Sausage Mahoney.

Does Not Compute

I am not predicting playoffs, let alone a march to Super Bowl glory.  More than likely, Matt Cassel will be about a league-average quarterback for the Chiefs.  But after a whole season watching Tyler Thigpen throw every other pass eight feet over the head of his intended receiver and omit ever to notice the end rusher bearing down on him before getting crushed into human butter, even at league average Cassel would be a significant upgrade.  And believe me, I am well aware Mike Vrabel is 443 years old.  (I guess this means Pioli is determined to install the 3-4, even if we don't have a single player on our roster who's really suited to playing on a three-man D-line.)  But here's the part that's really important, and maybe the only important part: to get Cassel and Vrabel, the Chiefs gave up just a second-round pick.  That's the part I really don't get.  Are the Pats just doing their homie Pioli a solid on the way out the door?  There's no shortage of teams with a desperate need at quarterback.  Do you think Vikings fans, having spent a fourth-rounder on the highly dubious Sage Rosenfels, are feelin' good right now?  That team could've gone to the Super Bowl but for horrible QB play.  Then we have the Lions, who recently restructured the contract of cement-footed autopsy recipient Daunte Culpepper, and I should remind you this is a team that DID NOT WIN A GAME last year.  Out here in Northern Cali, the Niners' depth chart is still headed by something named "Shaun Hill."  I do not believe Tampa Bay currently has a quarterback on its roster, although they still have the rights to Jake Plummer, which is nice.  And in this climate, the Pats gave up Cassel and an elderly but still useful coach-on-the-field-type linebacker for just a second-rounder?

It's obviously possible this deal won't work out for the Chiefs.  A pessimist like me couldn't possibly think otherwise.  But I don't think there's any doubt that, on these terms, it was a deal they had to make.

Suction: Engaged!

So the rumor mill strongly suggests that my beloved and bedraggled Kansas City Chiefs are about to hire Mike Shanahan as their next head coach.  No one asked me, but I really, truly hope this is an Al Capone's-vault-level hoax.  Not because Shanahan coached the fucking Broncos, whom I hate.  Not because of his eternal association with the horsefaced, overrated John Elway, whom ditto.  I just don't see any upside in it.  Never in the Super Bowl era has a retread Super Bowl-winner coach, like Shanahan, ever moved to a new team and won a championship.  Only two coaches—Parcells and Holmgren—have even reached the Super Bowl with a second franchise after winning it with their first.  Parcells is especially illustrative, for all the credit everybody gives him.  Two titles with the Giants, yes, you have to give him dap for that.  But that was many years ago.  Then a Super Bowl appearance, albeit a decisive loss, with the Patriots—fine.  The Pats were a mediocre, titleless franchise, so any degree of success was at least a little significant.  But then no Super Bowls, just one AFC title game (and another decisive loss) with the Jets, plus he stayed only three years and seemed chronically splenetically pissed, with nobody able to live up to his standards.  Jerry Jones hired him to coach the Cowboys, and he gave them two first-round playoff losses in four seasons.  He never even got to the divisional round and his neck veins bulged and he wanted to squeeze Quincy Carter's neck down to the size of a Twizzler.  One preseason he dyed his hair platinum blond.

Here's what I'm saying: at every successive stop Parcells was less successful and gave off way more of a dickhead vibe.  Shanahan always gave off somewhat of a dickhead vibe to begin with.  I have never liked the thin-lipped bastard.  For more than a decade his teams have consistently won using a brutal running game based on cut blocking—the practice of having offensive linemen dive at defensive linemen's ankles and knees.  Sure, it periodically injures guys seriously, but it lets Mike Anderson rush for 1,500 yards.  I get the sense Shanahan would eat a baby's heart to win a playoff game.

Plus he hasn't won anything in a long time.  I mean, let's go to the videotape: since the second Super Bowl win a full decade ago, he's missed the playoffs six times in ten seasons.  He's won one playoff game.  He's gotten to the conference-championship round just once, where his '05 Broncos fell apart embarrassingly at home against the Steelers.

