Arrowhead Adventures- Was Herm Given A Chance?

I’m a statistics man, Addicts. They fascinate me.  They can tell a hidden story, they can alter reality.  Some stats I enjoy are the ones from the Herm Edwards era, in my opinion one of the worst in KC history.

Why?

I’m a firm believer that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

So without further delay, here are a couple I think we need to remember.

1. Of the 53  players on the Chiefs kickoff roster in 2008, only seven joined the team prior to Herm Edwards arrival in 2006.

2. Six rookies were in the Chiefs starting lineup on kickoff weekend in 2008. Thats the most for any KC team since the Chiefs became the Chiefs.

What do I take from that?

Herm and Carl thought they had time. Lots of time. All the time they needed to blow up the KC highrise from the basement up and start building from the ground up.

They thought the KC fans that Carl Peterson brought to Arrowhead (yours truly being one of them), would keep coming. No matter what. No matter how many losses. No matter how embarrassing those losses might be.

And they thought the Hunt family would keep them in their cozy offices at Arrowhead for as long as the view pleased them.

Well as we all know they were wrong. Dead wrong. Out of the NFL wrong.

But was Herm given a chance?

From my seat at the top of Arrowhead I would look through my Tasco’s and see that Herm was the worst game day KC coach ever to take the sidelines  at Arrowhead.

But I could also see the results of some damn good draft choices taking the field. And he had  no quarterback worth squat to work with.

As I made that three hour trek home from the 2008 games,

it was becoming more and more obvious and more and more frustrating that we were losing but not by much. And so we come to the third stat for 2008:

In six of the last nine Chiefs losses, the margin of defeat was seven points or less.

At the time my outlook was that we were playing to the level of the competition. We didn’t want it bad enough.  But was that reality?

What can we draw from these stats AA’ers? What do you think?

Was Herm making progress? Did Clark pull the plug to soon? Did we remove the head to cure the headache? Are we headed in the same direction with the current regime? How long do we give Pioli and Haley?