Back in 1993, Marty Schottenheimer’s Chiefs were supposed to be Super Bowl-bound. The head coach made the franchise a playoff caliber team, posting winning seasons in his all first four seasons till 1992. But one thing he couldn’t do was get past the divisional rounds. So, in 1993, they brought in Joe Montana, the 4x Super Bowl champ from San Francisco who lost his spot with the 49ers but still wanted to prove his caliber. After the 28-20 win over Houston, there it was. One more game, and the Chiefs would go where they hadn’t been in decades.
In the AFC Championship Game, late in the first half, despite trailing 13-6, they came close. Montana spotted Kimble Anders down the seam and delivered the kind of pass that used to silence stadiums in San Francisco. But it slipped through Anders’s hands, into the waiting arms of Buffalo safety Henry Jones. The noise that followed felt less like a celebration and more like confirmation. Early in the third quarter, the pocket collapsed again—Bruce Smith, Jeff Wright, Phil Hansen converging on Montana as his helmet struck the turf.
“Everything went white,” he would say later. He did not return. “When we were in Buffalo that year, I couldn’t throw the ball from here to that camera…that was a Super Bowl team, we should have won,” Montana recalled. By then, Thurman Thomas was already carving the game into memory—eight yards here, ten there, three touchdowns by day’s end. The final score read 30-13. Kansas City had Montana; they had belief, and still, they were sent home. The old powers had held.
In the head coach’s 10 seasons in KC, the team went to playoffs every season. They won only thrice in the playoff competitions, but they were regular season monsters with one of NFL’s best 101-58 record. Yet, Schottenheimer never reached Canton. But should he have? The Chiefs’ former head coach, Herm Edwards shared his thoughts at The Coach JB Show where he discussed Schottenheimer’s tenure as the head coach, and the Chiefs’ playoff loss to the Bills.
Coach JB asked Edwards, “Marty Coach Schottenheimer, do you think he should be in the Hall of Fame?” Without a thought, Edwards replied, “I think so.” Adding more about the coach with eighth-most wins in NFL history at 200, Edwards said, “He was a great coach, man. You know, he was a stubborn coach. He was a stubborn coach, man. You know one thing about him, toughness. You going to run the football, and I mean, and you know, he kind of opened up a little bit, going to play good defense, but he’s one of those traditional guys. And he opened up a little when we got Joe Montana.
“Remember, Joe Montana came to Kansas City? When we got Joe, when we had Marcus Allen, and we had a good crew, but we couldn’t beat Buffalo. You know, Buffalo was kind of, we’d go to Buffalo and we’d lose to Buffalo all the time in the championship game, right? Buffalo was kind of that team, you know, Buffalo was Philly, right? Buffalo was the Chiefs back in those days.”
They were. Four straight Super Bowl trips. A defense that broke quarterbacks. And a hold on the AFC that Kansas City, back then, just couldn’t shake. That Championship loss to the Bills stung. No argument. That bone-chilling January day in Buffalo still haunts Montana. “We had an opportunity and blew it,” he once said, addressing the 30-13 loss. “We actually blew it twice … the (second-to-) last regular-season game made us have to go to Buffalo instead of playing at home. That probably hurt us more than anything.”
But it was just part of a broader pattern: the Chiefs’ playoff record in the ’90s was dismal. Even before Montana arrived in KC and went down to a concussion in the conference round, Schottenheimer’s Chiefs had already tasted a loss to Buffalo. It was back in the 1991 season when the Bills thrashed them in the divisional round. Those playoff losses were probably the reasons why Coach Schottenheimer never earned Hall of Fame honors.
Why Marty Schottenheimer never got to HOF
Back when the Browns were searching for any flicker of identity, Marty Schottenheimer arrived with a blueprint that looked almost old-fashioned: run the ball, play defense, and never flinch in big moments. He had one philosophy: “One play at a time.” The result? A 44-27 regular season record and a habit to show up in January every time. Fast forward to his Chiefs days, Marty’s ten-year reign yielded a 101-58-1 record, three division crowns, and consistent top-10 passing DVOA—even without a franchise QB.
But unfortunately, Coach Schottenheimer was never inducted into the Hall of Fame despite being amongst the nominees. And that postseason record was a big part of the reason why. Because when you’re a head coach with a terrible postseason record (5-13), all those regular-season (200-126-1) wins start to work against you. Think of Coach Schottenheimer as Bill Parcells but without postseason success. Or Andy Reid of his era, before 2020.
The former Chiefs head coach had a great regular-season record, no doubt. But he struggled in the postseason with prime Ladanian Tomlinson, Antonio Gates, Phillip Rivers, Shawne Merriman, Antonio Cromartie, and more. Think about this—George Seifert and Mike Shanahan have won two Super Bowls, and Dan Reeves has been to four Super Bowls. But they were never inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Taken all together, Marty Schottenheimer was one of the best head coaches in the NFL, who improved almost every team he was part of. But we can’t deny the fact that when it comes to the HOF, his postseason record always remained against him.
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