SOLEMN AFTERNOON: This fan’s sign says it all as members of both teams gather after yesterday’s Chiefs win over the Panthers, a game played — questionably, to some — one day after Kansas City linebacker Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend then committed suicide in the Arrowhead Stadium parking lot. (
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Name an emotion, and it’s a pretty good bet Jovan Belcher’s teammates and coaches felt it at some point yesterday.
Shock, anger, heartbreak, remorse, elation — they all came pouring out after the Chiefs somehow put aside Saturday’s astonishing murder-suicide by their Long Island-born teammate long enough to pull out a 27-21 victory over the Panthers at somber, half-full Arrowhead Stadium.
“I don’t even know what to feel or how to feel right now, to be honest,” offensive tackle Eric Winston said. “I’m exhausted, because it feels like we’ve been through everything you could go through in just 24 hours or so.”
Belcher’s suicide was the culmination of a nightmarish Saturday morning that began with the 25-year-old former West Babylon High School star shooting girlfriend Kasandra Perkins, 22, nine times in their home after a domestic dispute and then driving to the stadium to commit suicide less than 30 minutes later.
The thicket of conflicting emotions his teammates felt was symbolized by Belcher’s locker at the stadium, which was left fully intact as an apparent shrine while players just a few feet away expressed their dismay at him for the murder and for orphaning 3-month-old daughter Zoey.
“There’s just no way to condone what he did,” fellow linebacker Andy Studebaker said. “It’s tough to reconcile it because Jovan was a great teammate, but there’s a little girl out there now who will never know her mother or her father.”
Coach Romeo Crennel, general manager Scott Pioli and defensive coordinator Gary Gibbs had it even worse. They actually saw Belcher shoot himself in the head from just a few feet away in the parking lot of the team’s practice facility adjacent to the stadium.
Facing the media after the game for the first time since the linebacker’s suicide, Crennel was composed but wouldn’t talk about what he witnessed Saturday other than to say: “It wasn’t a pretty sight.”
“I felt I would be able to handle coaching the game,” said Crennel, who was awarded the game ball from Chiefs owner Clark Hunt in an emotional postgame locker room. “I knew I had to be strong for the players in that locker room, and they needed to see a strong individual lead them.”
Running back Jamaal Charles — the Chiefs player most connected to the tragedy because Perkins was his wife’s cousin and Charles introduced the couple — played well with 127 yards on 27 carries, but could not bring himself to talk about any of it afterward.
Linebacker Derrick Johnson spoke but struggled with what he described as a wave of emotions because the incident was so unexpected.
“This is devastating,” Johnson said. “I was once told that the hardest thing a person can go through is burying their child, so my heart goes out to the families, Kasandra’s and Jovan’s families. You can imagine what they’re going through right now, and as a team, we lost a brother.”
Added Brady Quinn, who had the game of his NFL life while completing 19-of-23 passes for two TDs: “There wasn’t one player on our team that could ever see that coming.”
Even though the 2-10 Chiefs played their best game of an otherwise dreadful season, it was clear afterward the players’ desire to go through with the game as scheduled wasn’t as unanimous as the team’s official statement Saturday indicated.
Crennel, who said Saturday he had polled the team captains and they all voted to play, said after the game “everybody was on board” with the decision to play and not postpone the game until tonight, at the very least.
But defensive end Shaun Smith said rank-and-file players were not consulted and they were ordered to play by Crennel in a meeting Saturday night.
Smith and several players either declined comment or danced around the question when asked if they felt the game should have been played barely 30 hours after the final act of a horrifying spectacle played out just a few hundred yards away.
“Sometimes you have to go out and let your emotion and frustration out on the field, and that’s what we did,” Smith said. “We lost a teammate and a friend. It’s tough, man. It’s all really tough.”