Buckley: It's not easy to hate Kansas City
Credit: The Associated Press
Chiefs coach Andy Reid and quarterback Alex Smith will come to Foxboro on Saturday.
Credit: Matt Stone
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and wide receiver Julian Edelman stretch during practice outside Gillette Stadium on January 11, 2016.
Credit: Matt Stone
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady throws during practice outside Gillette Stadium on January 11, 2016.
Credit: Matt Stone
New England Patriots Receivers Coach Chad O'Shea watches as wide receiver Julian Edelman makes a catch during practice outside Gillette Stadium on January 11, 2016.
Credit: Matt Stone
New England Patriots wide receiver Danny Amendola stretches during practice outside Gillette Stadium on January 11, 2016.
Credit: Matt Stone
New England Patriots Defensive Coordinator Matt Patricia and head coach Bill Belichick during practice outside Gillette Stadium on January 11, 2016.
Credit: Matt Stone
New England Patriots cornerback Darryl Roberts and tight end Rob Gronkowski block wide receiver Danny Amendola during a drill at practice outside Gillette Stadium on January 11, 2016.
Credit: Matt Stone
New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman talks with quarterback Tom Brady as wide receiver Danny Amendola looks on during practice outside Gillette Stadium on January 11, 2016.
We hate Washington because of McFilthy and McNasty.
We hate Oakland because of Jack Tatum.
We hate New York because . . . well, just because.
We hate L.A., we hate Philly, we hate Montreal.
We even hate Vancouver, an otherwise lovely city save for the fact that its hockey fans have this bad habit of setting things on fire whenever the Canucks get eliminated from the playoffs.
But is there any hatred — any real, deep-in-the-belly, nostrils-a-flarin’ hatred — for Kansas City?
The Patriots host the Kansas City Chiefs in the divisional round of the NFL playoffs late Saturday afternoon at Gillette Stadium, and it’s going to be a rough matchup for the defending Super Bowl champions. The Chiefs have won 11 straight games, including a 30-0 pasting of the quarterback-starved Houston Texans during last weekend’s wild card tourney, and under coach Andy Reid, they aren’t likely to make the kind of mistakes that doomed the Vikings and (especially) the Bengals.
But this is one showdown that lacks the kind of us-vs.-them mentality that we media types try so hard to attach to the storyline as though this were Hollywood and we were screenwriters instead of sportswriters.
True, the Chiefs hung a 41-14 beating on the Patriots last season on “Monday Night Football.” That should make for a neat revenge angle going into Saturday’s showdown, except that Pats coach Bill Belichick’s response to last year’s Kansas City debacle was his scorned-at-the-time-but-now-famous “We’re on to Cincinnati” speech. Coach Bill’s message was simple and to the point: The Pats were going to look ahead to the Bengals and not dwell on the Chiefs.
In that spirit, then, it’s not proper to talk about last year’s loss to Kansas City. Coach Bill has said so. Listen to Coach Bill.
It’s also true that the one serious injury on Tom Brady’s medical chart occurred in 2008 — against the Kansas City Chiefs. It was Week 1, and here were the Pats, one season removed from that wonderful-til-the-end 2007 campaign when everything went kapooey because of a first-quarter hit from Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard that turned Our Tom’s left knee into Nabisco Shredded Wheat.
Considering the Pats quarterback missed the rest of the season because of that hit, and that the Pats failed to qualify for the playoffs (despite an 11-5 record and a fine job by Matt Cassel as Brady’s stand-in), you’d think there’d be fire in the sky when the Chiefs take the field on Saturday.
But let’s be grown-ups about this. The Pats already took care of that piece of business, if that’s what you want to call it, when they handed the Chiefs a 34-3 beating at Foxboro in 2011. And anyway, Brady’s injury wasn’t a Kansas City thing; it was a Bernard Pollard thing. And Pollard was long gone from Kansas City by the time the Chiefs played at Gillette Stadium in 2011. He went on to lead a vagabond existence, logging two seasons each with the Texans, Ravens and Titans.
Pollard has had all kinds of run-ins with the Pats through the years, but now he’s done. And for the record, let it be known that he rushed to Brady’s defense last summer during the Deflategate crisis, telling SiriusXM NFL Radio, “I respect . . . him because the guy knows how to win. The guy, you can say whatever you want about him, but he is a true champion.”
Judge Pollard also made it clear he didn’t think Brady should be suspended.
Sorry, folks, there’s just not a lot here in terms of revenge, rallying cries and assorted other bulletin-board material. In fact, Saturday’s game will mark the first time these two old-timey American Football League rivals have squared off in the playoffs.
To expand that thread, the Red Sox have never played the Kansas City Royals in the postseason. (We would have had an American League Championship Series between the two teams in 1978, but then Bucky Dent took Mike Torrez out of the yard, and, well, what are you going to do.)
And, no, the Sox never played the old Kansas City Athletics in the postseason.
The Celtics? They never met the old Kansas City/Omaha Kings in the playoffs. Nor did the Bruins ever meet the late, great Kansas City Scouts in the Stanley Cup playoffs during the two seasons KC had an NHL team.
As near as I can figure, the only Boston-Kansas City playoff action — ever — took place in 2013 when Sporting Kansas City knocked the Revolution out of the MLS playoffs. That might be a big deal to La Familia Kraft, which owns both the Pats and the Revolution, but it won’t be enough to light the torches come Saturday.
Pats-Chiefs is going to be huge. So huge that subplots won’t be needed. Just the game will be enough, thank you.
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