Yes Chiefs Fans, It Is Time To Abandon Hope
By author
If you read my post last week, I posed the question whether it was time to abandon hope of the Chiefs amounting to anything this season. Ultimately, despite the pitiful showing at their home opener against Buffalo, I concluded that it was still too early to tell. Well, it turns out with RB Jamaal Charles out for the season (along with two of our star rookies from last year), it is time to admit that the wheels have come off of this team. As always I have turned to humor in this time of depression, and there are some funny thoughts that have helped get me through this troubled time.
= D Maybe Matt Cassel should add “Intercept Me Bro” to his line of K-Swiss ads.
= D Hey we re-signed Mike Cox! Now at least we get to giggle for the rest of the season when announcers say, “Mike Cox going up the middle!” or “Mike Cox had great penetration all day long!”*
= D I wonder if our replacement players will be guys that Pioli and Hunt find off the street holding signs claiming they “Will Work For Food” because that seems to best fit their team spending strategy.
*Thanks go to my brother for pointing that one out.
Fellow Kurt Vonnegut fans will appreciate this need for humor because when all hope seems to be lost in humanity, really what else is there left to do but laugh? Really it seems that we have regressed to the point that this is our only option. It is hard to believe that this post is coming just after Week Two of the regular season, but as Chiefs fans, we are used to it. The true team mantra has been and appears to remain Next Year as opposed to Chiefs Will.
Abandon All Hope Ye Who Click “Continue Reading This Post.”
Before the onslaught of negative comments start pouring in questioning my homer/hater status, believe me when I say that I have been the staunchest Haley supporter since he came to the team. The test article I wrote to audition as a staff writer for this site was about my belief and support in what Todd Haley was doing. I believe in his philosophy; I believe that it is smart to look at the season in quarters (to contradict Big Matt’s thoughts yesterday), and I think that his willingness to put people in their place and not cater to someone or permit a destructive attitude because they are talented are all great ideas. The problem is that they are just ideas. What we are seeing now is not an actualization of those ideas, but rather a failed attempt to implement them. Haley’s vision isn’t bad, I just think that right now he doesn’t have the competency level as a head coach to execute his vision. He’s not the first coach or leader to fail in his first attempt, and I am sure he will not be the last.
There are lots of arguments that will keep Haley around for the rest of the year. The lockout killed this team’s offense with Weis leaving, and our bread-and-butter players have all decided it is better to blow out their knees than continue through this farce of a season. Really though, these are excuses and no amount of reasoning can explain away the utter lack of discipline and sense of unpreparedness (I think that’s a real word) this team has shown the last two weeks. There is simply no excuse. Haley failed.
The question now becomes do the Chiefs allow Haley to admit his folly and attempt to continue the work he started after taking over a 2-14 team? Is one terrible season combined with a lockout and snake-bitten players enough to warrant axing the coach and starting over? You will not hear me say so. Yes, that’s right: I think that for better or worse we stick this thing through and see after this monumental clusterf$%ck of a season if Haley can rebound, because after all he is a fairly new head coach, and there is plenty of blame to go around this organization if/when it is decided that heads are going to roll.
Clark Hunt, it is disgraceful that you are allowed to accept tax money for your stadium and then spend tens of millions of dollars below the salary cap. True we have signed some key players that we drafted in Hali, Flowers, Charles, Bowe and Johnson. Realistically though, there was a lot of entropy in the Free Agent market this year, and the Chiefs didn’t make any big moves other than signing some supporting cast players from other teams. We can blame Pioli (and that’s coming) but, Clark, you own this team, and thus you own how it operates. If Chiefs fans want to be really mad at someone, they need look no further than you for pocketing $30 mil in shared NFL profits via the misery of your business’s supporters.
Scott Pioli, it is your job to ensure that your team has the depth at key positions to sustain injuries to marquee players. This is the Patriot way: If someone goes down or wants too much money, plug in the guy behind him and watch how little it affects team performance. This has to do with coaching, but really it comes down to scouting talent. If Clark was being honest, you had carte blanche with this team to spend whatever to get whomever the Chiefs needed to win. You have obviously gone for substance over sizzle. Unfortunately the substance was not so much realized in the players you acquired, but the money you didn’t spend by getting second-rate talent at the positions where the Chiefs struggled most. Plus you got rid of Shaun Smith, for that we will never forgive you. A little penis grabbing in the pile would go a long way to cheer us up in this our winter of discontent.
So really Haley has failed, but so has this entire organization. Instead of great leadership powered by strong vision, it seems we instead have boys playing at being men. It is most discouraging because now I have to admit that Double D was right last year when we argued over the merit of the coaching staff and the direction of this team. It’s depressing because I got my Tamba Hali jersey in the mail the day after the Chiefs died screaming at the hands of the Lions. Yet in the end, it’s funny, because to quote Clark W. Griswold, “If I woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am now.”