KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It was exactly three years ago Thursday that “The 13-Second Game” entered Chiefs Kingdom’s lexicon.
A late touchdown by the Buffalo Bills in an AFC Divisional Game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium left the Kansas City Chiefs in a (mostly!) impossible situation — down three points with 13 seconds left and the season on the line.
“When it’s grim, be the Grim Reaper,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid told quarterback Patrick Mahomes on the sideline.
After a touchback, Mahomes fired a quick-hitter to Tyreek Hill for 19 yards. Next came a 25-yard dart to Travis Kelce up the season to get into field-goal range before Harrison Butker drilled a 49-yarder as time expired in regulation to force overtime.
“In that moment when the field goal is happening, the whole stadium froze, like we were locked in a place,” René Rosser, a Chiefs fan now living in Seattle, said.
After winning the coin toss, Mahomes hit Kelce for an 8-yard touchdown to ice a 42-36 win on the eighth play in OT.
“It's arguably the best game in NFL history,” Joey Werner, who has been a Chiefs season ticket member since 2018, said. “We had the famous 13 seconds, but before that there were all the crazy lead changes in the last two minutes.You had two elite, the best two quarterbacks going head-to-head. It's hard not to be romantic about that game, because of just how great the offenses were and it was just so well-played.”
Josh Fisher helps organize pregame activities for the Lot J Tailgate — he’s got the shot ski and Jell-O shots! — and has been a season ticket member since 2019, but the 13-second game stands apart.
“The energy in the stadium for that one, there was nothing like it,” he said. “I don't think there's anything compared to it.”
SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?
For a moment, of course, Kansas City’s circumstance looked dire.
“We were definitely pretty down at that point,” Werner said. “But honestly, everybody around could just feel it's like, ‘We're not going down this way. We can't lose this way.’ All it took was the first catch by Tyreek and then you knew something kind of special was in the air.”
Before that fateful drive, not everyone was convinced.
Kevin Kooi is a former assistant principal at Staley High School and Dr. Ken Corum is a math teacher on the school’s faculty. The two had started a tradition of going to a Chiefs postseason game together a few years earlier.
“We looked at each other maybe for one second and we thought to each other, ‘You know what? Maybe we should beat the crowd out of the stadium with 13 seconds to go,” Corum said.
They’re grateful to notion quickly passed, but Zac Gall’s buddy took more convincing. He went to the game with his wife and another couple who have season tickets, Matt and Kelly Schmidli.
“My friend Matt is a stressed-out sports watcher,” Gall said. “When the Bills went up in the fourth quarter, he said, ‘Let's go. Let's beat the traffic. We’ve got to get out of here.’”
Matt drove and they were his season tickets, so it was his call but Gall wasn’t ready to give up.
“I said, ‘Hold on just a second; there's time left,’” Gall recalled. “... There was 13 seconds on the clock, but we had a chance to tie it with a field goal. I think he thought (the Chiefs) were further at further down than that. So, I had to kind of convince him to stick around. He was our ride and the guy with the tickets, but we got him to stick around and it paid off.”
Kelly who was pregnant with the Schmidli’s first child at the time later thanked Gall for convincing her husband to stick it out.
FAMILY CONNECTIONS: RENÉ ROSSER
Rosser was born in Iowa, spent several years in Louisiana then moved to Texas for the next 30 years, but she was always a Chiefs fan because of “my uncle, being a lifelong resident of Kansas City, Missouri.”
She was a casual fan until 2019 when her uncle Gary died unexpectedly in October 2019 during the infancy of this Chiefs dynasty.
“Cleaning out his home and everything, I found his Chiefs hoodie and some other memorabilia,” Rosser said. “Now, it's kind of become a way to keep his memory alive.”
On a whim, Rosser and her mom drove up from Texas in January 2022 for the playoff game against Buffalo.
“The Bills game, the playoff game, the infamous 13-second game was actually my first Chiefs game I went to,” she said. “... The energy that's in that stadium that you cannot replace anywhere. I have been to other games and I've been to other stadiums, you cannot replace that energy anywhere. When you are in the Chiefs’ stadium, it's mind-blowing.”
Rosser and her mom made it to one more Chiefs game before she died suddenly in 2023.
“Those memories are incredibly special to me now and now my tie to the Chiefs is even deeper just because of having my uncle and my mom and those memories and everything,” Rosser said.
It’s hard not to be flooded with memories of loved ones lost who shared a passion for Chiefs Kingdom with the Bills set to return for their first playoff game in Arrowhead since the 13-second game.
“My mind always goes back to him,” Rosser said. “But I also tell myself all the time, he has the best seat possible. He and my mom both, they have the most amazing seats. For me, knowing that they're together, watching together, that's where I get some joy.”
