If you’d turned off the Houston Texans’ playoff game against the Kansas City Chiefs after the first quarter, you might have walked away with the sense that Houston was on their way to an easy victory. When the first quarter ended, the Texans were up 21-0. Not long after, Texas increased their lead to 24-0. Was the game over before it had even reached the halfway point?
Spoiler alert: it was not.
By the end of the first half, the home team was up 28-24. And when the second half began, Kansas City kept scoring. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes threw a total of 4 touchdown passes in the second quarter alone. How many times did Kansas City score? So many that their stadium ran out of fireworks.
The Chiefs scored so many touchdowns that they ran out of fireworks 😯 (via @AlexGold) pic.twitter.com/vnUUZHOXSi
— The Checkdown (@thecheckdown) January 12, 2020
Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce also had a fantastic game, with a total of 3 touchdowns and 134 yards for the day. Texans quarterback DeShaun Watson passed for a total of 388 yards, including throwing for a pair of touchdowns and rushing for a third.
Both Chiefs and Texans fans have lived every human emotion in course of one half of football, ricocheting between Dreamland and Worst Nightmare. Exactly why sports is so phenomenal: Makes us feel things we would in real life if we were not dead inside 🙌
— roger bennett (@rogbennett) January 12, 2020
When you look at photographs of the Chiefs and Texans after the game, players from both sides look exhausted beyond what one might normally expect, even from a game of this magnitude. This was the sort of game people will be talking about for years to come.
Kansas City’s playoff run will continue next Sunday, when they host the Tennessee Titans in the AFC Championship.
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