.”

It’s not the most thrilling part of training camp or game-week preparation from the players’ perspective.

“It’s like a baby,” wide receiver Mecole Hardman Jr. said. “You’ve got to change a baby’s diaper every day and you’re just like, ‘Man, I’m tired of doing this. When can they get older and be potty-trained?’”

Beyond training camp, Hill said offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy “harps each and every Friday on those situations” in “boring” meetings, but there’s a method to the madness.

“EB (Bieniemy) does it because he knows eventually those situations are going to come up,” Hardman said, “and he hounded us on it so much, it’s second nature to us. When we get in those situations, it’s nothing new to us, because we’ve talked about it every day. So, we know what we need to do in those situations. ... It can be boring at times, for sure, but it’s worth it in the end.”

For all the criticism Reid has received in his career for game and clock management, often justifiably so, Kelce said that constant work on late-game situations helped the Chiefs avoid panicking with the season on the line.

With 8 seconds left after a completion to Hill and a timeout, Kelce gained 25 yards on a freelanced “backyard football” play up the left hash, got down and Kansas City called another timeout

“We rep these kinds of plays all the time,” Kelce said. “Because of how much practice and how many reps we have with these late-game situations that Coach Reid loves to go over throughout the year and throughout training camp, you start to develop an understanding for the time — how much time it takes for a play to develop and how much time you have.”

Reid, who praised Bieniemy’s poise amid the chaos for handling the play-calling, is an old-school coach, who proved the old-school adage — practice makes perfect — true on Sunday.

“I thought we managed that whole process the right way,” he said. “... We’ve practiced it and practiced it and practiced it. You don’t very often get a chance to do it in that type of setting. I’m just glad the rehearsal that we’ve worked on was able to play out the way that it did.”

Kansas City will now host the AFC Championship Game for a record fourth consecutive season. The Chiefs host Cincinnati at 2:05 p.m. on Sunday.

For those who may need a refresher, 65 Toss Power Trap was a famous play call from Super Bowl IV:

Jet Chip Wasp was the game-changing play call in Super Bowl LIV:

Finally, here's Keith Cash smashing a ball into a likeness of Buddy Ryan in the 1993 Divisional round at Houston:

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