Chiefs find some unwrapped gifts

KANSAS CITY, MO. —  Sometimes, teams playing their last game of the regular season needing half a dozen things to break their way get their wish.

The Kansas City Chiefs went around all week grumbling at themselves for failing to make the playoffs for the eighth time in nine seasons.

Now they’re rubbing their eyes and getting ready for the playoffs.

The Chiefs (9-7) defeated Jacksonville, 35-30, Sunday which, combined with losses by Tennessee, Cincinnati and Denver, gave them the sixth seeding in the AFC playoffs and a date with the Indianapolis Colts on Saturday.

Larry Johnson scored three touchdowns, had 138 yards rushing and set an NFL record for carries in a season with 416, surpassing the mark of 410 set by Atlanta’s Jamal Anderson in 1998. Johnson’s 1,789 yards rushing surpassed his team record of 1,750 yards set last year in only nine starts.

The Chiefs had feared that, for the second year in a row, they’d wound up the regular season with a hollow winning record.

“It won’t be that disappointing if we don’t get in. It really won’t,” guard Brian Waters had said. “It’s out of our control. And if we don’t make it, it was our fault. It’s nobody else’s fault.”

Jacksonville (8-8) finished the season with three consecutive losses.

“This is where we put ourselves. To walk away, losing three games in a row, that ain’t no good feeling,” defensive end Paul Spicer said. “If anybody in here says this season was a success, they’re lying to you. There’s no way in the world this season was a success, after losing three straight games.”

Johnson said he’d prefer not to have 400 carries “every season.”

“It just means that I know I can carry the ball through an entire season and you have something to gauge me by,” Johnson said. “Now you know you don’t have to worry about tiring me out because you know how far I can go.”

There were some jokes floating around that Lamar Hunt, the team’s founder, who died Dec. 14, had a role in the outcome.

Even Clark Hunt, the chairman of the Chiefs, wondered if his father was somehow involved.

“I’ve had some people in the locker room suggest that maybe my father had a hand in that,” Hunt said after the Chiefs won.