How Cold Was It?

From Arrowhead Stadium

It was cold, very cold, the second coldest day for a Chiefs game in the history of Arrowhead Stadium.

Temperature at kickoff for the Chiefs and Dolphins was 10 degrees. With a strong wind from the west-northwest, the wind-chill factor made it feel like minus-12.

The Chiefs announced their paid attendance of 73,689 during the game. The team does not release an actual in the house count, but a veteran Arrowhead observer (me) pegged the crowd at about 25,000 fans.

Obviously it was the smallest crowd that Arrowhead has seen for a game in some time. But then the Chiefs haven’t had a game played in these types of weather conditions since 1996 and the came in the playoffs against Indianapolis. That day was 11 degrees with a wind-chill factor of minus nine. It was a full house that day as the Chiefs fell to the Colts 10-7.

But it was certainly a bigger crowd than what showed up for the coldest Arrowhead game, on December 18, 1983. With the game-time temperature at zero and the wind-chill factor at minus-30, only 11,377 were counted in the house for the victory over Denver 48-17.

It was the coldest game in franchise history for the Dolphins. Oddly, Miami’s coldest home game (kickoff temperature of 40 degrees) was played against the Chiefs as well.

Remarkably, it seemed to have little effect on the performances of the players. With nearly 900 yards in total offense and the team’s combining for 75 passes, they played like there wasn’t a problem.

“I thought both offenses did a good job of throwing the ball and running the ball in this kind of weather,” said Herm Edwards. “Chad (Pennington) played well and I thought Tyler (Thigpen) did as well, although he made a few mistakes and turned the ball over too many times.”

Dolphins head coach Tony Sparano said the hardest part of the game was being able to concentrate.

“When it gets cold like that, you start thinking about a lot of things,” Sparano said. “I always think that’s a little bit of an advantage for the offense. It slows down the pass rush a little bit. It slows down those people in the secondary just a little bit.”

When the teams came out of the locker room just before kickoff, about an equal number of Dolphins and Chiefs were bare armed; mostly offensive linemen and running backs. A surprise was Chiefs rookie Jamaal Charles, who spent the whole week trying to figure out how to tape those heat packs to his body. He came out with bare arms, but spent his time when the defense was on the field practically hugging the heat blower on the sideline.

“This is my first time ever playing in something this cold,” said Charles, a native of Port Arthur, Texas. “I was freezing on the sideline and kept putting stuff on. But they were making me take all that cold stuff off.”

Said Chiefs wide receiver Mark Bradley: “It’s the type of game that tests your will, your manhood. Sometimes you won’t be able to feel your fingers, but you’ve got to fight through it and still go out there and do your job. Your job is to go out there on Sundays, regardless of the weather. You still have to go out and perform.”

Generally cold weather and wind like the teams saw on Sunday affect the passing games and the kicking teams. Not so much on this day with the quarterbacks, although both had balls that sailed on them when they had the wind at their back and hung in the air when they were throwing into the wind.

Although the wind was blowing in from the west, on the floor of Arrowhead it was blowing from the east. That’s just an oddity of how the stadium is designed and how it redirects the wind. There are also different levels of wind inside the stadium, so when it’s blowing like it was on Sunday, it’s different for field goal kickers than it is for punters. Kickoffs to the east were all short and one of Connor Barth’s kickoffs ended up going out of bounds and setting up Miami at its 40-yard line. Quite a few of the kicks towards the west landed in the end zone. There were just three punts in the game.

Like most of his Miami teammates, running back Ricky Williams said it was all about mental toughness in dealing with the conditions.

“It does hurt when you get tackled on that icy field,” Williams said. “But it’s just mental toughness to know we’ve got to go four quarters in these conditions and keep playing.”