Much was made of the Chiefs' audacious hire of Scott Pioli a couple of weeks ago, and reasonably so.  KC has been moribund and retrograde for so long.  Even when it's worked for us, in the Schottenheimer era, it never really worked out, with all the humiliating playoff failures and, except for the Vermeil era, which had its own problems, it's largely been characterized by dull-ass football.  We've valued loyalty over performance; we've let coaches and players go too early and then brought them back too late.  So Pioli was a pretty exciting choice.  He's an outsider, and his outstanding record in the draft and key role in building three championship teams in Foxborough speaks for itself.  The personnel acumen is the most important thing, since the characteristic trait of the Herm Edwards Chiefs has been that they lacked talent.  Their problem wasn't bad coaching; some of the coaching was awful, and I'm not sorry to see Herm go, but some members of the staff, particularly Chan Gailey on the offensive end, did pretty good, at least making a reasonable attempt to exploit the minute number of things the players could do well.  Then again, Chan had a little more to work with than the defensive coaches.  The Chiefs' problem wasn't employing the wrong schemes.  It wasn't a lack of heart.  Their problem was they had no talent.  I didn't write anything about last (2-14) season, because I decided early on I wasn't going to expend my flagging mental energy on the subject.  I watched the games, sure, but that was it.  But if you want my rundown on our personnel, last season's Chiefs had two good offensive linemen (one of them young), a Hall of Fame tight end, one physical stud of a wide receiver with bricks for hands, two potentially solid rookie cornerbacks, and a B+ punter.  And maybe you give a pass to two other guys, the rookie defensive tackle (maybe he's not just fat and slow!) and the perenially disappointing outside linebacker (surely he'll mature into an All-Pro in the middle!).  But other than that, we were at or below replacement level everywhere.  It was a painful team to watch, constantly playing from behind, nobody capable of doing anything to turn the tide of a game.  More than anything, we need someone to help us get better football players.

All of which should mean Pioli was the best possible hire.  And I am certainly willing to give him however much rope he needs.  But I don't understand why Pioli, who stood for so many years in Belichick's shadow, and who's finally gotten his chance to run his own franchise, with essentially total control of football operations, would pick for his coach a big-name ex-champ celebrity like Shanahan (or Cowher, for that matter).  You know the big-name guy is going to want some say in personnel decisions; you know he's going to get traction with the owner.  If push comes to shove, how do you know it'll be him and not you that gets the gate?  I know Pioli knows you can't win in the NFL with a cipher; you need a coach with a strong personality and some intellectual vigor.  But the Pats have succeeded under Belichick at least partly by handling their business in all circumstances, by being the most-professional football players in all of professional football.  If that's what you want—low-key, persistent success—why do you hire an established star who's going to be a media lightning rod?

Ultimately, when it comes down to it, I will always prefer the young, hungry guy over the retread.  The stats favor the young, hungry guy.  This is the most important decision Scott Pioli will make this season.  If he picks Shanahan, I've got to question his judgment, in all respects.

And needless to say, if Pioli wastes the number-three pick on Mark Sanchez, I'm canceling my Sunday Ticket.  A man can only take so much.

The Ship Be Sinking

After just two weeks, I feel pretty safe in saying this is the worst Chiefs team I've ever seen.  I'm not saying they're the worst Chiefs team ever.  That remains to be seen.  Although the Chiefs have never had a truly historically terrible single season, like the 1976 Bucs or the 1981-82 Colts or the Ryan Leaf Chargers, and never had a stretch of total, noncompetitive futility like the 1960s Broncos or the Shula-Coslet-LeBeau Bengals, they sure have had their moments.  After losing a double-overtime Christmas Day 1971 epic in Miami that is still the longest game of professional football ever played, the franchise went 15 years before returning to the postseason, bottoming out with a 6-24 stretch in 1977-78 under Paul Wiggin and the pre-Bills Marv Levy.  When they made the playoffs again in 1986, the coach was John Mackovic, who has basically been mistrusted and despised by players, fans, and administrators everywhere he's ever worked.  The Jets (of all teams) blew them out in a wretched wild-card game, and the Chiefs fired Mackovic.  Fair enough, although the timing sure seemed strange to me.  But even if firing Mackovic were the right move, promoting their fiery special-teams coach, Frank "Crash" Gansz, to the top job, was not.  Even by the standards of football coaches, Gansz was insane.  (This has gotten to be a chronic problem with the franchise.  See Cunningham, Gunther.)  Crash was not ready for prime time, and compiled an 8-22-1 record in two seasons.  That was 1987-88, and those Chiefs teams were totally unwatchable.  I don't remember the Wiggin-Levy era, so when I think of Chiefly incompetence, the Gansz years are what come to mind.

