Chiefs’ Terrell Suggs makes surprise trip to Super Bowl
MIAMI — The plan was pretty simple, if not understandable.
After deciding to leave the Baltimore Ravens after 16 seasons, a Super Bowl title and the franchise record for sacks, Terrell Suggs left to return to his hometown Arizona Cardinals and put a bow on his illustrious career.
His ending. His terms.
“They say if you want to hear God laugh, tell him what you’ve got planned,” Suggs said, shaking his head at the irony.
He was sitting at a podium in Miami surrounded by Kansas City Chiefs teammates he barely knew a month ago. Around the corner was Super Bowl LIV, a stage he unfathomably is about to see Sunday against the San Francisco 49ers.
That’s the same franchise he helped the Ravens beat to win Super Bowl XLVII eight years ago.
“You couldn’t have told me that, at the end of this season, I would be here in Miami playing for the opportunity to win a Super Bowl,” he said. “I would have thought that was far fetched.”
Thanks to a crazy chain of events he was able to join one of the best teams in the NFL as it embarked on a Super Bowl run.
Suggs played well to start the season, registering 34 tackles, five sacks and eight tackles for loss in his first 10 games with the Cardinals. Then came a dip in play in which he managed just three tackles over the next three games, a tailspin that included him failing to register a tackle or quarterback hit in 87 snaps in back-to-back games against the Los Angeles Rams and Pittsburgh Steelers.
The Cardinals, trying to create playing time for some young players they wanted to develop, released Suggs after the Steelers game.
As far as breakups go, it was amicable as it gets. But for the first time in 16 years, one of the greatest pass rushers of his generation was out of a job.
Suggs, vested veteran, was at the whim of the waiver-wire process in which claim priority works, in descending order from the worst team to the best. While there was fleeting hope of a reunion with the Ravens, who were in the midst of a landmark season that saw them rise to the best record in the NFL, landing there was predicated on 30 other teams passing on Suggs, including a handful of teams gearing up for playoff runs.
The Chiefs were one of four teams to put a claim in for Suggs. The others were the 49ers, New Orleans Saints and Seattle Seahawks. The Chiefs had the worst record among that group, so off to Kansas City he went.
That is, after a little bit of soul searching and a conversation with Chiefs coach Andy Reid, who promised Suggs he would fit in perfectly with his close-knit team.
“I was a little skeptical,” said Suggs. “(Reid) told me, you’re gonna fit in here. We’re gonna have some fun and go on a run.”
Someone else reached out, too. It made all the difference.
“Patrick Mahomes hit me, too,” Suggs said. “He was like ‘Sizzle, we would love to have you. Let’s go on a Super Bowl run.’ How do you turn down a reigning MVP?
“When he texted I was like, these guys score a lot of points. So, I was like, this might not be a bad idea.”
Reid and Mahomes were true to their word.
“That’s what I thought would be the most difficult, was the chemistry and that actually turned out to be the easiest,” Suggs said. “I’ve been getting along with the guys in the locker room so that’s a blessing.”
Suggs has provided a minimal contribution on the field, collecting five tackles, a sack and three quarterback hits in four games. But he is a presence opposing offenses have to account for, and that creates opportunities for his teammates.
As a Super Bowl veteran he also adds insight to a young team that has never reached this point.
“I’d probably say championship swagger too,” Chiefs safety Tyrann Mathieu said. “I feel like he’s a guy that’s played in this league a long time and has had great success. And he can still get it done.”
This week in particular Suggs has added the element of perspective.
“It’s easy to get distracted, to get caught up in everything,” said Suggs, “but I mean I think all of us, not just myself but the team, does a good job of realizing that this portion of it is this portion of it but we know the reason why we’re here, to play another football game, to win the last football game of the year.
“To enjoy it. It’s the biggest stage and there’s no guarantee you’ll ever make it back here again. It took me eight years to get back.”
That gap between Super Bowls is a poignant reminder to his young teammates not to take this experience for granted.
“There was no way in the world you could have told me, back then, that was going to be my only Super Bowl,” Suggs said. “I thought we were going to have a line of Super Bowls. But I was wrong and mistaken so here we are eight years later and this is only the second time I’ve been (here) in my career so it has a little more meaning to it. You have to cherish it.”
Contact Vincent Bonsignore at vbonsignore@reviewjournal.com. Follow @VinnyBonsignore onTwitter.
