Bengals at Chiefs - Week 11 - Record: 1-9

I really don't think there has ever been a darker day for Chiefs fans ever in the team's history.

Yes, there have been the awful playoff losses. But at least we were a good team.

Yes, there have been the awful seasons. But at least there was reasonable hope we could pick it back up for next year.

But now, right now, I just don't know of a time that is more abjectly wretchedly pukifyingly awful as it is right now for Chiefs fans.

And ya know? I have proof.

Today was "Wear Black Day" at Arrowhead. How amazing is that. That enough fans wore black to make the statement, and quite a few did. At one point when most of the fans had gone home, sometime in the third quarter, they pulled the camera back to show the crowd, and it was indeed a sea of black. Well, "sea" is not exactly the word, more like a large pond, but still.

A lot of black in the stands.

Not going to go over all the gory details of the game today. They just weren't a whole lot different than they've been all season -- we weren't in this game and were never going to be. It wasn't even funny -- in fact it has gone way past being funny in any way.

What I'd like to do is just go over two of the most critical things that the Chiefs have got to do to climb out of this abyss, but first, we must face one of those extraordinarily brutal things that makes this time so dark. It wouldn't be so bad if our headlong dive into the first draft-pick slot next April scored us a quarterback that'll be truly fully exceptionally studly for the next fifteen years or so. But we quite simply picked the wrong year to be frightfully bad, by just a single year.

Look at Indianapolis right now. (And I knew this was going to happen.) For eons they had Peyton Manning to get them to playoff glory after playoff glory, including a nifty Super Bowl title. Then last year, for the first time in those eons of years, Manning is gone for the season with a nasty injury, the Colts schlurp, and they get to nab the next Peyton Manning in the draft, Andrew Luck. Luck hasn't been that phenomenal this year, but he has led the Colts to a 6-3 record so far -- and he's still only a rookie. Even if we were the second worst team last year we'd have scored RGIII who's shown he can be especially studly himself.

Meanwhile, look at what us Chiefs have to look forward to in April. Matt Barkley? He looks like a shinier Matt Cassel if you ask me. Geno Smith? He's tanked. Johnny Manziel? Suddenly flashy and popular, but NFL material? Collin Klein? They say he's the next Tim Tebow. (And let's not forget to mention another aspect to this deeply dark day: K-State lost last night after Klein had an atrocious day, pretty much dashing their once very possible national championship hopes.)

I just don't follow college football a whole lot, but there has definitely been a humongous dearth of talk about the next Peyton Manning coming out of college.

Right at the time we so so so so so so so need that guy.

This is precisely why this is the darkest time for Chiefs fans, the darkest, cruelest, meanest, ugliest, and any of hundreds of other such connotative adjectives you can barf up. While we should be at least that little bit gleeful inside about our assured future largesse, we can't even do that.

We're not only bad now, but appears there's only more bad to come.

So what to do.

That first thing to look at is the players. Do we actually have decent players out there or not? I looked at all the draft picks we've gotten in the past three years, all the years after Scott Pioli's first pathetic attempt in '09 when he ridiculously took Tyson Jackson first and then proceeded to select a horde of other dudes none of whom have been even remotely meaningful (except Ryan Succop, but he was just a surprisingly nice very-end-of-the-draft gift).

Here are those players, and I'm only including the ones that are still on the roster (with round and overall pick numbers):

2012
1 11 Dontari Poe NT
2 44 Jeff Allen T
3 74 Donald Stephenson T
4 107 Devon Wylie WR
2011
1 26 Jonathan Baldwin WR
2 55 Rodney Hudson C
3 70 Justin Houston LB
3 86 Allen Bailey DE
4 118 Jalil Brown DB
5 135 Ricky Stanzi QB
2010
1 5 Eric Berry SS
2 36 Dexter McCluster WR
2 50 Javier Arenas DB
3 68 Jon Asamoah G
3 93 Tony Moeaki TE
5 136 Kendrick Lewis FS

Now, you'd think this'd be a great foundation for the future, but here's my question. Are these guys all on the team because they're really that good, or are they on the team because we have no one better?

Did Scott Pioli actually do a splendid job drafting these past three years, or did he do a sucky job of it and we're just playing these guys because they're who we've got?

What's the answer to the question?

I'd say guys like Eric Berry, Tony Moeaki, and Justin Houston make it seem like he scored. But then I'm really not sure about guys like Dexter McCluster, Kendrick Lewis, and Allen Bailey. And guys like Jon Baldwin drive me crazy.

This leads to the second thing.

Coaching.

There is absolutely no question this entire staff needs to go. Too many things to even mention make this imperative. Telling your players "You fumble and you sit" reflects tremendous inability to manage a team -- and that's just one of the lesser problems. I was nervous about Romeo Crennel from the get-go, really hoping that the Chiefs not hire him as the permanent coach after he took over for Todd Haley. What did they do? Went off and hired him.

The most important thing the Chiefs must do is to get that great quarterback, but as we've just seen that looks hopeless, at least right now it does. But we can still do something else almost as important and perhaps a bit more within our capacity to get.

First, Chiefs ownership must keep Crennel and company until the end of the season. It just seems pointless to fire him now and then have to go through all the stuff we went through last year all over again. Fire him now and what you get is an interim space-filler guy like Crennel who everyone gets unusually fond of then we end up with him. Don't do it! Just let Crennel finish up this train wreck then we can start brand-spankin' new fresh in January.

Then -- in fact it may go without saying that they should be starting this right now: Seek and find and get the smartest, toughest, keenest, most determined, most thoughtful, most incisive, and simply the best coach that the bazillions of dollars Clark Hunt has on-hand can buy. Find a guy who's all the Bills rolled into one: Bill Walsh Bill Parcells Bill Belichick (I definitely remember writing this already. Guess I have to keep writing it until the Chiefs actually do the thing...) Cripes I think I'd be happy if the guy we get is two of those Bills. No, I'd be happy if he were even one... or wow, even one-half of one of those guys because it'd be infinitely better than anything we've had. And reeelly try to get a sound college guy or the brightest young star in the NFL's assistant coaching ranks -- if we get an NFL retread who's tried head coaching six other teams I'm going to be sick.

You know, I recently watched one of those NFL Network "Ten Best" shows. This one had the ten most motivational coaches ever. You wanna know something wild?

Five former Chiefs coaches were mentioned. Five!

Hank Stram was No. 8, Marty Schottenheimer was No. 5, and Dick Vermeil was No. 2. No. 2! Only Vince Lombardi (of course) was higher. Marv Levy and Herm Edwards were mentioned as "Best of the Rest." As far as Chiefs coaches with any length of service, the only guy not there is John Mackovic.

This made me think. Have the Chiefs ownership/management just not been able to find a good, solid, genius head coach who gets the damn job done and doesn't have to be a big rah-rah guy? I mean, I'm not dissing Hank Stram or Dick Vermeil at all, those guys were super-geniuses. But come on!

When, WHEN are we going to have a coach who just flat knows what the hell he wants to do with our football team and gets it done? And of course I should add, finishes, because as "great" as Marty was he devolved into a waaay below average coach every year after Game No. 16. Every stinkin' year.

Can you imagine it? Really, in your mind, close your eyes, and dream a little bit: Roaming the sidelines... a good, bright, solid, focused, fully integrated head coach. You can see it in his eyes, look there, do you see it? Fully committed to sustained Chiefs success at any price and knowing exactly what to do to get it.

Ahh. Nice thoughts. Very nice indeed.

If we all knew that was a possibility,

A very real true actual possibility

Then maybe this wouldn't be the darkest day ever.

As it is...

::Sigh::
_