For much of the season, we thought that playoff seeding would to be on the line when the Kansas City Chiefs hosted the Denver Broncos on Christmas night for the Week 17 edition of “Thursday Night Football.”
Unfortunate developments, however, have stripped this matchup of most of its intrigue.
In Week 15, quarterback Patrick Mahomes was lost for the season with an ACL tear. In the next game, backup quarterback Gardner Minshew also suffered a season-ending knee injury.
As a result, third-string quarterback
Chris Oladokun — who has spent the past four seasons on the team’s practice squad — finished Kansas City’s most recent game against the Tennessee Titans. He will now make his first career start against Denver in primetime.
“It’s definitely been crazy,” Oladokun remarked of this sequence of events while speaking to reporters on Tuesday. “Stuff happens fast in the league — people always say that. So it’s been a lot of preparation getting ready for this game. I’m super excited to go out there and show the world what I’ve got.”
The Pittsburgh Steelers selected Oladokun in the seventh round of the 2022 NFL Draft. After being waived at the end of his first training camp, the South Dakota State product signed with the Chiefs’ practice squad. While many Kansas City fans have shifted their focus to the offseason, Oladokun understands the significance of this opportunity.
“It’s something I won’t take lightly,” he promised. “These opportunities don’t come around often — so when you get [one], you’ve got to take [it] and run with it. This is not only a big game for our team, but for me personally. [It’s] a big game in terms of letting the league know what I can do — and letting these coaches know what I can do moving forward [when] having that confidence in me. [So] if something were to happen, they feel confident that I can go out there and execute the game plan.”
On Tuesday, head coach Andy Reid pointed to the work Oladokun has put in while studying Mahomes and working closely with quarterbacks coach David Girardi, expressing confidence that he will be ready with standard preparation.
“He looks forward to every week,” observed the coach. “He prepares himself every week to go, so that’s been an easy transition with the verbiage and such. So he jumps in and gets it. He sits behind the offensive drill there, and they mock it; the two backup quarterbacks mock it as if they’re in. They make the calls to David and then go about it. They stay fresh on that, [so] he’s in a pretty good position that way.”
Offensive coordinator Matt Nagy also highlighted Oladokun’s decision-making against Tennessee.
“One of the very first plays we had,” recalled Nagy, “we had a little jet motion where we were going to try to time it up and snap it on time — [but] the timing was off a little bit. What he did [was] stop the motion, let them get set, got the back in the right spot and made a simple play. I think that just speaks to his calm — of where he was at in that moment early on in the game.
“I was proud of him for that. It’s not easy. We were just talking about it earlier: even just the simplicity of a cadence that you just don’t have with those guys. So I thought he handled the early part of it well. We had a few RPOs in there, and he made good decisions. Then he did some things with his legs. I was proud of him.
“I thought he kept his calm the whole time. That’s not an easy moment in that situation. I just think back to the first day that he was with us, what he came from and what he’s worked so hard for behind the scenes with Pat and these guys and Coach Girardi. So here he is, presented with this opportunity — and I know he’s ready for it.”
Reid also acknowledged the playbook will be streamlined for Oladokun — and potentially for quarterback Shane Buechele, who spent two seasons with the Chiefs and was signed from the Buffalo Bills’ practice squad earlier this week.
“You back it up a bit formation-wise,” the coach explained. “You’ve got a lot of guys that are new to it and learning — but we’re still able to do enough.”
One voice Oladokun will not have access to this week is that of the starting quarterback. Reid said Mahomes has not been in meetings while rehabbing from surgery — and will not be cleared to be on the sideline.
“It’s still fairly short after surgery,” noted Reid, “so he definitely won’t be on the sidelines — although he’d like to be. He can’t do that right now.”
