It appears the Kansas City Chiefs were prepared to go to extreme lengths to avoid forfeiting their Week 14 contest against the New England Patriots.
Just hours before kickoff last Sunday at Gillette Stadium, the Chiefs realized some of the team’s equipment had accidentally been shipped to Newark, N.J. So Ridell, the company that makes the Chiefs’ helmets, reached out to a local source for help: Masconomet Regional High School athletic director John Daileanes.
Daileanes didn’t pick up the Ridell representative’s first call Sunday, thinking it was “about some other winter stuff that he needed to deliver” until he called back “15 seconds later.”
“He told me, ‘I really don’t have too much time to talk. But a bunch of the Kansas City Chiefs helmets and shoulder pads and other equipment are in Newark, New Jersey right now,” Daileanes said, according to the MetroWest Daily News’ Dom Nicastro. “‘There’s a big snafu. I need to get down to (Masconomet, Mass.), and if it’s possible could we use your helmets for the game?'”
The Chiefs wanted their new gear to look as close to the originals as possible, so Masconomet’s helmets seemed like the perfect fit. The only difference, per Nicastro, “Masco has an ‘M’ inside its high school Chieftains arrowhead, and the NFL Chiefs have ‘KC’ inside theirs.”
In the end, the Chiefs’ gear made its way to Foxboro before kickoff, and Kansas City ultimately beat the Patriots. Daileanes was glad the team didn’t have to forfeit, would have loved to have seen his school’s helmets in the spotlight.
“It would have been great. I just wanted to see one random Masco helmet,” he said. “I thought that would have been pretty classic, but it never came to fruition.”
We think it would have been quite the sight, too.
