While I was "working" down on South Beach yesterday afternoon at a celebrity flag football game, my partner down here at the Super Bowl, Big Blue Shoe from Stampede Blue, was able to catch up with a few of the Sirius NFL Radio guys, including former Kansas City Chiefs QB Rich Gannon.
(Side note: Do me a favor and click this link to head to Stampede Blue because BBS did us a big favor by asking some Chiefs related questions to Mr. Gannon. Plus he's got a lot of good stuff up from the Super Bowl as well.)
First off, we all know what we would ask Gannon if we got the chance - Marty Schottenheimer starting Elvis Grbac over Gannon in the 1997 playoff game against the Broncos.
And that's what BBS asked.
Gannon had gone 5-1 down the stretch and a lot of folks (including myself) thought he should have gotten the nod over Grbac, who was out with injury, in the playoff game.
Marty had said you don't lose your job to injury.
"It was really hard to kind of sit there, particularly in ‘97. Because, I think I’d played in the last seven games where we were 6-1 or something. We were really on a roll, and then to step aside. But, then you realize you don’t get many chances in this business, particularly when you go 13-3 and have homefield advantage at Arrowhead for two games with a chance to go to the Super Bowl. It was hard."
That's one of the reasons Gannon said he actually preferred his time in Oakland versus Kansas City. It wasn't so much about the team and the people involved, but the fact that Oakland was his team.
"I think I enjoyed the Oakland experience more from the standpoint that it was finally my team when I got the chance. I played in Kansas City, but under Marty [Schottenhiemer] it was never really my team."
Mr. Gannon is actually currently right across the hall from me filming NFL Sirius Radio.