Amazingly, remarkably, ridiculously, the ball was in the air, traveling on a string, 63,551 sets of eyes locked on its every sidespin. Improbably, impossibly, incredibly, when those eyes lowered to the field, every one of them saw an Indianapolis Colts receiver named T.Y. Hilton a couple steps in back of the Kansas City defense.
Astonishingly …
Astoundingly …
Absurdly …
This was going to happen. Andrew Luck was going to happen. The Colts were going to happen. It had been 38-10, Chiefs, a few moments into the third quarter. Now, 4 ½ minutes from the end of the game, it was about to be 45-44, Colts, and there promised to be a run on audiologists’ offices all over Indiana the next few days to have a gander at eardrums soon to be ruptured by the ruckus.
And the throat practice was going to get a workout, too, from all the worked-over larynxes and voice boxes.
“We clawed our way back in it,” Indy’s coach, Chuck Pagano, said.
“We never lost faith,” Indy’s savior, Luck, said.
For so long, as afternoon bled into night, this was Alex Smith’s script. Smith: the former overall No. 1 pick who first bombed in San Francisco, then blossomed, then was benched when he made the awful mistake of getting himself concussed last year, losing his job to Colin Kaepernick.
Smith: belittled as a “game manager,” as if that’s some kind of quarantine-necessitating disease, yet throwing spirals all over Lucas Oil Stadium, dragging the Chiefs so tantalizingly close to their first playoff victory since Joe Montana and what would’ve been their fourth since Super Bowl IV.
Smith: whose two best weapons, Jamaal Charles and Donnie Avery, were taken from him during the game thanks to a concussion and a bum knee, nevertheless staring down Luck — another overall No. 1, just without the emotional scar tissue — and dominating him in every phase. For a short time, Smith even had a perfect quarterback rating of 158.3.
And Lucas Oil Stadium was a tomb.
“They came with a great plan,” Pagano said. “But we made one more play.”
And, goodness, that all seemed like so long ago now, as the ball spun out of Luck’s hands and soared toward Hilton’s, as the crowd began to understand what was happening, as Hilton gathered it in, scampered for the goal line, his feet carried along by the sheer joy of these screaming, shouting, squealing Hoosiers.
They had been all but shamed to come, threatened with a television blackout if they couldn’t sell every seat. Some wondered if 15 years of excellence, Peyton Manning passing the baton to Luck like a peaceful transfer of power in Washington, hadn’t spoiled them, softened them even.
And at Chiefs 38, Colts 10, 81 seconds into the third quarter, every one of them no doubt wished they had stayed home, watched the game on the big screen with their home-fridge beers and their private woes. But they still came, even with a dire weather report.
“Kudos to them showing up with the storm coming in,” Luck would say. “I’m proud to be a citizen of Indianapolis and get that kind of support.”
Maybe the most ardent, the most faithful, remembered Jan. 3, 1993. That day the Houston Oilers had gone into Buffalo and taken a 28-3 halftime lead and, just like here, the road team seized even greater control early in the third quarter thanks to an interception, returned for a TD and a 35-3 lead.
Now here came Luck, part Manning, part Frank Reich, turning 38-10 into 38-24 in what felt like a heartbeat. Smith fumbled a ball away, had no one left to throw to, or hand off to. Luck threw a killer pick, handing the Chiefs a 41-24 lead and the stadium piped down.
And then it didn’t.
It was 41-31 when Luck handed the ball to Donald Brown 5 yards from the goal line, the comeback still an abstract notion as time melted away, and then Brown fumbled, and that should have been that except …
Luck: “I sort of saw the ball there and … I think you revert back to the playground. Pick it up. Try and score.”
Pagano: “Andrew picks it up and finds a way like only Andrew can do. And he scores a touchdown.”
It was 41-38, and even after the Chiefs hit a field goal to push the lead to six, it really didn’t matter. The Colts had Andrew Luck on their side. The Chiefs didn’t. Football can be an awfully complicated game.
Or an incredibly simple one.