Chiefs at Bengals - Week 17 - Record: 2-14

I want to begin by emphasizing that this blog is about looking at each Chiefs game in depth. I simply want to ruminate on paper (or in “cyperspace” if you will) on how the Chiefs are doing game-wise, and the novel feature of this blog is that I pay no attention to anything else outside of the game.

I say this because I am fully committed to this purpose, though I haven’t been addressing much in-game stuff lately. Last week I barely said a word about the game itself and my feelings about it. Oh there were many such feelings, but my focus recently has been on that one single item that determines what precisely it is about any given game that makes up what we actually do out there.

That item is, of course, how strong the leadership of the front office is.

With that in mind I do want to continue that thread, even at the expense of an more thorough rendering of the actual game today with the Bengals. I must, however, share some important thoughts about the nature of my approach to the Chiefs and blogging on them.

Giving attention to the game itself and nothing else is a tactic that has its benefits but it also has its liabilities. One is a confession I have to make here, to be fair to Carl Peterson. Last week I made a very brief comment about Sylvester Morris being a wasted pick. It turned out to be, but not necessarily because of the GM. It was because Morris had been seriously injured during his first season.

The benefit is that I don’t have to endure hearing about the inane things people like Carl Peterson do to wreck my team. Last Sunday I’d stretched the bounds of my sports celibacy to look at the story about how Peterson treated tackle John Tait a few years ago. In some respect I was not wholly accurate about Peterson’s inability to draft a solid lineman. Well, it seems he did draft a few decent linemen, one of whom was John Tait. Peterson then proceeded to treat Tait like crap, inspiring him to take a hike and later help the Bears get to the Super Bowl.

As I read this story—thinking about how fortunate I am not to have known about it only because it would’ve aggravated me so much—I had to wonder: How much of this filth has been going on in the Chiefs front office? How much exactly are the Chiefs reviled by other teams and their top people? Furthermore—and most disheartening:

Exactly how many Chiefs players are grudgingly fulfilling their duties as Chiefs only because the league keeps them in Chiefs uniforms and punishes them severely for speaking out against a team they too revile?

This is the most harrowing question of all. I would otherwise shrug it off as a fleeting thought except for two critical considerations that do not make me feel good at all.

One is our record. At 2-14, we’ve demonstrated without a doubt that we are indeed one of the very worst teams in the league. This latest loss was a pathetic showing against another sad sack team, hardly worthy of a mention even though, as I did say, this blog is all about the game. (31 total rushing yards on the day? What’s new? Finally breaking the record for fewest sacks by a team in a 16-game season? You want to talk about that?) As it is we’ve got the second worst record in the entire NFL—thank goodness for the Lions! But just like the 0-16 Lions we lost to every single team we played on the schedule. (We did defeat Denver and Oakland but lost to them also.)

The most telling index of how good or bad something is: the scoreboard. We can talk all we want about how neat this is or how spiffy that is, but if we’re not flat-out winning ball games then there is something really really wrong.

I don’t think Herm Edwards is the problem. Getting rid of Carl Peterson was a big plus and I do know a new GM could blow Herm out in a nanosecond. But I actually think Herm is good for us. Bear with me now. What I’m more frightened of this that second thing that gets me.

It is a thought that I never thought I’d think before but perhaps, just perhaps others have. It may even be sacrilege for me to speak of it, and that may be why anyone else who dares to think it does not share it so widely.

To set this up, think about it. We had one of the strongest teams in all of professional football in the 1960’s, when Lamar Hunt was bold and brash and led the cutting-edge AFL. Along came the 70’s and 80’s when we were lucky to have years of mediocrity because Hunt simply dropped the team in the lap of know-nothing-about-football Jack Steadman for years upon years upon years.

Carl Peterson came in, bold and brash and fresh from building a quality USFL team in Philadelphia and used his touch to resurrect the team into arguably (with apologies to the Buffalo Bills) the best team in the AFC through that decade (ahem, at least in the regular season). But then we discovered just how awful Peterson was long-term, partly because Hunt continued his avowed “hands-off” policy regarding football and player matters.

