Now That That's Over…

It’s time for the Kansas City Chiefs to focus. Focus like Dick Vermeil would have them focus. No. I don’t mean to imply we need to score 87 touchdowns a game and give up 86. Dick Vermeil had a great mantra as head coach. We can never forget, he used to say, that the main thing is the main thing.

The Chiefs have dotted the last period (conditional draft pick aside) of the last sentence in the last chapter of the Trent Green story. And it’s been a doozy. It really is a shame for things to have ended the way they did, especially considering the journeymanesque career #10 had had until his 2001 arrival in the city that boasts, amongst others, a franchise that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell allegedly claims (via NFL Films VP Steve Sabol about a 1/4 of the way through the 20-minute clip) to be an all-around model for the league.

Trent Green was a lot of things Chiefs fans had dreamed of in a quarterback, dating perhaps all the way back to Len Dawson. His performance on the field was Pro Bowl caliber, his presence in the commmunity family-oriented and giving, his respect in the locker room voiced by teammates throughout his six-year stay. Fans thought, hoped that maybe, just maybe, this would be the captain that would steer the ship beyond that horrid blemish known as the 13-year playoff victory drought. Perhaps, had the winds guided the latter stages of his career through that swell, Green would’ve hung up the spikes as a Chief, his name in the Ring of Fame a given.

It was not meant to be. Herm Edwards is a far from the guy that brought Green to the home of the NFL’s best collection of model citizen athletes club. Now it’s time to see who will be the Chiefs’ new gunslinger.

Damon Huard more than filled Green’s shoes last year. His performance through eight games was a surprise to all, the Chiefs coaching staff/front office notwithstanding. The powers that be at One Arrowhead Drive returned said surprise to the football world (likely including Huard himself and Green) by inking a contract extension with the career backup in the offseason, a deal that encompassed the beginning to the epilogue of the Green story.

Brodie Croyle has all the support he needs, and more, to win the battle for the starting job. But there are naysayers. Oh, they’re thick as thieves; they hold cups below their chin to catch the piles of drool as they await his apparently imminent failure at the professional level to begin so that they can rain down on Chiefs GM Carl Peterson and Edwards with told-you-so spears and another-wasted-draft-pick swords.

One side of the argument litters Croyle’s name with exclamations of weakness, injury-prone laments and the like. Yes. He tore his ACL in game one of his senior season at Westbrook Christian high school in Rainbow City, Arkansas. Yes. His performance in the 2003-04 campaign at the University of Alabama suffered because of a shoulder injury. And yes. He tore his ACL again in 2004. Despite all of this, he also managed to break nearly all Alabama state passing records in his time tossing the pigskin in The Yellowhammer State. He was a finalist for awards in just as many categories as his then-SEC-/now-AFC-West-rival Jay Cutler. Just sayin’.

This QB competition will fascinate. No question. Regardless of who starts on opening day, the two matchups with our non-rule-breaking, class act neighbors to the west will be exciting as usual. If Croyle gets the nod, the powers that be here at Arrowhead Addict want the Tuscaloosa alum to have an honest chance before being thrown to the savages as an afterthought.

Coach Edwards noted the rest of the division has gotten younger at the position. He’d like to do the same. Let’s let him. Unless of course Huard has the clear edge. Either way, let’s get it on.