Bobby Sippio and Dwayne Bowe: The Catching Cousins

Woe is me — Michael Allan is gone. Woe is me — Michael Allan is gone!

I’m just about sick of that sentiment from Chiefs fans, and I’m the guy who championed the Whitworth product as a late-round sleeper over at Real football 365 back when you would have probably guessed that Michael Allan was just some guy you worked with.

The Chiefs still have three solid tight ends on the roster — Jason Dunn, Kris Wilson and, of course, Tony Gonzalez. And, yes, Wilson is a tight end. Right now he is a fullback/H-back, but I still see him as Tony G’s eventual successor. Why do you think we’re using a valuable roster spot on Boomer Grigsby? Ticket sales? To prevent a riot? OK, maybe, but we’re also grooming him to be our eventual fullback. So cutting Allan isn’t that big of an ordeal.

And who else were we going to cut?

A young cornerback? Yeah, right. With our aging starting corners and lack of depth at the position that would have been suicide.

An offensive lineman? Oh, that makes sense, given how well this unit has performed so far.

A defensive lineman? Then we’d only have six. That would work out really well against the Chicago Bears this upcoming Sunday sans Jared Allen.

I could go on and on, but Allan was the sensible choice. We desperately need Bobby Sippio on the roster, playing and making catches for us, so someone had to go. Unfortunately, Allan was just about the only possibility. We should all hope that he clears waivers and joins the practice squad (doubtful), but if not, hey, we did what we had to do after Eddie Kennison‘s injury.

The good news is that our one of our biggest weaknesses, the wide receiver position, might actually evolve into a strength over time.

Look at all of our receivers besides Dwayne Bowe and Sippio. The ancient Kennison might be one hammy pull closer to retirement. Who knows when he’ll be back. Samie Parker – who, I have to admit, did play pretty well against the Texans last Sunday — typically couldn’t catch an STD in the Red Light District with two fists full of hundreds and all the time in the world. As for Jeff Webb, don’t let his name fool you — the guy doesn’t exactly have Spider-Man-sticky hands. What was up with those alligator arms against the Texans? That right there was Pinkstonesque.

Enter Bowe and Sippio, two catching “cousins” with similar frames and similar games. What I like about each guy is that they are what I call third-and-long receivers, which is basically the antithesis of Kennison, Parker and Webb are. Both Bowe and Sippio possess the size, strength and, most importantly, moxie to fight for and ultimately haul in tough balls. They can go up and get balls, go across the middle and overpower defensive backs. My apologies to Kennison, who’s been a great Chief, butI’m not sure if our other three receivers can do any of those three things.

For the longest time we’ve needed a third-and-long receiver. This was made painfully clear last Sunday when we converted only three of 11 third down opportunities. I’m hoping that we now have two in “The Catching Cousins” — D-Bo and Bobby Sipp. Our anemic offense could definitely use that kind of boost.

I also want to talk a little more about Sippio, briefly. I feel like the Arrowhead Addict staff — along with Chris from Arrowhead Pride, Chris from K.C. Chiefs Fanatic, other Chiefs sites and the readers of said sites — really started this Sippio craze. He’s the Boomer Grigsby of the Chiefs blogosphere, or the Tech-Boomer for all our Net-savvy readers, so lets embrace him and cross our fingers that he’s the next quality NFL player to come from relative anonymity. Then we all could say that we helped create the next Chiefs’ folk hero.

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