Addicts, as far as anyone can tell we are standing on the precipice of what promises to be a whirlwind of free agency and minicamps as players and coaches scramble to get ready for the upcoming season after the lockout ends.  As far as all reports are concerned a deal is very very very close to being completed, or to follow their rhetoric, “The lockout is almost over, unless it’s not, but if it isn’t than it will be soon, unless of course it ends later than sooner, but, well, ah you get the point.”

Realistically I do not think anyone has any idea what’s going on.  In the meantime that leaves the players, coaches, and fans stuck in the awful wake of uncertainty, left with nothing to do but speculate and hope.  Daily I hear of reports from “some guy who once saw a news article about the lockout” or “someone who was cleaning the toilets in the stadium after a Jonas Brothers concert” that decidedly say the lockout is almost over, to hang on, to bla-bla-bla.  I hate to sound cynical, but this seems more like a device to keep people listening and reading than real reporting.  I will believe what I hear when it is from the mouth of a credible source, until then I will disregard it like I do all of the fake websites showing what the iPhone 5 will look like.

More below the fold…

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"Proof Through the Night That Our Flag Was Still There"

After the winds that broke a city and the storm that claimed the lives of so many, utter devastation was left in the wake of a tornado nearly a mile wide.  Yet, like the mythical Phoenix, something had risen from beneath the splintered wood and scattered belongings.  Walking around the shattered homes and cars spray-painted with X’s you can see this Phoenix.  You can see it in the eyes of rescue workers, the makeshift rest-stops giving away free food, the trucks of relief workers driving around offering repast, and the cases of water, work gloves, and trash bags left on every neighborhood corner for anyone willing to pitch in.  This Phoenix, the indomitable human spirit, exists in the people of Joplin through their anguish and time of great sorrow.  This human spirit bonds strangers together to help sift through the rubble to try and find anything to link them back to a time just over a week ago before everything changed.

My hat goes off to the Kansas City Chiefs for donating money to the relief efforts, and using Arrowhead as a base for collecting supplies and donations for those affected.  Affected isn’t the right word though.  These people were not “affected” by a “destructive storm.” I have been milling over in my head the past three days now what terminology can accurately depict what I saw when a group of us went up Wednesday and I still cannot describe what I experienced.

So I will start at the beginning.

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Chiefs fans, the 2011 NFL Draft is in the books, and right now even with all of the lockout drama in the NFL playing out like a mash up of “Law and Order” and “”Teen Mom” it’s hard to not be excited about the group of new young players acquired this past week.  I have never been someone that follows or talks about the draft each year at great length, but I think we learned a great deal about the Pioli/Haley regime with this draft.  Much of what we learned led us to the wise man conclusion reached by Socrates so many thousands of years ago: We truly know nothing.

I will be up front and honest here.  I am not claiming to be all knowing and all seeing.  I, like many of you, figured that this year we will see a lot more of the same.  I figured we would go for “high character” guys with lots of college leadership that seemed to be “safe picks.”  I figured we would draft a bunch of team captains that filled specific needs, but not take a lot of risks.*  I was in the draft chat, doing my best not to sound like an idiot since I know very little about the players involved and how the inner-workings of the draft play out besides what I have learned from the draft posts on this site, when BAM!  Not only do the Chiefs reach some on their first pick, but they go for a huge wide receiver with lots of potential and a bad rap for character flaws.  As everyone tried to digest what had just happened with the Ravens not picking and the Chiefs basically running up on stage with their card I began to realize just how little I understood the plan for the Kansas City Chiefs, and then I became very excited to see just where this team was going.

*By risks I do not mean players with unseen talent, but rather players that would not fall in line easily, and that despite having great physical talent would ultimately be a risk because they couldn’t wrap their noodle around what the team and organization were trying to do.

Where this team is going, and Chiefs 2011 Beast Mode after the jump.

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