FOR THE LIONS, IT WASN'T BUSINESS.......IT WAS PERSONAL
Remember Todd Haley refusing to shake hands with Josh McDaniel after Denver smoked the Chiefs last fall? I'm beginning to believe that episode is just the tip of the iceberg, there are many people in this league who don't like Todd Haley or Scott Pioli. The Detroit Lions might be at or near the top of the list of haters. Why you ask? Sadly there's a history between the teams & all of it was instigated by the Chiefs.
Did you notice former Chiefs head coach & defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham getting a Gatorade shower near the end of the game yesterday? Would it surprise you to know he was given a game ball? Tho Gunther's way too classy to say anything derogatory about the Chiefs, after being fired by Kansas City, he probably has a legitimate reason. He was canned as head coach after compiling a 16-16 record, he inherited a 16-16 team & had zero control over the college draft or free agency, micro-manager Carl Peterson took care of all personnel moves. Unfortunately, coaches who got stuck with the Mike Clouds, Larry Atkins & Sylvester Morris' of the draft, often lost their jobs. Worse yet, Peterson failed to fire Cunningham in person, Gun found out from the team's website he had been replaced by Dick Vermeil. He was humiliated in front of the whole world by Peterson. Later he was asked to swallow his pride & come back to Kansas City to "fix" their porous defense. He agreed, but Peterson gave him little to work with & the defense improved only marginally. He left after the 2008 season when the Lions offered him the D-coordinator's position. Just like the great Chiefs' defenses of the 90's, the Lion defenders love Cunningham & they took special pleasure in exacting a little revenge for their coach yesterday.
After the game yesterday, Chiefs exalted ruler, Scott Pioli stopped his Detroit counterpart, Martin Mayhew, offered congratulations & extended his hand. Mayhew shook his head & turned his back on Pioli. Obviously the Lions are still angry about the tampering charge the Chiefs leveled against them last season causing Detroit to forfeit a 4th round draft pick to Kansas City. The Chiefs used that pick to trade up for tight end Tony Moeaki. Do you think there was a message when the Lions went for a 4th & goal at the 1, leading 41-3 & just 5-minutes left in the game? They wanted to stick it up Pioli's ass. They scored the touchdown, mission accomplished.
And then there's the arrogance factor, which I guess is permissible if you have accomplished something worthy of being arrogant about, one lopsided home loss in a playoff game really isn't worthy of a huffy attitude. What rankles many around the league, both NFL people & media-types, is Pioli came here with this attitude. Humble is not in his vocabulary. He & Haley made Pro Bowl lineman & locker room leader, Brian Waters, look like a schmuck in an incident at Arrowhead right after they were hired. This pair has burned a few bridges, in fact they've followed a "scorched earth" policy with players as well as secretaries, security & other staff. For those who thought Pioli was taking credit for teams that were actually built by Bill Belichick, it appears that theroy is correct. I've witnessed a scatter-shot method of building a roster. I watched a football team, with precious little depth, suffer 3 injuries go straight into the toilet. I watched the "good guy" strategy of drafting followed by the selection of some extremely risky characters. No rhyme or reason. Folks, I write a crummy football blog & host a small town radio program, I'm not the personnel director of an NFL team. But I'll tell you this, I hated the Tyson Jackson pick, Jonathan Baldwin & others selected by Kansas City under the leadership of Scott Pioli. I made those feelings clear right here for 2 1/2 years. How are those picks working out for us?
About the lack of real NFL depth, sitting on $29 million in cap money doesn't look like such a smart business decision with tens of thousands of empty seats at Arrowhead does it? Twenty-nine millions dollars in cap space would have bought a helluva lot better depth than Sabby Piscatelli, Jerheme Urban, Steve Maneri & the three non-catchers at tight end. I will give the Chiefs a pass for some free agents not wanting to come here, they simply didn't want any part of Pioli, Haley or both. You think these players & their agents don't have a book on our franchise's leadership?
So where do the Chiefs go from here. Please don't mention the "process" because we're way beyond that propaganda, we aren't as stupid as you might believe. If the game in San Diego nets another single-digit scoring day, I figure Bill Muir will be back on the sideline coaching the offensive line & Haley will take over the play calling. What if we don't see results? Then I think Pioli will have to can Haley in order to save his own skin with Clark Hunt. But there are far more problems than just replacing a coach who tries to reinvent the wheel at nearly every turn.
