On Todd Haley
Thanks to the departure of offensive coordinator Charlie Weis for the same position at the college level, what seems to be an anti-Todd Haley campaign by Jason Whitlock and a poor second half performance by the Chiefs offense in their playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens, the pitchforks of speculation are being sharpened and pointed in the direction of the second year head coach in Kansas City.
What started out as a surprising season by a young, rebuilding team lead by a young, developing, coach of the year candidate has turned into an offseason of finger-pointing and blame-gaming.
It is remarkable how quickly exceeded expectations can lead to unreasonable ones.
The recent tarring and feathering of Todd Haley following the Chiefs’ 30-7 loss to the Baltimore Ravens in the first round of the playoffs is to be expected. The head coach has to answer for everything, both the good and the bad.
Still, the lengths that some are people are going to in order to discredit everything about the season the 2010 Kansas City Chiefs had is almost laughable.
The same skeptical folks who claimed in the preseason that the lowly Chiefs probably couldn’t improve more than a game or two over their 4-12 record from 2009 are some of the same people pulling the rug out from what was an exemplary coaching job by Todd Haley in 2010.
The hysteria reached it’s peak a few days ago when we were all expected to believe in Bob Fesco’s mythical pizza shop text messages that Charlie Weis declared to a his loyal, pepperoni slinging subjects that Todd Haley stripped him of his play calling duties in the second half of a playoff game.
The cup of hypocrisy overfloweth and so I will try to address each of the major criticisms of the Chiefs head coach as fairly as possible.
Complaint #1: The Chiefs only won 10 games this season because they played an easy schedule, not because Todd Haley is doing a good job.
True. Well, the first par is anyway.
The Chiefs did win 10 games thanks to an easy schedule. Had they played a schedule similar to the one they will be forced to tackle next year, there is a very good chance they would have struggled to finish 8-8.
Unfortunately for the folks carrying this banner, the fact that they might be correct still doesn’t hide the fact that their point is irrelevant.
Who cares how the Chiefs would have done with a tougher schedule?
The last time I checked, in the NFL you only have to beat the teams that are on your schedule. The Chiefs accomplished that goal in 2010. The Chiefs accomplished that goal where the other teams in their division failed. For all their talent, the San Diego Chargers lost 7 times. For all their boasting about their 6-0 division record, the Oakland Raiders still lost as many games as they won and even though the Denver Broncos flat out humiliated the Chiefs in Denver, their organization is starting over for the second time in two years and appears to have a long road back to respectability.
People forget how difficult it was for the Kansas City Chiefs to defeat even the most pathetic of opponents in 2008 and 2009. The Buffalo Bills, the Cleveland Browns, no task was too easy for the Kansas City Chiefs because in what was a reality most difficult for Chiefs fans to face, their team was a bottom-feeder too and when two bottom feeders do battle, one of them has to win.
The 2010 Chiefs took a gigantic step forward while the Cleveland Browns and Buffalo Bills still languished at the bottom of the barrel. Those teams failed to beat the easy teams on their schedule and thus remained in the front of the line for the NFL Draft.
Todd Haley and his staff have taught the Chiefs how to beat the teams they are supposed to beat and sometimes, that can be good for 10 wins.
Complaint #2: Haley is too difficult to work with and runs off offensive coordinators.
Everyone points to the fact that the Chiefs have had 3 offensive coordinators in 2 years as clear evidence that Haley is bumbling around, running off coordinators.
For starters, Chan Gailey has nothing to do with any of this. The only thing Haley did wring in regards to Chan Gailey was waiting too long to fire him. A Gailey/Haley marriage was never going to work so Haley cut ties with Gailey, knowing there was going to be some pain involved in implementing a new playbook 3 weeks before the start of the regular season.
While Haley shouldn’t have waited to can Gailey, if you think things would have been much different had he stayed or been fired from the off, you’re delusional. Bobby Wade, Mark Bradley and Larry Johnson weren’t going to succeed in any offense, regardless of how much it was practiced. Matt Cassel was never going to look good in his second season starting, in a new system, with no offensive line and no receivers. I don’t care him God Himself was calling the plays, Cassel still would have gotten sacked.
