KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City Chiefs have been in this position before. Walking across the cold parking lot to Arrowhead Stadium, dressing in their revamped locker room, strolling through the narrow tunnel and spilling onto the field for the AFC championship game.
In fact, the Chiefs have done it each of the past three years.
For the Cincinnati Bengals, though, it will be an entirely new experience when they follow the same path Sunday with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line. Only a couple of their current players were alive - and coach Zac Taylor was just starting out in elementary school - when the Bengals beat the Buffalo Bills in January 1989 in the franchise's most recent appearance in a conference championship game.
"I think it helps this time of year having a pretty good idea of what this is all about," acknowledged Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who can tie Dallas Cowboys legend Tom Landry for second in NFL history with his 20th playoff win. "They know how we go about our business, the intensity, whether it's practice or what we expect out of the game."
That experience came in handy last Sunday, when the second-seeded Chiefs went 44 yards in 13 seconds to kick a field goal and force overtime against third-seeded Buffalo. They proceeded to win the coin toss - and then the game as Patrick Mahomes & Co. marched right downfield for a touchdown without giving the Bills another chance with the ball.
It was the kind of unforgettable, heart-stopping victory that can give an NFL team plenty of momentum for the rest of the postseason, provided the celebration ends quickly enough to prepare for the next opponent.
"It was an awesome game and win that we'll remember forever," Mahomes said, "but we're not done. We're trying to get out there and win an AFC championship and try to get to the Super Bowl."
AP photo by Emilee Chinn / Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill (10) tries to get a way from Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Mike Hilton during a regular-season game on Jan. 2 in Cincinnati.The fourth-seeded Bengals had a thriller in their own right to get past the top-seeded Tennessee Titans last weekend in Nashville. They blew a 16-6 second-half lead, then put rookie Evan McPherson in position to kick a 52-yard field goal as time expired.
It was the first road playoff win in franchise history. Now they're after another in Kansas City.
"We're excited about the opportunity," said Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, the former No. 1 pick whose 2020 rookie season ended after 10 games due to injury. "If you want to do the things that we want to do, that's a team that you're going to have to beat every single year. The AFC has run through them for four straight years.
"So, you know, we're excited about the opportunity. We're going to have a great week of practice and be ready to go."
The Bengals beat the Chiefs on Jan. 2 in Cincinnati in a back-and-forth affair that ended when McPherson drilled a 20-yard field goal as time expired. Burrow threw for 446 yards and four touchdowns, most of it to wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase, while Mahomes threw for 259 yards and two scores against the lightly regarded Cincinnati secondary.
"The Chiefs do a good job of employing a variety of schemes to try to keep you off balance," Taylor said. "I thought Joe and Ja'Marr did a good job of being on the same page in that game."
Lost amid the playoff chaos last weekend was the fact that few people outside Kansas City thought the Chiefs would even be in this position again. They dropped three of their first seven games, including an embarrassing 27-3 loss at Tennessee, and an overhauled defense was allowing yards and points in staggering numbers.
The Chiefs turned things around quickly, though, and have lost just once since that October day - to Cincinnati.
"I think I just saw the persistence and the championship swagger, I guess you would say, of the team we have," Mahomes said. "Guys didn't hang their head. They just wanted to get better. I think that process of every day getting better and better has put us in this situation now, and we don't want to come up short. We want to keep this process going and get better and try to leave our best football out there on the football field."