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Drops, threats on path to Super Bowl for K.C.’s Valdes-Scantling
Elizabeth Merrill, ESPN Senior Writer
Feb 9, 2024, 10:00 AM ET
MARCELLUS SCANTLING HAD just finished a cigar and was about to turn in when the phone rang. It was almost midnight on a late-autumn Monday in west Florida, and the Scantlings had been up watching the Kansas City Chiefs lose to the Philadelphia Eagles on “Monday Night Football.” Marcellus texted their son, Chiefs receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling, to console him. But then Tahisia Scantling’s phone started to buzz.
She’s a real estate broker and always feels compelled to answer the phone in case a client needs help. But this caller was not a client. He was furious, because Marquez had dropped a football — a 55-yard pass, with 1:50 to go and Kansas City trailing 21-17. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes hit Valdes-Scantling in stride, in the rain, and Valdes-Scantling bobbled it, dropped it, then fell into the end zone. Mahomes put his hands on his head. Valdes-Scantling looked in the direction of his quarterback and picked himself up. Then some strangers searched the internet, found the closest number to Valdes-Scantling and vented. One person told her to watch her back; in another call, a man strongly encouraged her son to catch the ball.
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Tahisia eventually stopped answering and Marcellus eventually went to bed. It wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.
Back in Philadelphia, Valdes-Scantling’s direct messages blew up before he even walked off the field.
“I was told to kill myself,” Valdes-Scantling says, “that they were going to kill me. And I got voice memos about how someone was going to shoot me, or how I lost them all this money and they’re going to come find me. Everything that you could possibly think of, it was said.”
That Nov. 20 game was emblematic of a receiving corps that led the league in dropped passes in 2023, and Valdes-Scantling had become an avatar for the Chiefs’ offensive futility. Even Nickelodeon poked fun of Valdes-Scantling in a promotional cartoon in advance of their “Nickmas” game between Kansas City and Las Vegas, depicting Raiders cornerback Amik Robertson handing the receiver a block of butter, presumably for his butterfingers.
All that negativity flipped on Jan. 28 as Kansas City clung to a seven-point lead over the Baltimore Ravens late in the fourth quarter of the AFC Championship Game. On third-and-9, Mahomes went deep with Valdes-Scantling sprinting downfield. He soared through the air and landed on his back. In his hands held the catch to seal Kansas City’s victory.
When he got to his feet and put his finger over his lips, Valdes-Scantling quieted the stadium in Baltimore and, effectively, shushed the state of Missouri. Chiefs fans apologized on social media, and the hate-dialing abated. Kansas City was back in the Super Bowl, and nothing else mattered.
There are hundreds of stories told during Super Bowl week, oftentimes about redemption, but here’s the truth about MVS: He doesn’t fit that narrative, because he didn’t change a thing. He didn’t lose his locker room and he never lost his confidence. It’s carried him through two colleges, Green Bay and Kansas City.
On that rainy night in Philadelphia three months ago, Valdes-Scantling’s agent, Harold Lewis, sent a series of texts to check up on his client. MVS told Lewis that he felt bad that he let his team and the fans down, but reassured him that he was OK.
“I’ll make up for it tomorrow,” he texted Lewis. “I will definitely make up for it.”
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