When I started this blog back in 2005, I envisioned just writing a bit about each game, enjoy how we were doing, revel in recognizing the best of our team and lament about the not-as-best with honest and clear assessments. Each game would be about the game and pretty just the game, and maybe I'd add some about where we were at in relation to the rest of the teams and our playoff possibilities to the extent that I knew.
It'd be fun.
Well, this year it has been an entirely different endeavor. I've actually barely talked about items within each game, because the implications of what is going on right now with this team overall have been so pressing. This year it has purely been therapy, because I am such a passionate Chiefs fan and the Chiefs of 2012 were so utterly, astoundingly, sublimely wretched that this writing has probably been the only thing that keeps me sane through it all.
I've never written in this blog as much as I have this year. I've had to.
Here're the things that I simply have to splurch onto this post, just because I have to. I can't help it.
The abysmalosity of this season, wrapped up today in a typically underwhelming hammering by the Broncos:
We reached (and far surpassed) the minus-200 point differential plateau, or Marianas-sized trench as it should be. Very few teams reach it. Only the worst of the worst do. We barely beat two sucky teams this year, while they were saying Denver's only three losses were to three of the best in the NFL.
I think they said Denver had five players with 40+ receptions on the year. I'm pretty sure we didn't have one. I could think of a dozen different statistical evidences of just how atrocious the Chiefs performance was this year. There are so many it is hard to bring them to mind to put them down. Things like other team's quarterbacks who've thrown for five or six touchdowns in a game. I think we've had, what, eight or nine TD passes all year. Look it up! I'm sure it's close to that.
We were 0-12 against the conference this year. Think about that. I'd bet in the history of the NFL only winless teams like the 2008 Lions or 1976 Bucs could claim that. There're probably a couple 1-15 teams whose sole win was against an opposite conference team, but if you looked it up I'd bet only the worst of the worst went winless against every other team in their own conference.
Our best receiver is our punter. While the Broncos were making one-handed grabs for touchdowns left and right, our receivers were bumbling about as usual. But with the second-to-last punt on the day, Dustin Colquitt had a snap sail on him and he reached up with his right hand and -- wow! -- what a spectacular one-handed grab! No touchdown though, just another punt. Yay.
Meanwhile to get to his last punt of the day, we had 4th-and-2 with two-minutes left. And we punt the ball. At that point Denver kneels for three straight plays. Sure with the score 38-3 it didn't matter a whole lot, but it was just an indication of how lame this team is, especially its coaching. Romeo Crennel said he was proud of his men for never giving up. Yay. He still can't respect them enough to go for it on that 4th-and-2 just to make the statement, to stay in there and give it your all even when all is lost. Even though it was Brady Quinn, still. The crutch that Crennel had for a bad leg meant more than that in this game.
I saw earlier this week that Matt Cassell was dead last in QB rating, 66-point-something. I'd seen Brady Quinn's mark even worse, 60-point-something. I'm sure it didn't get any better today. So there ya go. The Chiefs 2012 quarterback performance. I just don't know how you could get any worse than that. I mean, I don't know how they arrange the quarterback rating, but I'm pretty sure that to get a rating lower than 60 you've got to complete only three passes for minus-18 yards, throw six interceptions, and get sacked seven times. Wait, didn't that happen to us a couple games this year?...
Otherwise, a couple of playing-against-Denver memories.
Remember the final game of the season three years ago, in Denver? We sucked then too but we'd had Scott Pioli and Todd Haley for just one full year, the first year of the rebuilding process? Remember that? We went into Denver and pasted them. Derrick Johnson had something like 14 pick-six's. I exaggerate, but if you remember that game you know what I'm talking about. It was splendid. Well, this year was supposed to be the full fruition of what was supposed to be, what was supposed to be coming out of that game. Today it should be us going into the playoffs with home-field advantage throughout, not Denver. But then, they have Peyton Manning and we've had Matt Cassel. Yeeeee-ah.
Remember that game late in the 1990 season, the one against a reeling Denver team when Steve DeBerg hit Rob Thomas and he ran up the sideline for a game-sealing touchdown? I treasure that play in my heart because it just represented a turning point when the Chiefs got to be great for a while after Denver had for so many years. In fact in the 90's the Chiefs had the best regular season record of any NFL team except the Bills. Better than the Cowboys, the 49ers, the Packers, and the Broncos. Except all of those teams had Super Bowls wins that decade and the Chiefs had... well, you can guess. So now we're back to really sucking and the Broncos dominating.
