The Marcus Peters trade is admitting failure by the Chiefs

The compensation was for Marcus Peters is not enough and the fact that the Chiefs have traded him is their way of admitting failure.

I have gone back and forth the past few days thinking about writing this. The problem is I am still in disbelief that the Marcus Peters trade even happened.

I love the Kansas City Chiefs just like many of you do. When I see something that is blatantly a wrong move, I cannot help being frustrated about it. Reading all the comments the past few days and constantly refreshing Twitter shows me that we as fans are all in the same boat. Moving Marcus Peters is the wrong move and, by doing so, the Chiefs organization has admitted that they have failed.

Do not get me wrong, admitting failure is not always a bad thing. The Chiefs have admitted failure before when they cut former third round pick KeiVarae Russell. They did this before he ever saw the field for the Chiefs. Cutting ties early on with a player that you misjudged and does not fit your culture is not a bad thing. The thing that differs with the Marcus Peters situation is the fact that he came into the league with known issues.

If we rewind three years back to the 2015 draft Peters had been recently dismissed from the Washington Huskies. If you look back at the old reports they are eerily similar to what happened since he became a Chief. This is a quote from ESPN after his dismissal:

"Peters has clashed several times this season with Washington’s new coaching staff. The third-year starter was suspended one game earlier this year after committing what Petersen called a “stupid” personal foul followed by a sideline tantrum in a game against Eastern Washington."

Sounds a lot like the game against the New York Jets, doesn’t it? Here is another quote, this one is from the Seattle times:

"Peters got into an argument with an assistant coach during practice Wednesday, a source said, apparently the final straw in a series of run-ins with Washington’s new coaching staff. He also got into an argument with coaches during UW’s victory at Colorado on Saturday and then missed practice on Tuesday, sources said."

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Leading up to the draft a lot of people were attributing these outbursts due to the new coaching staff that Washington had put in place. It is not uncommon for college players to not always get along with a staff that did not recruit them. Peters was not the only one suspended when the new staff arrived—in fact, it was the ninth such team incident that season. This may have made the Chiefs think that this dismissal was an isolated incident and that it would not happen again. Unbeknownst to them at the time, it was a huge warning sign.

Fast forward to today and the situation played out almost the same. Why then are we trading him? When John Dorsey, Andy Reid and their staff decided to pick him they were saying, “Hey, we have a strong enough locker room to help this kid” With players like Eric Berry, Derrick Johnson, Tamba Hali, and Justin Houston this seemed like a reasonable thing to believe.

Andy Reid is also known as a player’s coach. Being that kind of coach can be difficult, since it is your job as the coach to get everyone under one unifying banner. In the Air Force, we call it a mission statement; it is essentially a sentence that encompasses the overall team goal. I would assume that Reid has something similar.

When you approach coaching the way Reid does compared to, say, Bill Belichick, you have to be able to connect with your players on a fundamental level. You have to figure out what drives them. In the case of Marcus Peters we can say his number one concern is winning—Peters wants to win big. So when you post a 1-4 playoff record over five years, a player like that can become a malcontent. It is the Chiefs job to be able to bring these players back into the fold, especially when they are the type of value that Marcus Peters is. You will not find his talent at a mere $3 million dollars anywhere else in the NFL.

When Reid and company waved the white flag on Peters, it proved that Reid had failed at his job. He has to think he is no longer able to convince Peters to trust in the Chiefs mission, and Peters does not believe that the Chiefs can win in their current state.

Honestly can anyone blame him? After the loss to the Tennessee Titans (which was the Chiefs second playoff loss when leading by 18 or more points) the Chiefs decided to retain Bob Sutton. Clark Hunt and Andy Reid believed they had more of a talent problem rather than a schematic problem.

When you trade away arguably your best player on defense though how can you expect anyone to believe that? On top of this they traded him in a soft market, which turned into the Chiefs giving up and additional 6th round pick this year. While only receiving a 2018 4th round pick, and a 2019 2nd round pick. This is a slap in the face of the fan base, this compensation is nowhere near enough for the value that Peters is. Looking at what the compensation is means that Chiefs were doing all they could to offload him and it did not really matter what the return was in the end. Add in the fact that we could not even get Robert Quinn as reported by Ian Rapport:

The fact that we could not convince the Rams to part ways with Robert Quinn, who is coming off a year in which he posted a 58.1 grade as the 87^th edge defender out of 106 qualifying players according to Pro Football Focus, is just terrible. The organization is going to have a hard time convincing people that Peters has such a bad attitude that we had to trade him, especially when you have players that have had far more severe issues in the past on the team (see Tyreek Hill).

After watching the interview Marcus Peters had and reading some of the reports that came out you can tell this was not purely a football move. Peters showed at least to the cameras that he has nothing but respect for Andy Reid. Jason La Canfora talked about how Clark Hunt was the driving force behind the trade of Marcus Peters. If this is true and he was willing to weaken his team overall because of some philosophical differences, then how can we be sure that he is willing to take the proper chances to make sure this organization wins a Super Bowl?

I know many other Chiefs fans feel betrayed or are angry with this trade. When your favorite organization openly admits failure, it is hard to deal with. Brett Veach and the Chiefs organization have made the biggest bet on themselves that they could by making this move. They have to be all in on the upcoming draft and free agency period. Any kind of a step back by this team will now not be down played due to us having a first year starter at quarterback. Instead people will point to this trade and say this was the downfall of the team this season.

The Chiefs organization will be thoroughly scrutinized if they do not bring in some serious talent this off season to show that they are at least trying to win. If they do not bring in talent and instead sit on their laurels (which I do not think Brett Veach will do) it will be hard to continue to believe in the organization as it currently is. Hopefully we continue to see aggressive moves in the future to now cover this gaping hole that has been blown into the Chiefs defense.