Chiefs at Lions - Week 2 - Record: 0-2

Okay, this isn't the "Fire Todd Haley" blog, but it certainly could be. No, it is simply "The Chiefs Game Today," and it is indeed about the Chiefs, and not the coach.

But the "Fire Todd Haley" theme will indeed be running through the course of this blog, this year, this season, and however many more miserable units of time we'll have to endure having Haley as coach until the day he isn't our coach any more.

Yes, today we faced what may indeed be a very good Lions team. They did look very good today, however awful the Chiefs looked. And I take nothing away from the Lions -- they themselves have been so bad for so long that I do wish them well. Thing is, if they play like this regularly, they should win a playoff game this year, leaving only the Bengals as the one NFL team that would have a longer drought without a playoff win than the Chiefs. (Unless, of course, the Bengals win a playoff game too, then... Well, we know the Chiefs won't be winning any playoff games this year.)

Here's the deal for the rest of the year. It is easy, it is simple, it is quite uncomplicated.

We need three things to be a Super Bowl contending team.

Just three. That's all. I don't ask for much. We do have a lot of things in place that are good. Again, I do like our team's owner, I do like our team's general manager, I like a lot about this team. I like a lot of the players. I could list a bunch of things I like about the Chiefs.

But these three things are in such awful, wretched, pathetic, putrid, and any-other-such-adjective that they really are the focus of what needs to happen for the Chiefs for however long it takes for them to happen.

The three things we need are:

- A head coach.

- A quarterback.

- Some luck.

I've already written a ton about a lot of this, but here's the latest:

A head coach. Is there still anyone with a nanoliter of brain cell matter who thinks Haley needs to stay leading this team for one more nanosecond? If so, raise your hand. I thought so.

Come on people, there is no way in the world an NFL team can do what this one has done over the past two regular season games, over the past four altogether including the final game last year and the playoff game, and still hang around. It just doesn't happen.

No no no no NO it doesn't have to do with turnovers, and it doesn't have to do with lack of talent. Turnovers happen but that's just the game. Some teams have better talent than others, but not by this much of a margin.

No, sorry.

This is coaching.

Haley's inadequacy was evident today after the opening coin toss. When you have a team like this one, who uses the run best with the score as close as possible, you want the ball with the score 0-0 at the beginning of the game. Well, the Chiefs won the toss, then deferred to receive the ball at the start of the second half. Yes, I know in the grand scheme of the game it didn't mean anything! The point is that this is the NFL where the talent is not so disparate and there is always the possibility any team can beat any other team on any Sunday!

What happened was Detroit stormed down the field, scored a touchdown, and instantly we were on our heels. And it was worse when we got the kickoff at the beginning of the second half, down then 20-3. So what was the point?

Listen. Let me make this perfectly clear. I am one of those guys who always always wants to hang on to a coach we already have for far too long! I was one of the last guys to support Herm Edwards! I was even with him to the very end, on his side, championing him to stay! I liked John Mackovic! For cryin' out loud I even liked Frank Gansz! (Okay, okay, I admit, not for that long.) I only disliked Marty Schottenheimer after he got fired and that was because I was just so mad at him for being such a choke in the playoffs!

This is one instance, however, when it is categorical. Todd Haley simply cannot stay. He should be fired, and right now. No "Let's give him a bit more time." No "He's just had some rough luck." No "It was the lockout's fault." Or any other excuse.

Take care of business now and get us a coach, even if interim, so we can have a good solid coach.

A quarterback. Today was another nail in the coffin of Matt Cassel, and another point for the case to get the best QB in the draft next year for the long-term future.

The nail was Cassel's complete inability to move the ball through the air. Sure Bowe dropped a couple of passes, but only a few times did he get decent separation. The other receivers were worthless, yet again, and it wasn't entirely their fault. And some of the six turnovers today were interceptions in which Cassel just threw very poor passes.

The point earned for my incessently strident case for a QB was in seeing what first-overall-pick-in-the-draft Matthew Stafford could do for the Lions. What is the main reason the Lions are going to compete this year? Everyone knows the answer:

They have a future Hall-of-Fame quarterback.

You could see it all over Stafford today. He fired the ball right where it needed to be, he knew what was going on, he brimmed with confidence. He still looked a little raw, but I'd sure rather be the team to have a Matthew Stafford getting all ready to make us a true contender right now. Instead we've got a seventh round pick who in college was a career backup throwing a grand total of 24 passes, and absolutely no one even remotely in the mix getting groomed to take this team farther than one playoff game.

Some luck. We are so due for this. We are so due for luck it isn't even funny.

Instead we keep getting the worst worst worst luck you can possibly get.

How's this for our luck? In fact, this will say it all, really.

Here's a simple question for you: How many teams have any players who suffer season-ending anterior cruciate ligament damage ever? I mean of all 144 North American team professional sports teams (football, baseball, basketball, hockey), of all the thousands of players in that mix who play hard and stress their knees day in a day out, how many teams mind-you have a history of having even a single player endure a critically damaging ACL injury?

30 of those teams? Maybe 40 as the most conservative guess? And how many players? Most of them just one. For their entire histories. If any single team has two or three in their entire existence, that's a lot.

Well guess what, completely, thoroughly, and abjectly luckless Chiefs fans.

We've already had two, and may even have a third in three weeks.

That, friends, is not only phenomenally incredible, but that it has happened to three of our very best players makes the odds for this kind of thing to happen simply astrostratogalacticable.

Tony Moeaki against Green Bay: ACL tear and out for the season. Eric Berry against Buffalo: ACL tear and out for the season. Jamaal Charles today against the Lions: it is inconclusive as of this writing, but if you watched it you have to admit it really looked like an ACL tear before he was carted off the field and out of the rest of the game.

This season is making that train wreck look like playtime in the sandbox.

Too much. Absolutely too much. Enough writing for now. This just too much.

Thank goodness I have a whole week to find even more gruesome adjectives that will describe next week's affair with San Diego. I really don't know if I'll find them. I'm already scared that I won't be able to find them for Pittsburgh, and New England -- several weeks from now!

But hey, maybe Clark and Scott will do the right thing with their head coaching situation before then, and there will be just one little thing this year that'll make me a nanoliter less depressed.
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