Now, most NFL teams are good at some things and not so good at others.  They're flawed.  Which is not the same as being bad, of course.  Every year, three or four teams with very serious, obvious flaws make the playoffs.  Sometimes, like with the 2000 Ravens, seriously flawed teams even win the Super Bowl.  In the salary-cap era, the most common flaw is having one good-to-outstanding platoon and one that drags ass like a squashed possum.  Chiefs fans in particular know what I mean.  For close to a decade, Marty Schottenheimer (who succeeded Gansz in 1989) gave KC fans gold-standard defenses.  We saw sacks upon sacks upon safeties upon tackles for losses and gave up very few points.  But most of those teams also had a modest (if determined) running game and, in sequence, they started the elderly Steve DeBerg, the decrepit Dave Krieg, the highly fragile Joe Montana, the department-store mannequin Steve Bono, and the gutless Elvis Grbac at quarterback.  Then, for the first half of this decade, they had the reverse problem under Dick Vermeil: unstoppable offense, D of jelly.  Other than a brief, shining moment in 1997, I never once even entertained the idea that any of these flawed Chiefs teams could win the Super Bowl.  (Not even in 1995, when they were 13-3 and there was, for once in that era, no dominant team in the NFC.  You know, they had Steve Bono under center.)  But you could not deny they had their strong points, like most NFL teams.

Like the Gansz teams, the current Chiefs are not good at anything.  You could say that their defense is significantly better than their offense, and you'd be right, but the defense is still not good in any meaningful sense.  Before the season, I said the Chiefs would be lucky to finish 5-11.  After two weeks, I would be very, very surprised if they even did that well.  Let's go to the videotape:

The coaching has been timid, uninventive, and panicky.  The gameplan last Sunday in Chicago radiated fear.  It secreted reptilian panic from its every gasping pore.  Herm and O-coordinator Mike Solari were so stressed out by the fierce Bears defense that they basically curled up in a fetal position at the opening kickoff, as if they were deep in the woods, fighting actual bears.  Every time they had third-and-long: straight run, not even any action, often a dive into the line.  On third-and-short, when they should have butched up and challenged the Bears with their $7 million running back, they would throw downfield.  Early on they had a fourth-and-short in Chicago territory, and they came out for the dumb, perfunctory chicken dance, trying to draw the Bears offside.  It never works; it's like the fake-to-third, throw-to-first.  To me, it reeked of cowardice.  No risk, no reward.  You see this same mentality in the passing game, where they won't let Damon Huard do anything.  Quick slants, screens, swings, one-step drops, but nothing downfield, very little midrange.  This tells me the staff has no faith whatsoever in the O-line's ability to hold or move a pocket.  I'm also a little discouraged that Larry Johnson is half-assing it and no one's calling him on it.  I had no problem with the holdout—I got the sense most people understood where he was coming from—but, once it ended, he needed to repay the fans' understanding by working hard and being there for the team.  One week of preseason, one week of regular season—if he's not carrying a full load, he should be fucking close.  But he was not there in the second half on Sunday, and it doesn't look like the coaching staff is willing or able to do their job and light a fire under his ass.

