With the NFL Trade Deadline passing this week, it’s a good time to remember an era when the Kansas City Chiefs were more often sellers than buyers at this time of year.
Wednesday morning, on “The Dan Patrick Show,” Fox Sports NFL Insider shared a story about former Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez nearly being traded midseason. He reminisced about negotiations between Kansas City and two franchises: the Philadelphia
Eagles, led by head coach Andy Reid, and the Green Bay Packers, led by Mike McCarthy.
“Tony Gonzalez wants to get traded from the Chiefs, right?” Glazer remembered. “At the time, Carl Peterson was the GM; he had two deals: one with the Eagles and one with the Packers. Andy Reid and the Eagles were offered a [third-round pick] and LJ Smith, their tight end, and the Packers were offered a three and whoever their tight end was.”
Glazer is most likely referring to the 2008 season, a lost year in Kansas City that featured a 2-14 record. The year before, the Chiefs went 4-12. The Packers tight end he was likely referring to was Donald Lee, but Green Bay also had 21-year-old Jermichael Finley on the 2008 team.
“This is Tony: he talked to the Chiefs. He wanted to finish his career on a contender,” Glazer recalled. “He wanted to go somewhere else, and they agreed. So they’re really going back and forth, and it’s really up to him.”
“Maybe 20 minutes before, Carl Peterson changes it from a three to a two, and there just wasn’t enough time to do it, right? I got a text from Andy Reid like, ‘I knew this wasn’t going to happen.’ I got a text from McCarthy: furious.”
Glazer told Patrick that Gonzalez lost it when hearing that the trade didn’t go through. He was ready to put the Chiefs on blast for not letting him leave town: “Get your pen out!”
“He wanted to do a story that there was no way we could ever publish in the history of life,” Glazer said. “I never do stories where someone is just emotional… he was like ‘I’m never playing!‘”
“He calmed down — might’ve taken a couple of days off — and went out and finished with Kansas City,” Glazer finished. “Eventually, him and Scott Pioli and Todd Haley were horrible, and they traded him to Atlanta.”
Gonzalez was traded to the Atlanta Falcons the following spring in 2009, and finally won a playoff game in the Divisional Round of the 2012 season.
If the trade had gone through with Green Bay, Tony G could’ve had his Super Bowl ring with the 2010 Packers and quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Too bad.
