These Kansas City Chiefs literally rolled their way to a shot at another championship
Did you see the Kansas City Chiefs playing the Dallas Cowboys for the championship on Tuesday?
Wait. Aren’t the Chiefs playing the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas on Sunday?
Yes, those Chiefs are, but we’re talking about the Kansas Chiefs of the USA Wheelchair Football League. The team is made up of a group of athletes with disabilities who play the rough and tumble sport of football on wheels.
USA Wheelchair Football League is comprised of 14 teams. The league operates under the umbrella of Move United, the largest adaptive sports organization in the country. It also gets support through a partnership with the NFL.
Wheelchair football is played with adaptions to the more familiar game to match it with the abilities of the athletes. Instead of 11 players on the field for each team, there are seven. The ball is moved by passing and running, except a run is moving the ball along on wheels. All players on offense are eligible receivers.
The field is 60 yards long and 22 yards wide not including the end zones, which are eight yards deep. The rules state that the field must be on a flat, smooth surface that is free of cracks and debris like gravel that could create an unsafe environment for a wheelchair traveling at high speeds.
To score, the teams have to get the ball across the goal line for six points like non-adaptive football, but point after attempts garner one point for a pass completion and two points for a run. Tackles are made by a touch above the waist but the game is still a full contact sport with violent collisions that can knock players out of the wheelchairs they are strapped into.
The athletes wear helmets to protect their heads. For these Chiefs, those helmets look a whole like the ones worn by the Chiefs playing in Super Bowl LVIII.
The championship game Tuesday was played in Dallas. Like those other Chiefs, the Kansas City Chiefs of the USA Wheelchair League returned as defending champions. They defeated the Los Angeles Rams in the championship game last year in Phoenix. That’s not all, they won the title in 2022 by beating the Rams in the championship game in Los Angeles.
Kolton Kincaid of Gardner, Kansas, plays for the Chiefs. He’s also the team’s program director and coordinator. When he’s not doing that, he works as a human resources professional.
Kincaid says his previous football experience was playing defensive positions as an able-bodied athlete in high school. His life was drastically changed when his spinal cord was severed in an accident involving a large piece of equipment in 2013. He’s been confined to a wheelchair since.
He says he doesn’t see the adaptive game as being a whole lot different than the traditional game of football. He does acknowledge the difference in how the athletes have to respond physically to the game though.
“It’s definitely a different kind of physicality,” Kincaid said. “A lot of it involves chair skills.”
“Being able to finesse the chair is essential. You can’t go full speed and run through somebody,” Kincaid said, comparing how an able bodied player can knock someone over and keep moving.
Kincaid describes his team as being balanced with a strong offense and an equally strong defense. He says last year’s team could be described as a defensive powerhouse. They shutout the Rams in the 2023 title game. This year’s team had a 9-1 record.
Military veterans are prevalent in the league’s teams. Part of the league’s funding comes from a Salute to Service grant from the NFL. That partnership requires each team to have at least three veterans on its roster.
Kincaid says there are five veterans on Kansas City’s traveling roster and that the organization works with more veterans through training programs.
The NFL and the Bob Woodruff Foundation, which also supports the league, are the sponsors behind a veterans all star game that will be played during the NFL Draft festivities this April in Detroit.
How did the Chiefs fare in this year’s championship game? After a hard-fought battle with the Cowboys, they lost to Dallas 27-14. They still have a championship record that matches that of the other Chiefs in the Mahomes era, two wins and one loss. Could that mean the Kansas City Chiefs of the USA Wheelchair Football League are on their way to becoming a dynasty?
The league hosted its first national championship game in 2022 and the rolling Kansas City Chiefs have been in every title game since.
Does Kincaid think his team is a dynasty?
“I suppose you could call it a dynasty. When the boot fits,” Kincaid said.
