Arrowhead Stadium is surely sacred ground to noted Kansas City fan/my imaginary boyfriend Paul Rudd, but it's been a graveyard for our Seahawks over the decades. Seattle is an abysmal 5-21 all time in Kansas City, and they have only won there TWICE since 1980. Thankfully Friday night's game is only a preseason tune-up- But given our team's history in that venue, I'll be happy if we simply escape without some sort of The Dark Knight Rises-esque calamity befalling the boys in blue.
Sidebar: You know how a couple of weeks ago I told y'all to hold off on buying those Tyler Lockett and Frank Clark jerseys? Wow. They both made me look like a schmuck, huh? Is it too late for me to claim that was a brilliant motivational tactic on my part? It is? And I just don't know what I'm talking about most of the time? Alright, then. Anyway, why not take a look at the Top 5 Seahawks wins over Kansas City?
5. 11/21/99 Seahawks 31, Chiefs 19
4. 11/26/99 Seahawks 23, Chiefs 14
That game in KC was the high-water mark for the 1999 Seahawks. It was only the 5th Seattle win at Arrowhead EVER, and it ran the Seattle's' record to a gaudy 8-2. After such an emphatic win at the Seahawks' Temple of Doom, I started figuring out how I could scrape together the time and money for a road trip from Columbus to Atlanta in January, because my Hawks were clearly XXXIV-bound, and my geeky ass was going to be there.
It turned out that Ricky Watters' infamous throat-cutting gesture after the game-sealing run at Arrowhead was a premonition of our Hawks gurgling from a gaping neck wound for the next month, not the demise of the Chiefs. The Hawks were 8-2, and the Chiefs were a lackluster 5-5. Over the next month, while the Seahawks plummeted into a dark, cold abyss, KC marauded through its schedule destroying anyone in their way.
I was in attendance at the Kingdome's final regular season contest, and the Seahawks shambled into the game in a completely zombified state. Seattle hadn't won since Arrowhead, and it looked like Mike Holmgren's first season would end in a historic collapse, particularly with the streaking Chiefs coming to town on a four-game winning streak.
I know the players are the ones who scored the points, who made the tackles, etc. I'm not entirely delusional. But on that day, you couldn't shake the feeling that 64,000 Seahawks fans would simply not allow the guys wearing blue to lose. I went to over 30 games in the old Kingdome, and I never heard that place get louder than it did that day. The Chiefs, an otherwise solid team that year, was absolutely petrified by the atmosphere in the Dome.
Elvis Grbac was less poised than Skinny Pete tweaking with Badger, chucking three picks and making Jon Kitna look competent in comparison. Even with this uplifting win, the Hawks would start hibernating again the next week, getting shanked by the Jets on the road and needing an OT FG from the detestable Oakland Raiders to win the AFC West on the basis of their head-to-head sweep over KC. Then the Hawks would send the Kingdome into retirement (in the way replicants in Blade Runner were "retired") with an embarrassing Wild-Card loss to the ancient Dan Marino and his unremarkable Dolphins.
1999: Welcome to the suck.
3. 11/4/84 Seahawks 45, Chiefs 0
Your usual NFL blowout quickly becomes a turgid, boring affair. Whether your team is ahead or behind by 30+ points, watching Bad Lip Reading Clips on YouTube suddenly becomes a very tempting option. This particular game was quite different...
It was a competitive game into the second quarter. In fact, KC was deep in Seattle territory and they only trailed 3-0 when Dave Brown snagged an errant throw and raced 90 yards the other way for Seattle's first touchdown.
Then it was Keith Simpson going 76 yards for another defensive TD, and the rout was on like a bad check from Homer J. Fong. As if to more deeply humiliate KC's quarterbacks, Dave Krieg threw two touchdowns to guys wearing the same Seattle uni he sported, and it was 31-0 at halftime.
While Coach Knox mercifully tried to shorten the game by calling almost nothing but running plays, the Chiefs kept throwing it and Seahawks defenders kept scoring touchdowns... One more for Brown in the 3rd, and one for evetntual Defensive Player of the Year Kenny Easley in the 4th.
THREE KC quarterbacks combined to deliver six interceptions to Seattle DBs. Seattle's four interception returns for TDs in a single game is still a league record.
2. 11/27/83 Seahawks 51, Chiefs 48 (OT)
This might still be the most entertaining regular season win in team history. The Hawks came in 6-6, and needed a win to keep any hope of postseason play alive. At the half, the Chiefs led 28-14. Early in the 4th, they led 42-31... But the Seahawks never stopped digging those talons into the red flesh of the KC invaders...
Chuck Knox used rookie stud Curt Warner as an instrument of blunt force trauma, feeding him the ball 32 times. The former Nittany Lion rewarded his coach by gobbling up 207 yards rushing and scoring three touchdowns. However, the story of Seattle's amazing 1983 season probably has a very different ending if KC had converted a PAT attempt late in the 4th quarter. Instead of Theotis Brown's TD giving the Chiefs a 49-45 lead, it was only 48-45. Norm Johnson made one 42 yard kick as time expired to tie the game, and another in OT to give Seattle a season-saving triumph.
1. 11/11/90 Seahawks 17, Chiefs 16
1990 was a transitional year for the Seahawks- Steve Largent had just retired. Curt Warner was gone. After limping to a 7-9 finish the year before, expectations were low going into the 1990 season. Seattle came into Arrowhead on Veteran's Day 3-5, and a loss would surely extinguish their flickering playoff hopes. The playoff-bound Chiefs seemed a step quicker than the sleepy Seahawks, and future Hall-of-Famer Derrick Thomas racked up a single-game record SEVEN sacks of Dave Krieg.
Seattle's defense somehow kept the game close, and Kansas City only took the lead after recovering a fumble in our end zone in the 3rd quarter. The Hawks got the ball one last time with less than a minute left. They clawed their way to the KC 25-yard-line with 4 seconds left... The clip below is mostly Thomas sacks. but at the end you can see the result of that final snap:
Thomas couldn't QUITE wrap up Mudbone for that 8th sack, could he? That loss would ultimately cost KC the AFC West title, a home game in the playoffs and a first-round bye.
I was 15 at the time. My mom let me turn our basement TV room into a "Seahawks Cave" during football season, with posters, banners, newspaper clippings, and so on blanketing the walls.
We were getting ready to move from Richland to Kennewick, and that day the realtor was having an open house (yes, I insisted on staying put to watch the Hawks that day rather than, you know, watching the game elsewhere). The whole family was packed into the basement, and when Krieg hit Skansi for the winning TD we all went completely luggage-throwin' INSANE. I jumped so high I hit my head on the roof of the basement, and the realtor came running downstairs thinking that we were murdering each other or something... All we could do was scream incoherently and point at the TV. We didn't get any offers on the house that day, obviously.
Fun fact: after that joyous day in 1990, the Seahawks would lose 14 out of their next 15 games against the Chiefs. That single win in 1994? By one lonely point. The '90 Hawks would finish with a flourish at 9-7, but miss out on the playoffs because of a convoluted tie-breaker the league no longer uses.
Yeesh-, Just get out of Arrowhead Friday without any major injuries, guys. Why do we even agree to play these guys in the preseason at this point? Thankfully we don't have to play there in the regular season again until 2022...
Any positive memories versus the Chiefs that I'm missing here? Let me know in the comments.
