What’d I Miss?
By author
A lot can happen in a week. While I was fishing Lake Michigan, camping out, and escaping the inferno of Oklahoma the Chiefs were busy continuing to not care about pre-season games, getting into fights, and then snubbing the media.
Let me make it abundantly clear that I could not care less if we win a preseason game. The outcome of those games doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter to the team, it doesn’t matter to the coach, and other than the people that pay to go to the games who probably don’t care about a win either, the fans largely don’t care. Hell watching the Giants/Bears game last night even the Monday Night Football crew couldn’t completely hide their total disinterest towards the end of the game. Todd, lose every freaking game in the preseason so long as those boys are ready to play come September.
As far as the Chiefs approach to their training regimen and these games, it’s a gamble. No surpise here. We all have become aware of the gambling nature of Todd Haley. Sure he can tell you that there is statistical data to show that his gambles are sound, but so can a guy in Vegas with notepads full of supposed patterns he’s found in the slot machines by spending his kid’s college fund. A gamble is a gamble, that’s why they call it “a gamble.” Last year the Chiefs took a similarly cockeyed approach to their bye week by having players act as coaches during practices. I conjectured this format was put into place to prepare our boys in the Red and Gold for player ran practices during the lockout, but the world may never know. The result of this player-coach approach? Of course the Chiefs lost to the Colts. So, will the extra time Haley and Friends took to work on conditioning end up being the smart move over focusing on actual football work? Only if the Chiefs can keep it close enough at the start of games to make the fourth quarter matter.
Like I said, it’s a gamble.
We dig into Thomas Jones going “Larry Johnson” on Jonathan Baldwin after the jump…
So I’m sure over the past few days that I was gone this has been discussed to death, but still, I gotta talk about it. How awesome is this! Mr. Character Concern First-Round-Draft-Pick himself tries to buck up to the running back corps and gets beat down! That’s awesome, and it’s awesome for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost I think it shows how wrong we have been about Thomas Jones. Yes, I said it. We were wrong to bash him, and we were wrong to think he shouldn’t be the starter over Jamaal Charles. Rip me apart on this. I don’t care.
If reports are right (and by the tweets and retweets it appears they are) Baldwin got into it with Charles and subsequently got beat down by Jones. Who sounds like the starter in all of this? It seems very much like a “nobody messes with my little brother” situation. To solidify this stance, Jamaal retweets a “Thomas Jones is my hero” message to all of his followers. Case closed, doesn’t appear that there is any bad blood between the two over the depth chart and that Jones looks out for Charles. It shows that Jones is definitely the leader and thus earns the #1 spot despite Charles’ superior ability. If Jamaal was the true number one he wouldn’t need Thom Jones to take care of his business.
Number two reason this is awesome is that it will be good for Jonathan Baldwin. Correct, I said good for Jonathan Baldwin, and thus good for the Chiefs. For Baldwin, not only did he get a front row seat to the show about how you don’t act in the NFL, he has a reminder on his arm in case he forgets the plot-points. Sure, he may not be able to play the rest of the preseason and may not be able to play the first couple of games, but do you really think after getting into a fight with a locker room leader that Haley would start him anyway? Remember what he did with Dwayne Bowe? This will be good for Baldwin because right away he will either shape up or ship out. The best lesson he could learn in humility happens every day he steps onto that practice field with a brace on his arm and if he can take this lesson to heart it’s good for him and the Chiefs. If he can’t, I hear the Dolphins are willing to take risks on players with personality issues.
The last thing to talk about is how the Chiefs handled this little melodrama. If you are surprised that we got the company line, and the “we handle things in house like a family” then you must have been living under a rock the past two years. Personally it doesn’t bother me, but I’m not a fan of reality television or soap operas either. Giving updates on exactly what happened, how each player feels about it, what the team is doing to address the problem, and all of that just is too “Keeping Up With The Kardashians” for me. Tell me that if there is a problem you will look into it and address it. That’s all I care to know. Leave the rest up to speculation, because that’s more fun anyway…
Good to be back, just a couple more painful preseason games to watch, and then we have real football again.