At one point during Saturday’s first-round playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins, the fourth-coldest game in NFL history, the cameras showed a man shirtless. He was standing. He was cheering. He was alone. And despite his bold gesture — he was yelling “Let’s go!” or something like that amid a sea of his seated and bundled-up peers — his fleshy torso looked as if it wanted to revolt against the rest of his body and go find a parka.
That fan, along with thousands like him, risked hypothermia to watch a football game — and a rather unexciting one at that. The reigning Super Bowl champion Chiefs did manage two touchdowns in their 26-7 win, but the players looked miserably cold, especially the ones forced to stand for long stretches on the sideline. Who would have blamed the long snapper for dreaming about his offseason vacation plans in Cancún as he watched every breath leave his body in trails of vapor?
Every Miami fourth-down attempt felt like a cruel experiment to see how long Hawaii-born quarterback Tua Tagovailoa could survive without hand warmers. Every hair on Chiefs Coach Andy Reid’s mustache was adorned with ice crystals. And judging by all the drops, every pass thrown seemed as if the quarterback was tossing concrete at his receiver.
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At least Kansas Citians and fans with roots in South Florida had an excuse for enduring the inhospitable outdoors, even if it was lunacy. It was the rest of us that I’m more concerned about.
The matchup, streamed exclusively on Peacock, felt like pay-for-view for psychopaths and made me wonder: Just what kind of warm-blooded weirdo would sign up for that $5.99 monthly fee to watch human beings suffer in freezing temps? (Raising my hand here.)
Before the game, Peacock often showed the temperature graphic: minus-4 degrees at kickoff, but it felt like minus-23. The National Weather Service was even more blunt in its warning for the Kansas City region: “Dangerously cold wind chills. Wind chills as low as 40 below zero.” And as I watched the pregame scenes, I felt every bit of that — while on my couch, nestled under my sherpa-lined wearable blanket. Just watching those poor souls, I had to turn my home thermostat up to 71 degrees. Surely, even Chiefsaholic, the Kansas City super fan who moonlighted as a bank robber, probably felt fortunate to be inside his Leavenworth prison cell instead of at Arrowhead Stadium for this one. But as the cameras spanned the crowd, some kid — hidden in a winter coat and ski mask — had the nerve to hold up a sign that read “We Are Not Cold.” Liar. That kid better keep that same energy the next time his parents ask him to shovel the driveway.
At least the child had the good sense to pile on suitable clothes. During warmups, Dolphins wideout Tyreek Hill did not.
While Midwesterners are a tough lot able to manage the cold (babies come out of the womb wearing Carhartt and knowing how to make award-winning chili), those Americans who live and work in South Florida — for example, Tagovailoa and his teammates — know of no such character-building pain. Miami is the team that retreats to its indoor practice facility when there’s a little rain. This season, HBO’s “Hard Knocks” followed the Dolphins in-season, and most every episode went like this: Coach Mike McDaniel starts the team meeting and finds new ways to scramble curse words into nouns, adjectives and even prepositions. Then, there’s B-roll of blue skies and the greenest grass that Midwesterners haven’t seen in months. Next, guys go outside and grunt through practice while wearing shorts. Because, yes, even in January, it’s flip-flop weather down there.
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So coming from that kind of ideal climate, Hill tried to psych himself up Saturday night and go through warmups while wearing a skintight T-shirt. Before kickoff, however, he wised up and asked for a coat — just not one as jazzy as football’s favorite girlfriend.
When the temperature drops, even a nice, cozy cocoon can be affected because cold air can blur the windows from the inside. And the network suits must have been cursing this condensation, panicking over this nightmare, because how could camera operators show Taylor Swift every five seconds if the windows in her suite were fogged up?! Thankfully, the windows cleared, and Peacock was able to flash Swift on the screen no less than three times before kickoff and plenty more during the actual game. Whew. How else would we know how to feel whenever Travis Kelce made a catch if we didn’t see Swift’s euphoric reaction?
Near the end of the fourth quarter, after the Chiefs had put the game on ice, those gratuitous shots went into overdrive. Did we need to see Swift swag surfing — or at least trying to — next to Brittany Mahomes, the wife of the Chiefs quarterback? Absolutely not. Would Peacock show us anyway? A hundred percent, yeah. Anyway, by that time, a Kansas City victory was assured, and mercifully all those frostbitten people would soon return to the warmth of their homes.
The divisional round — and the flu — now awaits the Chiefs. At least that shirtless man will have a story to tell his friends. He braved the coldest game ever played at Arrowhead. As for the rest of us, the conquerors of the couch who sat and streamed this game? We spent a whole Saturday night tuning in and daring to ask: Where did Taylor Swift get her cute coat?
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