The offense—well, it's awful, even worse than those Grbac teams.  The line is not good in the running game, and the staff won't let it pass-protect.  The big free-agent signing, Damien McIntosh, is not healthy and may not be this season; he has to come out of the game often.  Both tackles are problem spots.  Huard hasn't done anything to convince the offensive coaches he should be taking risks.  His game-killing fourth-quarter interception against the Bears, when the Chiefs had no business even being in the game—a deep fade to the 5'9" and not unduly aggressive Samie Parker—was a terrible decision.  And he gets jittery—in the first half, he short-armed a swing pass that would've gone for an easy first down.  He badly misses Eddie Kennison, the Chiefs' smartest offensive player and only professional wide receiver, who pulled a hamstring on the first offensive play of the year and won't be back until who knows when.  As the new number one target, Parker is soft and has weak hands.  I would like to think the young wide receivers can develop, but I need to see Jeff Webb run a wider variety of routes and Dwayne Bowe's acrobatic TD catch came only because he broke off his pattern and stole a ball intended for Gonzalez.  I like the way Bowe fought for that jump ball in the end zone near the end of the game, but he seems like he's 1000% instinct at this point.  And with LJ unready to pull much weight so far, and the coaches talking about featuring Michael Bennett more anyway, taking some of the burden off LJ's shoulders, the weaknesses of the downfield game are magnified.  Then again, would things have gone any better if LJ had run the ball 30 times?  I have my doubts.  Against Chicago, he had 19 touches, but his numbers (16-for-55 running, long of 10 yards, 3 catches for 32) don't suggest any long-term trends but mediocrity.  During the Bears game, Jim Nantz and Phil Simms basically agreed that every time the Chiefs got a first down, it was a huge victory.  That was a touching moment: expressions of pity from Jim and Phil down at the Chamber of Commerce.  It was like a nice verbal fruit basket.

The defense is the stronger of the two main platoons, by far.  But league ranking notwithstanding, it's still below average.  Let's see what happens to the ranking when they face a competent offense.  The line gets limited push and the backfield doesn't have much speed.  They're generally well-disciplined, but they aren't very talented; they give good effort and keep the offense in front of them, but they're susceptible to playmakers—all too often they turn guys into playmakers—and have trouble getting off the field on third down.  They're not that physical against the run; both the Texans and Bears, neither of which has a proven running game, ran effectively using basic plays.  The Bears drove for a first-quarter touchdown on the back of four John McKay-era USC-style sweeps for about 8 yards a pop.  The week before, Houston could always get five yards off tackle when it needed them.  Mix in Gunther's tendency to blitz too much and in obvious situations, and his inability to improvise, and you're starting to talk about a unit that is really pretty limited in its ability to throw the opposition off balance.  On Sunday, they gave up a touchdown on one of those gimmick Dan Klecko plays, where the Bears sent in an extra lineman on at the goal line as a tight end—at which point the officials announced the guy's presence as an eligible receiver to God and everybody over the PA—then ran play action up the middle and threw to the lineman in the flat.  I think everybody in the world knew that was the play call except the Chiefs.  Patrick Surtain looks oooooollld, and I'm only sold on one of the young safeties—Bernard Pollard has been in the wrong place a lot so far this year.  If there's a saving grace, it's the linebacking corps, who have some athletic ability (Derrick Johnson) and brains (Donnie Edwards) and as a result will occasionally make plays.  (Edwards made one typical great Donnie play against the Bears, baiting Grossman into throwing a bad pass and stepping in front for an easy pick, which the offense subsequently squandered.)

As for the special teams, the fifth-round-pick rookie kicker Justin Medlock was lousy in the preseason and began his regular-season NFL career by slicing a 30-yard field goal attempt to the left.  Slicing.  I've seen hundreds of NFL field goals that were hooked, but I don't know that I've ever seen one that was sliced.  College kickers do that, though.  The Chiefs sent Medlock to the practice squad after the Texans game.  The new guy, Dave Rayner, had a semi-long kick blocked last week.  The return game is not too scary; Eddie Drummond is kinda fast but not very elusive, and so thin I can't believe he doesn't get his torso severed every time he takes the ball upfield.  And of course the punt coverage team gave up huge returns all day to Devin Hester, including a touchdown, although you can't necessarily blame the Chiefs for getting beat by Devin Hester.