FAMILY CONNECTIONS: SIERRA AND ELLA
But there wasn’t a bad seat on Jan. 23, 2022, to watch history being made.
“The 13-second game was crazy,” Sierra Jasso said. “I went to the Super Bowl that against the Eagles a couple years ago, and I've told everybody that the 13-second game is my favorite game I've ever been to, even over going to an actual Super Bowl. Especially the last two minutes of regulation, it just was something that I literally couldn't believe it. I could not believe it.”
Jasso was at the game with her daughter — Ella Galyon, then 5 years old.
They are veterans of dozens of games, but the 13-second game was “by far the craziest,” Ella said. Not even catching a glimpse of Taylor Swift at a game can top that playoff win.
“She has spotted Taylor a couple times actually,” Jasso said.
“Yeah,” Ella said before giggling, “I remember — in the suite we tried to record it.”
Still, the 13-second game remains king of her Chiefs memories.
“I just remember my mom and me being so happy — and being shocked at the same time,” Ella said.
Mother and daughter may turn up Sunday for the AFC Championship Game.
“We've been talking about it nonstop,” Sierra said. “She has her full Carhart snowsuit ready to go. She's like, ‘Mom, the outfit's already planned,’ so hopefully we get a hold of some cheaper tickets if they (prices) come down.”
FAMILY CONNECTIONS: KEVIN AND KEN
Kooi grew up a Chiefs fan, catching training camp back when it used to take place at William Jewell College in Liberty, while Corum — a native of eastern Iowa, where he rooted for the Bears — adopted the Chiefs three decades ago after moving to Kansas City.
Kooi and Corum first went to a game together in 2018 and decided to start a tradition of taking their sons to a playoff game, beginning with the Divisional Round win against Indianapolis in January 2019.
Corum grilled on his deck at home, wrapped the food in aluminum foil then braved a 7-inch snowstorm with his son and the Koois for the game.
“That kind of started the tradition there of our sons and us going to the game,” Corum said.
Kooi usually tried to find seats in the same general area of the stadium — Sections 317 and 318.
“We just made it a yearly tradition from then on to try to attend one of these playoff games, whether it was the divisional round or or the AFC Championship Game,” he said.
In January 2020, it was the iconic 24-point comeback against Houston in the Divisional Round
By 2022, even though the boys were off to college, Kooi and Corum didn’t want to let the tradition die, which is how they wound up at the 13-second game — and the AFC Championship Game win against Cincinnati a year later, too.
“We've seen a lot of good stuff," Corum said.
Scheduling conflicts as Staley’s boys volleyball coach have prevented Corum from going to Chiefs postseason games the last few years, but Kooi plans to be in Arrowhead on Sunday — and he’s hoping for another moment to treasure.
“Maybe it's a little bit of the history that we've had and the memories that we've made with our boys, but I'm hopeful that 317 or 318 will provide some more happy memories for us,” Kooi said.
THE AFTERMATH AND THE REMATCH
It’ll be tough to top that Divisional showdown.
“It’s a game that I'll never forget,” Kooi said. “One that probably might stand out to me as my most favorite Chiefs game I've ever been a part of.”
After most games, it’s a race to the parking lot to try and beat traffic out of the gates, but things were different three years ago.
“Everybody stayed in the stands for probably 10 or 15 minutes, because it was just so unbelievable,” Werner said. “I mean, you're talking to random strangers just about how incredible that was and how you just couldn't believe what we just saw.”
The only equivalent he could conjure in Kansas City sports was the Royals’ extra-winning win against Oakland in 2014 AL Wild Card, a game Werner also attended.
In the moments after the 13-second game ended, Gall remembers being struck by Chiefs Kingdom’s compassion.
“When the game ended, there were Bills fans in front of us,” Gall said.
He watched Matt lean over to console them, saying he didn’t think the Mahomes-led Chiefs and Allen-led Bills were done meeting in the postseason, which has turned out to be true as they’re set to meet for fourth time in the last five postseasons.
“I don't know that there's many NFL fans who would show as much grace as Chiefs fans did that day,” Gall said. “If you watch that gesture of Matt's at the end, talking to those Bills fans, we understand what it is like to lose, and I was just impressed, looking back on that video, at the kindness and grace that my friend Matt showed and that he's known for. I was really tickled and just really impressed with Matt's gesture there. I thought that was really cool and emblematic of Chiefs fans overall.”
The Bills Mafia, a remarkably generous and rabid fanbase in their own right, will be out in force again Sunday for the encore at Arrowhead.
“We hope it doesn't come down to 13 seconds this year,” Kooi said, “but we wouldn't be surprised. The Bills are a good team, and they usually provide a lot of drama and fanfare.”
So, can that game be topped?
“You never know,” Werner said. “Maybe 12 seconds?”
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