During the gamecast today they'd said Crennel is as good as gone, but Pioli may stay. Whatever the case, this Chiefs team needs leadership like nothing else. One of those critically wonderful things that someone like Peyton Manning provides is that leadership. So it can't be emphasized enough:
If Clark Hunt is going to build a winning team here, he's got to know football to make the best football happen in Kansas City. (See last post.)
If Scott Pioli is going to show that he's all about that leadership he's got to get out of that funk that it is about him and make it about Kansas City.
As it is those two have got an uphill climb because the most harrowing thing of all is not even that we had the crappiest of crappy seasons. It is that for the first time in however many years there isn't a marquee franchise quarterback in the draft at the time we're picking No. 1.
Every Chiefs fan knows how much we need a drafted and developed quarterback, and for the umpteen-gazillionth time that guy is just not going to be there when we draft. And we're drafting No. 1. How stinkin' rotten is that Curse.
As it looks right now we're faced with picking some other quarterback off the retread pile for the -- okay, I won't write "umpteen-gazillioth time" again -- and seeing what happens with that. But it won't mean anything until we
Get that leadership.
I truly believe that leadership deficit is what is killing us. Look at our talent. It seems others think we've got the talent too, because at the beginning of the year most thought we'd contend. But look what happened. At least a dozen of our best players just played waaay crappier than anyone thought. In any normal instance maybe a few of them would be crappier than people think, but for us this year there were that many? That's a result of a leadership deficit.
And while Clark Hunt is getting football, Scott Pioli needs to get on with hiring that fantastic coach and ultimately drafting and developing that quarterback. Please-oh-please, Chiefs fans are begging you, don't get a retread coach -- sheez we're already faced with having to get a retread quarterback from somewhere.
For cryin' out loud, 1987 is the last time a Chiefs D&D quarterback won a game for us. There ya go, there's another stat to look up. It'd require scouring games and some counting or just some computer wizadry by some sabermetrics guy. But here it is: Which team is second-to-last with number of wins by a their own D&D quarterback since 1987? That is, since that September game in 1987 -- 25 years ago -- the Chiefs have had zero wins from their own D&D quarterback. How many is the next fewest? It's got to be at least 20 or 30, and if it's any higher it's just that much more of a brutally ugly testament to the Chiefs abject futility in this area.
So how does Pioli do that if he can't get one with the No. 1 pick? Could he trade down? Is there any way he can get a Ricky Williams-type trade going, that one where I think it was the Saints traded all their picks to get Williams in the draft? Why can't Pioli show some leadership ganas and swing that kind of a deal, then we can get lots of picks and still get a Matt Barkley or Geno Smith at No. 17 or somewhere like that? Look what the Hershel Walker trade did for Dallas. Is there no team who's salivating over the guy we'd otherwise get at No. 1 but will do us no good, some team that will give up their entire farm system for that pick?
Whatever Pioli (or yeah, whoever the GM is) does, it has got to be about what the Chiefs here need more than anything else.
LEADERSHIP.
When we get that, then we'll contend.
As it is, I've got a lot more banging around in my head, and just not enough space here or time right now to get to it. So without the Chiefs in the playoffs this year yet again, I thought I'd use the next three weekends to blog on three things, just to reminisce about these first 50 years of Chiefs football.
Next week I'm planning to put in a blog post about what I consider the five worst Chiefs seasons when they were in the playoffs. Oh the heartbreaks from those years give us a lot to choose from there. Anyway, you'll get to commiserate with me then, and you can agree, disagree -- it'll be great fun.
The following week I'm planning to put in a blog post about what I consider the five best overall seasons in Chiefs history. That will definitely be the funnest. Good wholesome reminiscing then.
The week after that I'll put in what should be my last blog of the year: the five worst Chiefs seasons overall. I had to split up the "Worst Seasons" category because there were bad playoff results and just plain bad seasons.
Guess what'll be No. 1 on that list.
But then, from that point, we've just got to hope it'll get better. It looks so grim right now, and there's certainly no reason it can't get worse -- but wow, it has just got to be hard for it to get any worse than it was this year. The Curse simply can't be that awful can it?
Let's just hope once again that to get going Clark truly really actually does
Football.
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