I understand this must read as overwhelmingly negative.  But I don't think I'm being unreasonable or going out of my way to wax pessimistic.  If you see silver linings, I'm happy to consider them.  But where?  Are we seeing exceptional individual talent?  A lot of young promising young players?  An overriding sense of commitment?  A sound offensive and defensive philosophy?  Coaches who appear in control of the situation?  I don't see any of that.  About all I can say, and it's not nothing, is that at least the team didn't quit.  They've spent the entire season playing from behind, but they've always kept on trying to overcome their limitations.  Even against the Texans, where the game was never really in reach, they kept working.  Sunday, the Bears tried their best to give the game away—Grossman threw two picks, one of which was the worst interception I've ever seen, and Chicago scored just three points in the second half—and the Chiefs tried to take it, but they just couldn't.

(About Grossman: I know we all make fun of that guy, but, seriously, he is never going to be good.  He just cannot regularly throw the ball with any accuracy.  His first interception—holy blue blazes.   He overthrew a screen pass by about 12 miles.  How bad was it?  You know the sport basketball?  It was like a free-throw shooter hitting the shot clock.  But not even Chris Dudley was that bad.  Rex is like a hitter with bad strike-zone judgment; he can succeed, if modestly, despite lacking a really valuable skill, but he's never going to gain that skill.  He'll spend most of his time trying to prevent the opposition from exploiting its absence.  In other words, if you enjoy watching Rex throw blindingly dumb game-killing picks in the fourth quarter of close games, if you dig his uncomprehending, open-mouthed stares after every loss-sealing TD runback, savor his remaining weeks in the league, because he will never throw the ball accurately, and eventually the NFL will figure that out.)

So now we have the Vikings coming to town.  The Chiefs were a little fucked by the scheduling, the only NFL AFC team to open with two road games, but now they're back at Arrowhead.  I'm not trying to be on some Knute Rockne shit and close with, "If ever there was a time to take a stand and salvage this season, it's this Sunday at noon against Minnesota!"  You know, You Must Protect This House and whatnot.  I want to see this team play better, but I try to be realistic.  But I will say that, if this is the best offense Herm can run with Huard, he should go to Croyle now.  If he mistrusts Huard so much, or mistrusts the line's ability to keep Huard off his ass, he should go to Croyle.  Damon Huard deserves better after his service keeping the 2006 season alive, but he's 34 and we know his ceiling.  I'm not saying Croyle would be better, but unless the guy is so stupid that he will literally be killed if he plays, Herm owes it to the organization to give him a shot.  This team is not making the playoffs.  They're not finishing with a winning record.  If they focus all their energy, Herm and his staff can probably manage this season into a series of 16-10, 23-13, and 17-9 losses, but what kind of thing is that to do?  The only positive thing they can accomplish this season is building a plausible team for next season.  They need to be a little bold.  At the very least, that would help them figure out what they really have on the roster, 'cause they will need to make some personnel moves next offseason.

No Expectations

When we last saw our Kansas City Chiefs, they were incompetently flopping around on the artificial turf of the RCA Dome like they had never played this game we call "football."  The Colts, who would otherwise perform adequately (against the offense-free Ravens and the overmatched Bears and their moron quarterback) or extremely well (against their former nemesis Patriots) on their way to the Lombardi Trophy, were basically garbage throughout the game and still dominated.  Here's an e-mail I wrote to my friend Mark at halftime of the 23-8 Colts win (which wasn't that close):

So far, this has been the most inept offensive performance in the history of organized American football.  An historic display of robust, unrestrained incompetence.  Six possessions, no first downs.  Four dropped passes.  Two sacks.  Two yards a rush.  Play-calling so predictable I have a gun in my mouth right now.  First three series each went run off tackle, run off tackle, five-step drop pass.  Jordan Black is a turnstile.  Finally, on a completely undeserved third-and-goal from the 1, after Ty Law finally made the play we signed him to make following a season of being largely useless, our All-Pro guard steps on our concussed quarterback's foot.  It was obvious Johnson would have scored on the play.  Then our fucking Scotsman kicker honks the ensuing two-inch field goal.  But that's not even the worst of it—how about the three-and-out after the second, almost miraculous, momentum-changing interception with 1:40 left in the half, where we neither gained yardage nor ran the clock and thus gave the ball back with enough time to allow the Colts to kick yet another field goal?  Not that it will matter in the end, since this team is getting shut out, but some things are just too embarrassing for professionals.

