K.C. Chiefs: What’s A Guy Gotta Do To Get Fired Around Here?

At One Arrowhead Drive things are hopping. Owner Clark Hunt has stepped in and fired head coach Romeo Crennel. Next, he states that general manager Scott Pioli is still under review before a decision is made about him.

Then Hunt states, “No final determination has been made on the future of General Manager Scott Pioli.”

Huh?

While I’m miffed about that development I’m all the more puzzled about why Scott Pioli still has his job and wondering: what’s a guy gotta do to get fired around here?

GM Scott Pioli’s record over the past four seasons: 4-10, 10-6, 7-9 and 2-14 ought to do it but, for some reason Clark Hunt wants to take a closer look. I don’t know… 23-39 should be enough in the minds of most fans… you would think. Wins on a graph looks like this:

The fifth black dot you see on the left represents the 2008 record of the previous regime who only won 2 games that year. Obviously, the Kansas City Chiefs have returned to that same level of epic failure. The minimum standard for any organization should be to at least win nine games, a winning season. “NINE TIMES”… (to quote the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off)… we just want to see the Chiefs win at least nine times, c’mon man! The Chiefs have only had one of those in the past four years and it should be noted that the Chiefs have only had one winning season in the past 6 seasons… and that is on Clark Hunt.

Some will say that the win-loss record is on the head coach and not the general manager. Common thought prior to the 2012 season was that the Chief had one of the best rosters in the league and some even believed that they would compete for the AFC crown (the Lamar Hunt Trophy). However, even with the supposedly good roster the Chiefs had, Mitch Holthus has referred to this year as, “The worst season in Chiefs history.”

The proof is in the pudding and it’s more a case that the truth is in the team the Chiefs are putting on the field. A team that spent half a season without leading in any quarter of any game. How can you expect the everyday Kansas City Chiefs fan to desire to continue to spend their recessionary dollars on that kind of “entertainment?”

True, this is just entertainment and some of us who cover the Chiefs, including myself, take it way too seriously. However, if “entertainment” is your standard… this TV show would have been canceled at mid-season.

I get that you can’t compare the Chiefs to a TV show but, this season has been more dramatic than any reality television production… and not in a good way. What the Chiefs are needing… as well as fans of the organization… is a fresh start.

Clark Hunt can attempt to sort out the specifics of how the team has been managed but, nothing is more clear than the fact that the team needs a fresh start.

A number of events or perceptions about the Chiefs have become… well… unpleasant:

• Hog tying his coaches on the decision of whether or not to start QB Matt Cassel,
• The candy wrapper incident,
• Pioli’s mismanaging three head coaches under Pioli (Edwards, Haley and Crennel). Edwards- why keep him around for more than five minutes? Haley- why hire him to begin with? Crennel- why revert to your NE roots to make this blunder?
• Pioli’s mafia media style (if I told you I’d have to….).
• Four out of five Pro Bowl players on the Chiefs current roster were provided by the previous regime
• Draft failures in the first round (Tyson Jackson and Jon Baldwin).

In this age of hyper-techno-fandom in which we can access information about teams, owners, GMs and players deeper and faster than ever before, we have come to over value players that are actually may not be very good. I did this with John Baldwin. He may yet come around, depending on who gets hired as the Chiefs next head coach and while no one notices when I make a mistake evaluating a player… it’s not easily forgivable for a GM to make that blunder.

However, when it comes to Scott Pioli, 2 out of 3 years of making such a mistake… and possibly four (see Dontari Poe)… is the very mistake that can force any organization down the rabbit hole and never to return.

Now, we don’t want Clark Hunt to be like Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, who would make a coaching move because he doesn’t like the way the coach trims his sideburns. And… we don’t want Hunt to be like Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys,  who makes coaching moves as soon as he discovers his coach doesn’t think exactly like he does in every single way.

"At 2:00 PM today Clark Hunt has announced via 810WHB that he’s changing the reporting process and he will now place the GM and the Head Coach on the same plane as far as reporting to the owner. Hunt has also stated that “one will not be answering to the other,” referring to the GM and he Head Coach, which means they will both be reporting directly to him. Clark went on to explain that, “The Chiefs had the third highest payroll this season and considering the results, I’m not very proud of that.”"

Hunt also apologized AGAIN and said he wants to assure fans that he’ll do everything in his power to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

A key part of this interview was his statement about the importance of chemistry between the new head coach and the GM. So, if Hunt, who will be the only one interviewing possible head coaches, finds his man and that man isn’t a Pioli guy… it could be a hint that Scott Pioli may be moving on.

Having heard all that… you can tell that Clark Hunt would rather not fire Scott Pioli. However, he did say he won’t let anything stand in his way of putting a winner on the field in 2013.

Since that’s the case, why not just go ahead and bag the GM who obviously can not hire a good head coach? Hasn’t that been half the job description for a GM? Take that responsibility away and what does a GM have to spend his time doing all day? This is truly going to redefine the “War Room”… because it will truly be a… War Room!

I said it before and I’ll say it again… what’s a guy gotta do to get fired around here?

Then again… maybe Hunt can find someone else to completely run scouting and signing players and still keep Pioli around as a token ______… uh… a token ______… uh… a token ______… that’s it… A TOKEN.