Matt Cassel appears to miss Charlie Weis a helluva lot. He's thrown 4 picks in two games, that's more than half of the 7 interceptions he threw all of last season. Pioli has to draft better & let's start with a real live quarterback, enough of taking other teams castoffs. No more Steve DeBerg, Dave Krieg, Steve Bono, Elvis Grbac or Matt Cassel. Draft a college quarterback with a first round selection. Did you see the difference between Cassel & Matthew Stafford yesterday? It's huge, Stafford has a very live, very strong, very accurate NFL arm. A quarterback of his ilk can make a team 2-3 games better. I don't want to hear Ricky Stanzi mentioned either. In no way does he compare to Cam Newton, Blaine Gabbert, Christian Ponder or Andy Dalton, who were all taken in last year's draft. Cam Newton threw for over 400-yards again yesterday, think Cassel is capable of doing that? Newton's putting up these numbers with basically the same offense that went 1-15 last season.
The fact that the Chiefs have been stomped by two teams with losing records in 2010, shows how far Buffalo & Detroit have progressed while Haley's Chiefs look nothing like the 10-6 team of last year. You can't ignore beatdowns of this magnitude. The Buffalo loss was the worst-ever home opening defeat in franchise history. Yesterday's loss was the biggest margin of victory in the 81-years the Detroit franchise has been playing in the National Football League. After watching the superior coaching job by Chan Gailey last week, it should be apparent to all we kept the wrong coach.
People if this isn't a wake up call for everyone drawing a paycheck out at One Arrowhead Drive, we're doomed. There is no magic potion, crappy teams don't turn around on their own, but they don't all of a sudden start circling the drain by themselves either. There's plenty of blame to go around, but the responsibility starts & ends with Pioli & Haley. From the poor drafting to the bizarre training camp we just watched, a few heads need to roll. If for no other reason than to sound a very loud alarm bell. Aren't we all tired of little or no results? I know I am.
Did you notice former Chiefs head coach & defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham getting a Gatorade shower near the end of the game yesterday? Would it surprise you to know he was given a game ball? Tho Gunther's way too classy to say anything derogatory about the Chiefs, after being fired by Kansas City, he probably has a legitimate reason. He was canned as head coach after compiling a 16-16 record, he inherited a 16-16 team & had zero control over the college draft or free agency, micro-manager Carl Peterson took care of all personnel moves. Unfortunately, coaches who got stuck with the Mike Clouds, Larry Atkins & Sylvester Morris' of the draft, often lost their jobs. Worse yet, Peterson failed to fire Cunningham in person, Gun found out from the team's website he had been replaced by Dick Vermeil. He was humiliated in front of the whole world by Peterson. Later he was asked to swallow his pride & come back to Kansas City to "fix" their porous defense. He agreed, but Peterson gave him little to work with & the defense improved only marginally. He left after the 2008 season when the Lions offered him the D-coordinator's position. Just like the great Chiefs' defenses of the 90's, the Lion defenders love Cunningham & they took special pleasure in exacting a little revenge for their coach yesterday.
After the game yesterday, Chiefs exalted ruler, Scott Pioli stopped his Detroit counterpart, Martin Mayhew, offered congratulations & extended his hand. Mayhew shook his head & turned his back on Pioli. Obviously the Lions are still angry about the tampering charge the Chiefs leveled against them last season causing Detroit to forfeit a 4th round draft pick to Kansas City. The Chiefs used that pick to trade up for tight end Tony Moeaki. Do you think there was a message when the Lions went for a 4th & goal at the 1, leading 41-3 & just 5-minutes left in the game? They wanted to stick it up Pioli's ass. They scored the touchdown, mission accomplished.
And then there's the arrogance factor, which I guess is permissible if you have accomplished something worthy of being arrogant about, one lopsided home loss in a playoff game really isn't worthy of a huffy attitude. What rankles many around the league, both NFL people & media-types, is Pioli came here with this attitude. Humble is not in his vocabulary. He & Haley made Pro Bowl lineman & locker room leader, Brian Waters, look like a schmuck in an incident at Arrowhead right after they were hired. This pair has burned a few bridges, in fact they've followed a "scorched earth" policy with players as well as secretaries, security & other staff. For those who thought Pioli was taking credit for teams that were actually built by Bill Belichick, it appears that theroy is correct. I've witnessed a scatter-shot method of building a roster. I watched a football team, with precious little depth, suffer 3 injuries go straight into the toilet. I watched the "good guy" strategy of drafting followed by the selection of some extremely risky characters. No rhyme or reason. Folks, I write a crummy football blog & host a small town radio program, I'm not the personnel director of an NFL team. But I'll tell you this, I hated the Tyson Jackson pick, Jonathan Baldwin & others selected by Kansas City under the leadership of Scott Pioli. I made those feelings clear right here for 2 1/2 years. How are those picks working out for us?
