Visitor:  Kansas City Chiefs

Home:  Jacksonville Jaguars

Date:  December 30, 2001

 

Scoring:

Team                1          2          3          4          Final

KC                  7          10        10        3            30

JAX                 7          10        0          9            26

 

Visitor playmakers:

RB Priest Holmes, TE Tony Gonzalez, DT Derrick Ransom, CB William Bartee, S Jerome Woods, DE Duane Clemons

 

Home playmakers:

RB Stacey Mack, QB Mark Brunell, WR Keenan McCardell, CB Jason Craft, DE Tony Brackens, LB Hardy Nickerson

 

Network:  CBS

Announcers:  Don Criqui, Steve Tasker

 

Pregame:  No

Halftime:  No

Postgame:  No

Commercials:  No

 

Grade:  Fair.  Very good quality video and audio, but clumsy commercial edits, Sunday Ticket menus that pop up, missing KC’s 3^rd quarter TD and Jacksonville’s 4^th quarter TD all detract from this copy.  Looking to upgrade, but so far this is the only copy to be found.

 

Notes:  A late season win for non-playoff teams usually means little, but for the Chiefs, this one meant a lot.  With just three wins in their first 12 games of the season, the Chiefs seemed destined for nothing more than a high draft pick for 2001.  But with a strong showing in a losing effort against the Raiders three weeks earlier, Kansas City proved they were not packing it in early.  They followed that performance with wins over Denver and San Diego, and were ready to take on the Florida jinx that had haunted the team for almost a decade.

 

The game with Jacksonville was a squeaker in the end, and hardly a top team performance.  But it was a win in the Sunshine state and the Chiefs’ first ever regular-season victory against the Jaguars.  The win snapped an 11-game overall losing streak in the state of Florida, dating back to a 27-3 victory over Tampa Bay on September 5, 1993.

 

“I don’t know if it’s the best win [of the year], but it’s a great win,” a happy Dick Vermeil said after the game.  “Denver was a great win.  Any win is a great win.  But to come down here, I could say it’s our best win.  It’s a heck of an accomplishment, it really is.”

 

The two teams were tied at 17-17 at the end of the first half.  Todd Peterson kicked a 40-yard field goal early in the third quarter, and Tony Gonzalez scored on a 12-yard hookup with Trent Green – his second touchdown of the game – to put the Chiefs up 27-17.

 

“It was a great win for the team,” Gonzalez said.  “Three in a row and for us to put it together against a team like Jacksonville.  They won three games in a row and we knew it was going to be a test to the end, and it certainly was.”

 

Peterson kicked his third field goal of the day with five minutes remaining in the game to put the Chiefs up 30-24.  Kansas City took an intentional safety with 46 seconds remaining in the game, then held off the Jaguars’ last-ditch attempt to win the game.  Jacksonville quarterback Mark Brunell’s pass into the end zone fell incomplete as the clock ran out.

 

Inconsistent most of the season, Green completed 26 of 35 passes for 294 yards and two touchdowns.  Priest Holmes ran for 91 yards, Gonzalez caught eight passes for 78 yards and two touchdowns, and Eddie Kennison caught six passes for 121 yards.

 

“You never want to talk about next season too son, but we eliminated ourselves from the playoffs early on,” Green said.  “We then began focusing on establishing what we were going to be as a team and organization next year.  When you go into the tank as early as we did, you can find guys that give up, and we haven’t had any of that.”

--Kansas City Chiefs Encyclopedia, Mark Stallard.

 

Thanks JD!

 

Running time:  1:59 (1 disc)