Can you see the common thread here? No, it is not Herm Edwards, upon whom everyone seems to unleash their fury. But why look down at the paintings and furniture in the house to see where the termite damage is? No you’ve got to look up, in the rafters, where the wood is wettest and lightest.

Up, past the general manager position.

You see where I’m going with this.

Heaven forbid I should say anything against the Hunt family, because while Carl Peterson was not lionized, Lamar Hunt was. And rightly so. Nothing will take away any earnest Chiefs fan’s respect for him. And Clark Hunt is right now just feeling his oats for this kind of thing. That’s cool.

But this supposedly noble “hands-off” position the Hunts have prided themselves on has got to end. It is not so much that the considered positive here is that an owner is hands-off, but that he should be hands-off in areas he should leave to the right people who best do those things. Proclaiming with a smile that you are “hands-off” may actually be an implicit confession that you just don’t know what in blazes you are doing up there.

I pray this is not the case.

I really hope Clark knows what he is doing and does the most important thing he could do: Be very hands-on and get the best damn general manager there is, and then do one vitally crucial thing to be even more hands-on, and that is to simply

Make damn well sure he does his damn job.

Some will say that this should not be about money, that the Hunts were always making sure the Chiefs made the family a buck. But making money is actually a testament to how good a job you are doing and the number one thing that gets the Chiefs money— for whoever gets it even if it all goes to the Hunts— is

Winning football games.

The Hunts may have told whoever the GM was, “Make us money.” I don’t think the GM’s of the past ever volitionally sabotaged the Chiefs just to put a dollar in Lamar Hunt’s pocket, I just think they were sadly deficient at doing what it took to win football games. Oh Steadman and Peterson were pretty good with marketing and promoting and selling the team but what was the thing that was missing? (Do I have to write it again?...)

Fielding not just a winning team but one respected as one of the finest organizations in the NFL.

Sure someone can say “What about the 90’s and what about 2003 and what about the miracle end of 2006?” The NFL is designed in such a way that anyone can have special things happen at any time. But a 2-14 record is proof that we are woefully deficient at even remotely being in any position to capitalize on that parity. What is amazing is that this year the AFC West was prime for the taking even if we had a mediocre team! Everyone in it sucked. How sad it is that we sucked the most.

Why belabor the point.

The good things we can look at now include the fact that we’re getting a new GM. This is the most wonderful Christmas gift of all. Whether the gift is gold stardust or lumps of coal will remain to be seen, and that will be mostly a response to—(whimper)—how much Clark Hunt can convince the best guy available that this is a terrific opportunity. Watch and see. I won’t be doing that, as you know, because I just can’t stand the repercussions of such things; it’s bad enough to think of the implications now as it is. But here it is, here’s the million dollar question:

Is the Chiefs’ reputation so soiled that the first 15 guys we want refuse to take the position and the 16th one who we hire is just a reincarnation of Jack Steadman?

If that’s the case, please, go ahead, you can kill me now.

As for the team itself goes, it does look like there is great promise. There are the Dwayne Bowe’s and Jerrod Page’s and, yes, thank goodness for Dustin Colquitt. Oh, and I just saw that Brian Waters made the pro bowl again. So we’ve got one pretty dang good O-lineman, yay!

And again, I may be completely totally pig-headedly wrong about this, but I still think Herm Edwards is the best thing about this Chiefs team right now. He has done everything he can to hold this dilapidated shack together through the season. He hasn’t done the best game calling, I know, and he hasn’t closed out games the team should have won, but, hey, looking at this team it could have just as easily been the case they shouldn’t have been in any of these games to begin with.

I plan to have a final post-mortem closing post soon—a letter to the new GM regarding the things I see the team needs. Should Clark Hunt truly become a strong respected owner, we’ll get it done. I’m going to hope for the best and write with that in mind.
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