KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- No one is accusing the Kansas City Chiefs of looking like a high school team these days. But they almost had to dress like one for last week's game at the New England Patriots.
When helmets and other equipment for 35 players were accidentally left on their chartered airplane, which moved on to Newark, New Jersey, after dropping off the Chiefs in New England, they asked for aid from a Massachusetts high school, according to The MetroWest Daily News.
The Chiefs arranged to borrow equipment from the football team at Masconomet Regional High School, which is nicknamed the Chieftains, according to the newspaper. The school has a red helmet with an arrowhead logo on the side, similar to that of the Chiefs.
It turns out the Chiefs didn't need the equipment. Their missing helmets and gear were returned to the Boston area and arrived at Gillette Stadium with a police escort about 2:20 p.m., about two hours before kickoff.
"Everybody did a good job of getting it back here," Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. "We had plenty of time, and we rolled."
That's not to say there weren't some anxious moments for the Chiefs, who would have forfeited if they hadn't had equipment for their players by the start of the game. The Chiefs had a group of equipment handlers hanging out by the loading dock at Gillette Stadium waiting on the equipment arrival. One joked the episode was giving him gray hair.
When the equipment arrived, it was rushed to the Chiefs' locker room, with some of the handlers running while carrying several bags of gear. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes was one of the players with missing gear. His normal pregame routine is to warm up without helmet or pads a couple of hours before kickoff and well before the team's formal warm-up period.
"I had to warm up in some different stuff than I played in," Mahomes said. "But it was here in time for me to be able to go out to the real warm-up. They always keep extra stuff around. They took care of us and found a way to make it work, and we just kept rolling.
"They let us know it would be here before we went out there. We might have had to share helmets if it didn't get here."