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Ivis AburtoESPN Digital
When no one was expecting him, maybe not himself, Chad Henne had to take the field, giving him a reason to celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs fans, who at the same time had their souls lined up for the injury he left out. Patrick Mahomes of the Divisional Round game against the Cleveland Browns.
Henne, who played the role of backup for most of his 11-year NFL career, did enough to secure Kansas City’s pass for the third consecutive AFC Championship Game after beating the Browns 22-17. .
Henne entered the game after Mahomes suffered a concussion from being tackled in a third place run and a run to midfield with 7:44 left and the Chiefs 19-10 on the scoreboard.
Mahomes didn’t get the first and 10 in the action he was injured in and on the next game, fourth and first, Henne passed the ball to Darrell Williams, who had 12 yards in his career and kept the Chiefs’ offense alive.
Henne threw his first pass until his fourth offensive play, but it was incomplete, and then he hit a five-yard pass with Travis Kelce to create Harrison Butker’s 33-yard field goal that was key to Kansas City’s victory, as he she pushed away. five points from Cleveland.
Had the Chiefs not gotten those three runs, the Browns, who scored on their next offensive drive and then intercepted a bad pass from Henne, might not have felt the need and pressure to score a touchdown on their last drive, which was a goal. outfield would have been enough to tie the score and force the Chiefs to play longer without Mahomes.
For its part, the Browns defense, which pressured Mahomes on only three of his 31 passing plays, did what it had to do when Henne came into play and was behind the Chiefs’ reserve passer from the start.
Cleveland blew Henne on four of his 10 designed passes and Henne took advantage of one of those moves to escape the pressure, get out of the pocket and run 13 yards in the conversion of the third and 14 it preceded the pass in fours and inches with which Henne secured the victory of Kansas City by 1:14.
Henne’s dirty work to keep the Chiefs’ victory was also reflected in the conversion in the fourth and centimeter that secured Kansas City’s victory.
The five-meter pass he threw to Tyreek Hill is only the third in the past 15 years in a fourth-and-inch situation within two minutes of the fourth period, in Shotgun formation and with his team in the lead.
Deshaun Watson played the other two times a quarterback made a good fourth and inch conversion in that context, first in week 6 of the current season against Tennessee and in week 17 of the 2018 season against Jacksonville.
When coach Andy Reid decided to rest several starters in Week 17, including Mahomes, with the first AFC seed already for sure, naming Henne as the starting quarterback for the final game of the regular season, the Chiefs created the hashtag #HenneThingIsPossible, a pun in English that translates to Spanish as “Anything is possible,” and Henne made sure it happened at the time of greatest tension for Kansas City.
ESPN Stats & Information contributed to this report.