KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Arrowhead Stadium turned into a House of Horrors for San Diego Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers before a national television audience on Monday Night Football.
With the score tied at 20, the game clock had melted under a minute as the Chargers were driving for the winning score against the Kansas City Chiefs.
On first down from the Kansas City 15, Rivers never got the exchange from center Nick Hardwick and the football fell to the ground. Chiefs outside linebacker Andy Studebaker emerged from the pileup with the fumble recovery at the KC 16-yard line with 48 seconds left, and the game went to overtime.
After San Diego went three-and-out on the opening series of overtime, Kansas City drove 69 yards in 14 plays, capped by kicker Ryan Succop’s 30-yard field goal at the 5:19 mark as the Chiefs pulled out a 23-20 win.
Indeed, a haunting Halloween for Rivers and the Lightning Bolts.
“It hasn’t happened in years, it’s just unfortunate,” Rivers said of the botched exchange. “Like I said, we hadn’t had an issue in years. This one is rough. Any loss, obviously, will throw us back.
“When you know you’re a minute away from just milking the clock and kicking a field goal to end it, after the way we fought back, and then you blow it on a play; something, obviously, that never happens, shouldn’t happen …”
Rivers completed 26 of 41 passes for 369 yards, although he never produced a touchdown pass on this night. He threw two interceptions and, coupled with his costly fumble, increased his giveaway total to 14 — the most of any quarterback in the NFL.
The fumble ultimately proved fatal for the Chargers.
“It’s so hard to tell,” Chargers head coach Norv Turner said. “It looked to me like Philip got a little anxious and came out early, but it’s really hard to tell particularly from where I was.
“For those of us who have been doing this a long time, you spend a lot of time trying to figure that out. Between those two guys (Hardwick and Rivers), you very rarely see one.”
The Chiefs (4-3) became the first team in NFL history to lose their first three games and share at least a part of the division lead after four more. They are locked in a three-way tie for first place in the AFC West with the Chargers and the Oakland Raiders.
“It was not pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, I really don’t believe that it matters right now and to those guys in there,” said Kansas City head coach Todd Haley, referencing to the Chiefs’ locker room.
“We have to get corrections done and clean some things up, but I’m just real proud of our Chiefs, of our fans. Our fans were just phenomenal. They played a big part of that game, causing problems for San Diego at the line. They were so loud they caused us problems offensively.”
Throughout the game, fans waved a Kansas City version of “The Terrible Towel,” made famous by the Pittsburgh Steelers. The white towel had a vintage KC arrowhead logo on it.
The fans were treated to a back-and-forth penalty-filled game, where Kansas City led the entire game before Curtis Brinkley went airborne on a 2-yard scoring run and then scored on the conversion, tying the game at 20 with 7:11 remaining and setting up the bizarre finish.
“That’s a very unusual way not to win a game,” Turner said. “If someone gave me different scenarios before the game of how the game would end, that certainly would not have been in the discussion.”
The Chiefs scored the game’s first 10 points on a 36-yard field goal by Ryan Succop, followed by rookie Jonathan Baldwin’s first NFL touchdown reception, a 39-yard perfectly threaded strike from quarterback Matt Cassel, who finished 19 for 32 for 261 yards and threw two picks.
Kansas City extended its lead to 13-3 after Succop boomed a 47-yarder with three seconds left in the half.
Kicker Nick Novak kept the Chargers in the game by nailing 44-, 44-, 42- and 26-yard field goals, the last pulling the Bolts within 13-12.
Novak, though, never got another opportunity.