Harmlash: Inside Adam's Arrow-Head
Chiefs Nation is in shambles. As a result, one of the voices of Chiefs Nation, Arrowhead Adam, and the site he spearheads, Arrowhead Addict, has been taken along on the topsy-turvy hellride. Here’s an unprecedented look inside my head and the civil war that takes place within, and also inside our war room to a certain degree. This is going to either be the greatest of worst post in Arrowhead Addict history — and it may finally prove to us all that I’m clinically insane — but it’s something I have to do…
(Oh, and NSFW language if that’s an issue. We try to steer clear of language as much as we can, but this one is more artistic rant than journalism. Think of it as AA: The Unrated Director’s Cut. Just wanted to give you a heads up.)
Cast of Characters:
Adam Ant – The suicidal side of the writer known as Arrowhead Adam. This is the woe-is-me, world’s-tiniest-violin side. Adam Ant is just about to cave in and give up on the anti-Harm crusade and even covering the Chiefs. To quote BIll Murray, “this man has no dick.”
Adam Bomb – The angry, combative side of the writer known as Arrowhead Adam. This is the eff-you, I’m-right-and-anyone-who-disagrees-is-a-dumbass side. Adam Bomb wants to obliterate anyone who gets in the way of the anti-Harm crusade getting The Preacher fired. Somedays he shows up with dynamite strapped to him, but so far he’s just been bluffing.
Adam’s Rib – The stable, laid back side of Arrowhead Adam, and the one who holds the group together. He was there at the beginning, and will be there at the end, bitchslapping the other two alter-alter-egos when they get out of hand. He knows that we probably can’t do too entirely much about what’s happening with our Red and Gold, and wants everyone to chill out. He still thinks we all should, and have to, speak our minds, though.
Arrowhead Adam – The culmination of the above three alter-alter-egos. The original voice of Arrowhead Addict, for better or worse.
Crane Damage – Outspoken, outrageous and as consistent as anybody in the sports blogosphere or MSM when it comes to his opinions. Hate him or love him, he is those things.
Coach Zach – Frank but friendly. Little Big Brother always lets you know what’s up, while wasting as few words as possible.
The Sports Doc – Most of the time he gives you the exact RX you are looking for while also alerting you of your own potential malpractice. Very opinionated, so, sometimes the best medicine is to take his for what it’s worth, cheek it R.P. McMurphy-style and spit it out.
ADAM ANT, ADAM BOMB and ADAM’S RIB sit around a coffee table.
Adam Ant: The Chiefs are 1-18, yet Herm Edwards has a ton of support. Why don’t I just stick my head in the oven instead of that slab of ribs next Sunday. Nobody listens to me. I’m finished.
Adam Bomb: Shut up, pussy. 2-17 even got Matt Millen fired. Where’s the outrage? This is bullshit. You and Chiefs Nation need to grow a pair. Screw just suicide, I’m going suicide bombing on AA, and I’m taking Harm down with me.
Adam’s Rib: Easy, Firejerk. You’ve got a good point, but Matt Millen should have been gone long before 2-17. And, actually, he was.
Adam Bomb: Whatever. Even Matt Millen’s Lions beat the Chiefs during that stretch. I’m sick of Ant. Even the Hermaphrodites know that Harm isn’t holding up his end of the bargain. Warning us that we’re about to endure growing pains is one thing, but this isn’t just a case of the shin splints — this is Edwards Disease, commonly just misdiagnosed as growing pains. It can be terminal. We need to dig a hole in the desert for this dude, and quick. Casino-style, baby. Dig the hole big enough for Dick Curl, too. But that old, clueless bastard out of his misery.
Adam’s Rib: Does he deserve to be fired? Yes. Has he had a lot of injuries and other obstacles? Sure. But good coaches don’t lean on potential excuses — they ignore and eventually overcome them. He also could and should have brought in more talent instead of going with this ridiculous unheralded-guys-signing-their-second-contract tactic. Problem is that Chiefs fans are so frustrated about being stuck in 8-8 mediocrity that we’re willing to suffer what we think we have to suffer through to get back to the Promised Land. That’s just the thing, though, in the age of parity you don’t have to hit bottom. Then again, we could be wrong about Herm. Some still contend that it’s too early to call.
Adam Bomb: How low have we set the damn bar? It’s almost like we want to hit rock bottom. Like a criminal who accepts responsibility for his actions, packs his Vaseline, hops on the bus to the Big House and takes what’s coming to him. Problem is, we’ve done nothing wrong as fans. That is unless there’s something wrong with leading the league in attendence and noise over the past two decades. The NFL is a feast, and we’re hooked on crumbs like Jason Whitlock is hooked on double cheesburgers. What the hell is wrong with us? It’s all your fault, Nat Nuts. Fans like you let this shit slide.
