1. Priest was great, but holy crap that line was insane. Look at T Rich getting out in front way down the field. How many times did Holmes have multiple blockers in front? He was a master at setting up and using those blocks, but he did have a lot of help.

2. The Chiefs early '00s offense was a testament to front office success in free agency and trades. They assembled a roster of guys other teams moved on from and turned them into an all-time great offense. Trent Green and Willie Roaf came in trades. T Rich was an undrafted rookie FA. Veteran FAs were Priest Holmes, Jonnie Morton, and Casey Weigmann. Eddie Kennison and Brian Waters were waived by other teams. The only draft picks were, Tony G., Will Shields, and John Tait

3. The plan was to draft a defense to go with the offense. The strategy was fine. D players tend to develop faster than on offense, and a young, fast, physical defense flying around should have been enough with that offense The problem was execution.

4. Peterson's failure came down to two huge draft blunders: Ryan Sims instead of John Henderson in 2002 and Larry Johnson instead of Troy Polamalu in 2003.

Larry Johnson is 3rd all time rushing in chiefs history spock

They always refer to that as the No Punt Game, but we actually forged a punt, but were called for a 5 yard penalty (5 yards I think, but either way) to give them the 1st down.

When Hall broke free on that kick return for a TD, Arrowhead was louder than I have ever heard it. I was in the lower bowl, about the 45 yard line, about 13 rows up, and I could feel the concrete shaking.

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He is still one of only 3 backs in NFL history to have back to back seasons of 1700+ rushing yards.

Then the offensive line was decimated and became incompetent. Johnson would often get hit behind the LOS, and people blamed him because he acted out on the field in frustration. His off the field stuff was all on him though.

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Pretty much.

Oh yeah, the place was literally rocking. And as loud as we were we just could not bring about a false start. As much as I hate to give any kind of credit to those cocks, I am still impressed with that OLine that day.

Love Holmes. Fun era of Chiefs offense. However, it still makes me cringe thinking about that 2003 playoff game.

In a game where nobody punted, the one change of possession was when Priest broke free on a 50+ yard run but was caught from behind and fumbled, giving the Colts the one additional possession they needed to beat us by one score. Ugh.

Nothing wrong with the pick, per se. Larry Johnson was a stud. And, yes, he was ruined by Herm Edwards overusing him and the decline of the o line.

However, it was poor overall strategy given the needs of the team at the time. That squad desperately needed defense and was in win-now mode.

Thanks for that link. Priest was the engine and his running ability was off the charts

Thanks for posting this. I loved all of those old TV and radio calls (a lot of great announcers there), and I really loved watching Priest run behind T-Rich and that amazing OLine.

I have a trivia question, and I don't remember the answer.

I recall that we signed Priest in part because we signed some other player from the Ravens, and Dick asked him about other free agents. The guy raved about Priest Holmes.

Who was that player? I'm looking at the roster and I don't see a guy that jumps out at me as a former Raven.

https://www.pro-football-reference.c...001_roster.htm

Derrick Alexander is a former Raven. Was it him? He overlapped one season with Priest, but it was three years before we signed Priest. It could have been Jeff Blackshear, too, because he was with the Chiefs in 2000 and the Ravens in 1999. I bet it was Blackshear.

Suggs

I think the Chiefs had one of the Ravens restricted free agents in, but they didn't sign him. I'm thinking it was Lional Dalton, whom the Chiefs later signed in 03 or 04.

He was brought in to be the team chaplain. They had no idea he could also play offense.

It looks like you don't want to see Lional Dalton pulling into your business's parking lot. (This is five years old, so I wonder what happened with these.)

https://www.browardpalmbeach.com/new...cember-7690543

Priest has paid a heavy price for the mileage the Chiefs put on him.
https://joeposnanski.substack.com/p/ignore-the-pain

The next morning, I got emails. I always got emails on Mondays after Chiefs games, but these were different. This is why I will never forget the game.

The people behind the emails wanted me to shut the hell up about Priest Holmes’ pain.

I couldn’t believe it at first. I mean, sure, you can and will get random emails from people saying crazy things. But these just kept coming, a dozen of them, then a few more, and they had the same rhythm, the same vibe, often the same words.

They didn’t want to hear that Priest Holmes was hurting.

They were sure that Priest Holmes wasn’t REALLY hurting.

They wanted me to know that Priest Holmes got paid a lot of money to play football.

They raged at me that I had exaggerated Holmes’ pain to sell papers (?).

There was a desperation to those emails, something I couldn’t quite understand. In the end it was a small number of people, but I still read each note with wide-eyed astonishment; I had always come to associate Kansas City with humanity, and I still do. But these were angry people. And why were they angry? They had woken up on a Monday morning excited to read about the Chiefs’ victory over the Buffalo Bills and instead found themselves reading about how Priest Holmes had given up days, weeks, months, perhaps years of his life for the victory.

They didn’t want to read that.