Basically, just what I expected when we hired Herm—an uninspiring, mediocre year full of near-losses in games we should have won and fourth-quarter collapses on the road, leading to a sixth-seed playoff appearance in which we perform crappily and are fucking squashed.

If there are any Chiefs fans reading this, you'll be happy to know that, as bad as that was, I fully expect this coming season to be way worse.  Hopefully you do too; trust me, it makes things a lot easier to give up ahead of time.  During the last four years of the tear-stained Vermeil era, the Chiefs had a Super Bowl-quality offense, but they managed just one playoff appearance (a sad home defeat to those same loathesome, gay-marriage-despising Colts) because they were unable to cobble together even a league-average defense.  Those years were an endless parade of 38-35 wins and losses, as the defense put up about as much resistance as—well, pick your simile: cheesecloth, College Republicans, the Maginot Line.  (Chiefs fans used to refer to D-coordinator Greg Robinson's "scheme" as "the 32 defense": 32nd against the run, 32nd against the pass, 32 points a game.)  Rehiring the batshit crazy Gunther Cunningham as coordinator improved things a little, but only a little, and now the offense has gotten oooooold.  Last year, the biggest Chiefs-related story in the national media was the decapitation of our quarterback by the Bengals' Robert Geathers in the opening game of the season, but the real problem, as always, was on the offensive line.  Our All-World left tackle Willie Roaf had retired before the season, and we replaced him with Jordan Black, who is basically a good backup guard.  Our non-All-World right tackle John Welbourn had been suspended a second time for injecting crazy-man juice into his asscheeks, and the best we could come up with to take his place was Kyle Turley, who'd been out for two years with a debilitating back injury and returned like 50 pounds lighter, presumably because he was no longer injecting anything into his asscheeks.  All of a sudden, Larry Johnson, who'd been able to run around left end for 40 yards at will during the '05 season, started getting stacked up behind the line.  People who didn't watch the Chiefs every week didn't seem to notice this, but Johnson last year was nowhere near the back he'd been in '05, because his blockers weren't giving him nearly as much help.  He ran for a shitload of yards, of course, but only because he carried the ball more than anyone had in the history of the league.

Things have only gotten worse since then.  After last season, our All-World right guard Will Shields decided enough was enough and returned to chill with his family in Lawton, OK.  In two years, the Chiefs have gone from having the best O-line in the league to being substantially below average.  Unsurprisingly, Larry Johnson is holding out.  Why wouldn't he?  This is his contract year.  Does he really want to suffer the awful brutality of carrying the ball another 400-some times behind a mediocre line for a shit team, only to be denied free agency when the Chiefs franchise him at the end of the season?  Johnson might be a prima donna, but I don't blame him one bit.  The passing game will be no better, because the Chiefs apparently intend to play this season without any quarterbacks or wide receivers.  Training camp is less than a week old and, at least if you believe Jason Whitlock, things are already spinning out of control.

The best thing about the coming season is that the Chiefs are going to be featured on HBO's training-camp docudramainfotainment Hard Knocks, which is returning on August 8 after a five-year hiatus.  So we get to see this ineptitude play out on national teevee.  Priest Holmes, whom the fantasy-football aficionados among y'all may recall as a superlative performer during the early years of this decade, seems to think he's going to play again, at age 33, after two years away from the game with a serious neck injury.  I love Priest, but I suspect the team is mostly interested in him as leverage against Johnson.  The world will finally get a window into the football intellect of Herm Edwards, a guy who thinks you can win in the NFL by kicking more field goals than the other team.  And Americans outside the KC metro area finally will come face to face with Carl Peterson, the longest-tenured general manager in American professional sports, who has never come close to winning anything but has retained his job mainly because Midwesterners are too unfailingly polite to demand actual results instead of platitudinal bullshit.  The last time HBO aired Hard Knocks, the subject was the Dallas Cowboys, then coached by half-asleep fat boy Dave Campo and with a roster featuring noted bong enthusiast Quincy Carter and the vocal stylings of Richmond Flowers.  I believe the 2002 Cowboys finished 5-11.  The 2007 Chiefs will be lucky to match that performance.