Adam Ant: I’m out of here. Everybody’s mean. Readership is down —
Adam’s Rib: As it was by a similar percentage last year. Readership is way, way up over last year at this time. It’s the Chiefs, not us. Get it together, man.
Adam Bomb: And if they’ve left, screw ’em — they weren’t real fans anyway. Sick of these second team scumbags.
Adam’s Rib:That’s fam, Bomb. Keep ’em above the belt.
Adam Ant: I’m done with this bickering. What’s the point? A reader recently compared us to Jason Whitlock, fellas. 1-18 and we’re the bad guys? All that nuclear nutjob does is meltdown and all you do is act like evrything is hunkdory. It’s over. We’re losing games, we’re losing our audience, and we’re going to lose our minds if we don’t change things. Later fellas…
Adam Ant trudges out of the room.
Adam’s Rib: It’s alright. He’ll get some shuteye and feel better in the morning.
Adam Bomb: Both of his eyes are going to be swollen shut in the morning if he doesn’t grow a sack and knock it off.
ARROWHEAD ADAM, channeling mostly Adam Ant, takes a call from THE SPORTS DOC.
Arrowhead Adam: Am I being too harsh. What’s going on? Maybe I need to get with the program and just give in, you know, give Herm time like a lot of other fans are.
The Sports Doc: No. Here’s my prescription: Keep going at Herm, knowing that he won’t likely be fired. Chiefs fans need to hear it and you need to get it off your chest. But you do get a little too negative sometimes. Even Edgar Allen Poe would call your stuff gloomy, son.
Arrowhead Adam: So I don’t have to let up on Herm, er, Harm?
The Sports Doc: No.
Arrowhead Adam: As long as I try to be more positive about other things. Like Tyler Thigpen? Or Chan Gailey sticking around as Bill Cowher’s offensive coordinator? Or our secondary playing pretty well despite playing behind possibly the worst front seven in team history? Or like I do with Dwayne Bowe and Mark Bradley?
The Sports Doc: Exactly. One other thing: stop getting onto Jason Whitlock about his weight and going at him so hard. Brother’s got a weight and possibly an ego problem, but he’s a powerful force in the sports journalism world. I wouldn’t cross him.
Arrowhead Adam (muzzling Adam Bomb best he can): It’s all in good fun. I never said that people couldn’t call me the Lanky Loudmouth or the Skinny Scribe, did I? Besides, this site was built by us taking on what Jason calls “the good ol’ boys network,” you know, the establishment as far as the K.C. media is concerned. Good advice, though. Except that last part. I’ve got another call — call you back…
Adam Ant takes a call from COACH ZACH.
Arrowhead Adam: What’s up?
Coach Zach: What’s up?
Arrowhead Adam: I’m frustrated as hell, bro. I feel like Jason Whitlock trying to hulahoop (told ya!). Am I being too hard on Herm?
Coach Zach: 1-18.
Arrowhead Adam: Yeah, but the fans —
Coach Zach: 1-18.
Arrowhead Adam: But —
Coach Zach: 1-18.
Arrowhead Adam: Always putting it in perspective. Thanks, bro.
Coach Zach: Done with this guy. “It’s the players time to play. The players know that. … Our guys will have to understand it and they eventually have to go do it.” What kind of coach says that?
Arrowhead Adam: True.
Coach Zach: OWWWWWWWWWWW! Walter (pit bull) just bit me. I’ll call you back later…WALTER!
Arrowhead Adam e-mails CRANE DAMAGE.
Arrowhead Adam: Honestly, I haven’t been as active this week because right now I’m not sure how to handle the Addicts and stay true to myself and the voice that started AA in the first place. It seems like they are with Harm and supporting the youth movement despite us having the worst record in the league over the last 19 games — even Dee-troit Foot-ball is better!
Here’s the problem…(going all “us and them” on you) Chiefs Nation likes having the wool over its eyes. They like it and, like Tom Cruise, they “can’t handle the truth.” They have just grown accustomed to it. Like with Brodie, they are not going to jump off the bandwagon until it crashes. This frustrates me, so I ram it down there throats harder, which I feel like they reject harder. I’m also trying not to come off like some holier than thou Chiefs prophet, but let’s face it — we have a platform, and me, you and Zach have been right more often than not. Much more. And the last time we did something like this was with Croyle.
We’ve lost the Addicts and I’ve lost myself. I’m thinking about giving up the crusade.
Crane Damage: You’re suffering from Harm Damage!
Dude.
You cannot fucking be serious. I hear the quit in your voice! FUCK THAT SHIT DUDE!
The readership is down because the Chiefs are down, period. Look how high your readership was during the draft and early when there was hope. I mean seriously, this is all the more reason for you to not give up on bashing Harm into the fucking dirt like the LOSER that he is. Fuck!
