Clark Hunt Talks Chiefs’ Disastrous 2012 Season

Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt sat down with Forbes recently to talk about a number of issues, including his team’s disastrous 2012 NFL season.

Hunt doesn’t do a ton of interviews but he has been taking a more active and public role with the Chiefs since things began to go awry last season.

“It was a very difficult year,” Hunt told Forbes, “for me, for our family and really for anyone associated with the Kansas City Chiefs, including our fans. We had relatively high expectations going into the season and just right from the get-go the season went sideways on us and we had a very tough time being successful ont he field.”

Hunt is right. For me, the 2012 Chiefs season was enjoyable for exactly two quarters of football. When the Chiefs went into the first game of the season against the Atlanta Falcons, I knew KC was going to have a tough time on defense. Brandon Flowers was out with an injury and Tamba Hali was serving a suspension. Atlanta had an explosive offense but for a while at least, it looked like the Chiefs might be able to hang with the Falcons. KC was answering Atlanta’s offense and went into halftime trailing 20-17.

Then the wheels came off. KC would go on to lose the game 40-24 and from there it was all downhill for the Chiefs. The season that would follow was a folly, ending in a tragic murder/suicide involving starting linebacker Jovan Belcher.

It was clear to Hunt that changes had to be made.

“I did feel that the best thing for the team at that point was for us to head in a new direction from a leadership standpoint,” said Hunt. “We needed to make a change with our head coach and ultimately with our general manager as well.”

You can see Hunt’s entire interview below. He talks about his reasoning for wanting to hired Andy Reid before adding a GM and also touches on the NFL’s possible expansion into Europe.