Thus Haley’s “failures” as a play caller in 2009 were largely a product of the face that the Chiefs were horribly shallow on talent and were building from the ground up. I know Haley is a good play caller because I watched him do it at Arizona.
Still, Haley recognized that he could be more efficient as a coach by bringing in a veteran play caller. For all the talk about Haley being an insecure tyrant, nobody seems willing to point out that he was able to set his fabled ego aside to bring in two Super Bowl winning coordinators to work on his staff. If Haley was so insecure about having talented people around him he probably never would have brought in Weis and Crennel in the first place. He could have just appointed a puppet coordinator to run the offense rather than bring in the best possible candidate available.
Yeah, that screams of insecurity.
Has anyone considered for a moment that maybe, just maybe, Weis was the one with the ego? Is it so far out of the realm of possibility that a man who had just had a long run as the head coach of a college team couldn’t handle having a strong willed and in his mind, less qualified boss breathing down his neck?
Haley didn’t fire Weis. He didn’t run him off. Weis decided to leave of his own accord. There could be piles of reasons why Weis left. They could range from anything from actually wanted to spend time with his son to not being able to handle working under Haley to simply realizing that he liked the slightly less intense atmosphere of the college coaching game better. It could be a combination of things and to point the finger solely at Haley is absurd.
If Todd Haley is insecure I doubt he ever would have fired himself as offensive coordinator to hire Charlie Weis.
Isn’t it interesting that some many of the things that Haley got criticized for in 2009 developed into things he could probably be given credit for in 2010?
Let’s take a look at the 2009 criticism and the 2010 result:
2009: Benching Derrick Johnson
2010: Johnson has his best season as a pro. Is a Por Bowl alternate.
2009: Riding Dwayne Bowe and knocking him down the depth chart.
2010: Bowe has his best season as a pro. Goes to the Pro Bowl
2009: Supposedly insulting Brian Waters by not giving him special treatment.
2010: Waters gets on board, goes back to the Pro Bowl (though largely on reputation).
2009: Running off Bernard Pollard.
2010: Texans have one of the worst defenses in the league. They are terrible easy to throw on.
2009: Fires Chan Gailey to implement his own playbook.
2010: Chiefs offense scores 72 more points than in 2009. 366 vs. 294.
2009: Throws temper tantrums on the sideline, screams at players.
2010: Rarely seen flipping out. Seems cool and controlled on the sideline.
One could easily look at the list above and say that Haley’s methods are working. He has the support of his team and the support of his players. His offense improved this year while running the same playbook that they failed to execute the year before.
The thing that stands out most to me is Haley’s sideline demeanor transformation. This is the clearest example that Haley is not an insecure coach refusing to change but a young coach who is evolving and growing with his position.
The fact of the matter is that it took character to fire himself as offensive coordinator and hire Charlie Wies and it took character to examine his sideline behavior and take great strides to change it.
I’m not saying that Haley is perfect. I have been as critical of the coach as anyone. I have a real problem with the way he handled the running back situation this year. I am still very iffy on his gambling philosophy of going for it on 4th down. I have many concerns about Haley as a coach but I also think that he shows great promise and that there is a great chance that he will continue to improve along with his team.
What I will try to do is always treat the coach fairly in my evaluation of him. That is the reason for this column. I feel the pendulum, heavily weighed down on one side by Jason Whitlock, has swung way too far in one direction without anyone really taking the time to make the points I’ve outlined above.
I’m not asking for everyone to give Haley the benefit of the doubt on every single issue but I am asking for him to be given a fair shake. A couple of bad games against teams with strong defenses shouldn’t sent Chiefs Nation into a panic about the big, bad 2011 schedule. It also should lead to playoff conspiracy theories concocted around a mythical pizza oven, in a mythical pizza shop that shall not be named.