When Joe Montana threw a "stink bomb" in his first meeting with Chiefs after 49ers exit
For many, Joe Montana is synonymous with the San Francisco 49ers and their 1980s dynasty. With him at the helm, the 49ers won four Super Bowl titles, and Montana was adjudged the game's MVP in all but one of them.
But for the final two seasons of his career (1993 and 1994), he played in a different shade of red and gold: that of the Kansas City Chiefs. The circumstances of his exodus are already very well-known, but his first meeting with his new team did not go as smoothly as expected.
Speaking to FanSided's Matt Verderame and Patrick Allen before Super Bowl LVII, Joe Montana recalled pranking his team:
"I’m not sure he was ready for me when I got there. We were in our first meeting, and I saw [then-Chiefs offensive coordinator] Paul Hackett who knows me from San Francisco days.
"All of a sudden, there’s this really bad smell in the locker room. And Paul Hackett, right away, knew I threw a stink bomb in the team meeting and it cleared out the whole thing. Marty went running out of there cussing and swearing at me. I was just getting warmed up."
How did Joe Montana fare with the Kansas City Chiefs?
In his first season with the Chiefs, Joe Montana immediately catapulted the 11-5 team to the AFC West title as he made his eighth Pro Bowl. In the playoffs, he led Kansas City to an overtime victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Wild Card round, then defeated Warren Moon and the Houston Oilers in the Divisional round.
But in the AFC Championship game, he and his team ran into the dominant Buffalo Bills. Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas overran the Chiefs in the second quarter with 13 unanswered points, then "Joe Cool" received a concussion in the third and was subbed out for Dave Krieg.
In that same interview session with Verderame and Allen, Montana reflected on his time at Arrowhead:
“It was a great organization and a great team. We should have won a Super Bowl and I apologize that we didn’t, because when we played in Buffalo that year, I couldn’t throw the ball from here to that camera.
"We did the dumbest thing by losing the game later in the year that cost us home-field advantage. We’d already beaten Buffalo once earlier in the year, and even as bad as it was when I was playing in that game, we still had a chance to tie the game at halftime and still turn things around.”
The following year, Kansas City regressed to 9-7 and second in their division, still good enough for a Wild Card spot. But Montana and the Chiefs lost at the Miami Dolphins, while his old team in San Francisco won the Super Bowl with his old backup and eventual successor Steve Young. Joe Montana retired afterward.