KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) – A punter released by the Buffalo Bills will make his first appearance on the field in Kansas City in more than a year as he prepares to suit up in a Chiefs jersey next season.

JL Sports, agents for current and former NFL players, announced on Thursday afternoon, Feb. 22, that the Kansas City Chiefs have picked up former Bills punter Matt Araiza in the team’s first off-season move following a Super Bowl 58 victory.

“Matt has been to hell and back in the last 18 months,” his managers said. “He has handled himself with grace.”

Araiza did not play this past season as he faced a rape lawsuit which was dropped in December. The suit claimed he had sex with the then 17-year-old woman at an off-campus party in San Diego in 2021. The suit then alleged he brought her up to a room where a group of men took turns raping her.

According to the AP, witness statements indicated that Araiza had not even been at the party when the incident was alleged to have occurred. While the claims against Araiza have been dropped, the suit against the other players continues.

Many have speculated that the move also indicates the end of Tommy Townsend’s time with the Chiefs. Townsend is a free agent who signed in the summer of 2023.

“I am proud and honored to sign a contract with the Chiefs. I am thrilled to be able to continue my NFL career,” Araiza said in a statement. “I want to thank my family, who have been my rock and my many friends who have been unwavering in their support.”

Araiza concluded that he is excited to begin the next leg of his career with the Super Bowl Champions.

Tommy Townsend, who has been the Chiefs’ punter the last four seasons, will likely be an unrestricted free agent after the Chiefs announced Araiza’s signing.

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Sixty Years in Kansas City: A Golden Era of Chiefs Football

December 13, 2006, and the mantle of leadership passed to his children, led by Clark Hunt, who became the club’s chairman of the board.

It has been a little more than 60 years since Hunt brought his football franchise to Kansas City and realized a world championship following the 1969 season. It would take 50 years since then to realize a second world championship, but only four more to achieve back-to-back titles for the first time in NFL history in 19 years.

After coming up an overtime short of reaching the Super Bowl in 2018, Head Coach Andy Reid’s team raised the Lamar Hunt Trophy, named after its founder, the following year and reached the Super Bowl for the first time in 50 years.

With one of the best all-around rosters in the NFL – led by league MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes – the Chiefs took home the NFL crown in 2019 and eventually reached four Super Bowls over a five-year span, topping the AFC West for eight consecutive seasons, and winning championships again in 2022 and 2023.

Sports do not always build character, but they most certainly reveal it. There could be no more quibbling over when Kansas City might reach a Super Bowl or if Andy Reid was the right man to take the Chiefs there.

The scale and speed of the franchise’s rise as an offensive power was something so startling that no one could quite believe that it had happened. With an improved defense under the direction of coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, Kansas City was a formidable force to be reckoned with now on both sides of the ball.

And if the fans were thrilled with their team’s achievements, then so too did many feel unease, some doing what they had always done comparing the present to the past. But the struggles, particularly on offense, that had plagued the franchise throughout the ’70s, ’80s, and even in the successful ’90s in Kansas City, were soon forgotten.

No Chiefs quarterback had played the game like Patrick Mahomes. When he was on his game, it was like watching a star go nova on the field. Sports strain to stress to us that we are watching history, and Reid’s Chiefs didn’t want to let slip the opportunity to make that literal.

“The end crowns all,” Shakespeare had written. “And that old common denominator, Time, will end it.”

It was time, and what had once been a dream was to become a reality and it would forever after be. Where once there was a chance, there was now history. Where once there was feeling, there was now fact.

The Kansas City Chiefs were world champions not once again, but three more times, and a grateful city could take pride in that and for Lamar Hunt who had bought them a professional football franchise 60 years ago.