Fuck!
Seeing you giving up on me and the rest of us sensible Chiefs fans makes me sick. Yeah, the homers are coming out of the woodwork and they are the only ones commenting. It makes me sick as fuck, too, but you can’t change your tune to give them happy horseshit because that’s Bob Gretz’s job. We need to convince the sheep that this coach is the wrong dude and stay on message. The ship is sinking and I don’t want to wait for the special on the Discovery Channel where a dive team with some dude with an Australian accent takes us to the depths of the ocean to raise the U.S.S. Chiefs — when he gets down to the bottom, there’s Harm holding onto the wheel looking up at the replay screen with that stupid “What Just Happened” look on his face.
Arrowhead Adam: Whoa. You’re right. Guess I’m just going to let Ant hang himself with a rope of his old Chiefs jerseys and get back to work.
This is precisely what went down tonight. I haven’t known how to handle the undoing of my Chiefs and the resistance to my anti-Harm crusade, so I went to three of my closest advisors — my dad, my bro and an old college drinking buddy — three die-hard Chiefs fans who also write for this site. As smart and football savvy as Double D and Merlin are — and they are just about the die-hardest of Chiefs fans around — going to the two of them would have been like Barack Obama making Karl Rove White House Chief of Staff. Those meetings would have resulted with Adam Bomb and Adam’s Rib going Heaven’s Gate together and just Adam Ant emerging. This way, we still have Double D and Merlin, but no Adam Ant. Nobody wants to read that little bitch. Sorry, he is.
What now? Well, I’m going at Harm Edwards with renewed intensity. There’s no reason to just think this is the way to do things simply because the Chiefs have never done things this way before. That’s asinine. 1-18 can’t be right under any circumstances ever and he has to go. This was a fight for my Chiefs soul — which I almost lost due to Bug Brains — and deep down in my Chiefs soul I believe that Herm Edwards is dumb enough to cause almost irreversible damage to this franchise that could take a decade to undo. Nobody wants that. Because I believe that, I feel compelled to continue to push. I feel like I have to do my part — However big or small it ends up being — to save this once proud franchise.
Will I try to minimize the sting with a little comedy thrown in here and there? I always do. Will I try to be more positive and keep Adam Bomb locked away? Absoluetly. But going after Harm — just like I went after Brodie Croyle, something I have since been vindicated for doing — is what I have to do. I love writing and I love Arrowhead Addict, but I don’t do this just for me. I started AA along with my brother because it combined possibly my two biggest passions — writing and the Chiefs — and allowed me and now other Chiefs fans to have a voice after being voiceless for so long (and not just from yelling on Sunday). I’m not Jason Whitlock. Let me repeat that — I’m not Jason Whitlock. I’d rather be wrong and get what I want, than be right and have the Chiefs suck. If Herm turns this ship around and takes us all the way I will eat my words and it will be the the hap-hap-happiest Chiefsmas at AA “since Bing Crosby tapdanced with Danny fucking Kaye.” But that’s not going to happen. And no matter what, Elvis (as Randy calls me sometimes in our e-mails) will not be leaving Graceland/Memphis.
So, now, that Arrowhead Adam has returned, he has another message for Clark Hunt: When you send Herm Edwards packing (which you won’t), send Gunther Cunningham and Tim Krumrie with him. Gunther’s lost it. 32nd-ranked defense? Greg Robinson could have stuck around and done that. In the box, on the field, doesn’t matter. He’s a hasbeen retread who’s worn out his welcome. And what good is that outrageous Krumrie drill if the players it drafts and develops are on pace to record an all-time NFL low for sacks in a season? What good does all that yelling do when our front four gets caved in every week? Jared Allen made you look good, buddy, but now he’s gone — you should be, too.
Oh, by the way, if you’re not going to go to the games, then sell the team to someone who gives a damn. There are thousands of Chiefs fans who never miss a game. You owe it to us to do the same. Remember, football isn’t a business — it’s a lifestyle. If making money is all you care about, then go do it elsewhere.
One other thing, since I’ve got my swagger back. If Tyler Thigpen and Chan Gailey’s offense can win two of our last six games with this laughingstock of a defense, then I will let Adam Bomb out of his cage long enough to burn my Michael Vick jersey for all the Addicts to see on a vlog. It’s an easy schedule, so if they can’t win just two then I’ll relaunch the Vick campaign and suggest that Gailey join Gun, Harm and the Krumrie Drill at the end of the unemployment line. Tyler also needs to have over an 80-percent QB rating in this last six games. The gauntlet has been thrown down, gentleman.
Ah…it feels good to be back. I love all you Addicts. Especially when you call me, er, all three of me, out — right or wrong. Without this place I have a feeling we’d all be taking the ribs out of the oven and shoving our heads in instead.