Haley Has Chiefs Ready For Stretch Run

All season long, Kansas CityChiefs coach Todd Haley has been beating the same drum. He refuses to admit his team is good.

I agree with Haley’s strategy. The Chiefs are woefully shallow at a number of positions and it seems many of their solid starters are barely above the legal drinking age. The Chiefs have a ton of ascending players and Dwayne Bowe is a perfect example that you can’t allow players to think they’ve arrived too early. Herm never really pushed Bowe and it took Haley over a year to get him right. Whether or not Bowe keeps it up remains to be seen but what Haley has done is pushed Bowe to his potential.  He is doing the same thing with the rest of the team.

More after the jump.

Haley understands, and this should really excite Chiefs fans, that his team has a ton of room to grow. The fact that the Chiefs are winning now is even more motivation for Haley to keep his foot on the gas.

Haley has his player’s minds right. Last week, when they were leading by 11 on the road in Seattle, they got together in the locker room and decided there was no way they were going to lose that game.

Think about that for a moment.

A lot of teams, going into the locker room with an 11 point lead at halftime, on the road, would be feeling pretty good about themselves.

Not the Chiefs. Haley’s team knew that despite their lead, they had missed multiple opportunities in the first half and that those failures could come back to bite them in the rear if they didn’t get focused fast.

The Chiefs did just that and turned an 11 point halftime lead into a blowout win.

Make no mistake, Haley has his team in attack mode. The transformation has been remarkably fast.

It all started a few weeks ago in Denver. The Broncos jumped all over the Chiefs and KC wasn’t ready for it. Shortly after the game, I wrote that the Chiefs needed to trust Cassel to air it out more. They did just that on Sunday, letting Cassel toss the ball around on the opening drive which eventually led to a touchdown.

With Cassel and Bowe playing at their current level, the Chiefs are going to be very difficult to beat. They have a fast an opportunistic defense and an explosive and dangerous offense. They are no longer a one trick pony.

Look for the Chiefs to go all out over the coming weeks. They’ve reached 7 wins and they are likely to hit at least 8 or 9 before all is said and done. There will be no more playing it safe in Kansas City. The conservative play calling is over. Expect Haley, Weiss and Crennel to pull out every trick they’ve ever learned over the next few weeks to get their revenge on the Broncos and to steal a road win in San Diego.

Whether it will work or not is a different story. As well coached as the Chiefs are, they are still young and prone to big mental mistakes as we saw on a few big plays in Seattle. It is possible that these Chiefs will fall just short but make no mistake, this is no flash in the pan team. These guys are for real.

These guys are good.

Haley doesn’t need to tell us so. He’s showing us instead.