Chiefs rookie wide receiver Rashee Rice’s first playoff game was a memorable one for multiple reasons.
Rice caught a touchdown to cap the opening drive of the game and he had another one wiped out by a penalty for an illegal block before the end of the first half. Rice wound up with a game-high eight catches for 130 yards on a frigid night that saw temperatures dip well below zero due to wind chill.
Safety Mike Edwards, who had an interception, said the cold “was bad” but safety Justin Reid said the team was either going “buy into it or you’re gonna whine and complain.” The Chiefs bought into it with Rice saying he was able to ignore the icicles forming on head coach Andy Reid’s mustache because he was in “game mode.”
“Everybody out here was playing for each other,” Rice said, via Jesse Newell of the Kansas City Star. “So we just put the weather to the side, and knew that our opponents didn’t want to be here — out here in this cold as much as we did. So we just took it to the chin and showed our love for the game.”
The Chiefs will find out on Monday if they’ll be back in Arrowhead Stadium for another game or if they will head to Buffalo for the first road playoff game of the Patrick Mahomes era. Either way, the conditions are unlikely to play the same role in the proceedings that they played on Saturday.