About the lack of real NFL depth, sitting on $29 million in cap money doesn't look like such a smart business decision with tens of thousands of empty seats at Arrowhead does it? Twenty-nine millions dollars in cap space would have bought a helluva lot better depth than Sabby Piscatelli, Jerheme Urban, Steve Maneri & the three non-catchers at tight end. I will give the Chiefs a pass for some free agents not wanting to come here, they simply didn't want any part of Pioli, Haley or both. You think these players & their agents don't have a book on our franchise's leadership?
So where do the Chiefs go from here. Please don't mention the "process" because we're way beyond that propaganda, we aren't as stupid as you might believe. If the game in San Diego nets another single-digit scoring day, I figure Bill Muir will be back on the sideline coaching the offensive line & Haley will take over the play calling. What if we don't see results? Then I think Pioli will have to can Haley in order to save his own skin with Clark Hunt. But there are far more problems than just replacing a coach who tries to reinvent the wheel at nearly every turn.
Matt Cassel appears to miss Charlie Weis a helluva lot. He's thrown 4 picks in two games, that's more than half of the 7 interceptions he threw all of last season. Pioli has to draft better & let's start with a real live quarterback, enough of taking other teams castoffs. No more Steve DeBerg, Dave Krieg, Steve Bono, Elvis Grbac or Matt Cassel. Draft a college quarterback with a first round selection. Did you see the difference between Cassel & Matthew Stafford yesterday? It's huge, Stafford has a very live, very strong, very accurate NFL arm. A quarterback of his ilk can make a team 2-3 games better. I don't want to hear Ricky Stanzi mentioned either. In no way does he compare to Cam Newton, Blaine Gabbert, Christian Ponder or Andy Dalton, who were all taken in last year's draft. Cam Newton threw for over 400-yards again yesterday, think Cassel is capable of doing that? Newton's putting up these numbers with basically the same offense that went 1-15 last season.
The fact that the Chiefs have been stomped by two teams with losing records in 2010, shows how far Buffalo & Detroit have progressed while Haley's Chiefs look nothing like the 10-6 team of last year. You can't ignore beatdowns of this magnitude. The Buffalo loss was the worst-ever home opening defeat in franchise history. Yesterday's loss was the biggest margin of victory in the 81-years the Detroit franchise has been playing in the National Football League. After watching the superior coaching job by Chan Gailey last week, it should be apparent to all we kept the wrong coach.
People if this isn't a wake up call for everyone drawing a paycheck out at One Arrowhead Drive, we're doomed. There is no magic potion, crappy teams don't turn around on their own, but they don't all of a sudden start circling the drain by themselves either. There's plenty of blame to go around, but the responsibility starts & ends with Pioli & Haley. From the poor drafting to the bizarre training camp we just watched, a few heads need to roll. If for no other reason than to sound a very loud alarm bell. Aren't we all tired of little or no results? I know I am.
FINALLY HAD A CHANCE TO CATCH YOUR SHOW TONIGHT...YOU SOUND LIKE A PRO, LIKE YOU'VE BEEN DOING IT FOR 20 YEARS. BOY THAT LAST GUY JUST WANTED TO ARGUE WITH YOU AND TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF CHIEF RECORDS AND STATS. I'M AFRAID I'D BE LIKE ROME, OK MORON, YOU'RE OUTTA HERE...CLICK! THE FIRST 2 GAMES REMIND ME OF OUR DAYS IN SEC 121 OR WHATEVER IT WAS...PURE MISERY AND PAIN. MY LORD, HOW COULD THEY BE THIS AWFUL THIS QUICK? GRANTED THE EASY SCHEDULE LAST YEAR BUT WE'RE TALKING ABOUT BUFFALO AT HOME AND DETROIT(WHO I RELIZE IS VASTLY IMPROVED)BUT STILL SHOULD HAVE MATCHED UP EVEN TO US OR A LITTLE BETTER...BUT NOT 45 POINTS BETTER!! I COULDN'T WATCH, WAS GANZ OR MAC-WHATEVER ON THE SIDELINE? HOPE YOU HAVE A LONG RUN ON THE RADIO AND I HOPE MISTER EXCITEMENT(MAN I WOULD SHOOT MYSELF IN THE TOE IF I HAD TO LISTEN TO HIS MONOTONE, LIFELESS SPEECHES)WAS LISTENING BECAUSE YOU HIT THE NAIL ON THE HEAD AND LAID HIM THE GREASE BUT GOOD...WHERE HE BELONGS! GOOD LUCK RICH AND TALK TO YOU SOON!
GW
Reply to this
Thanks for the kind words, I'm just learning this radio bidness, but hopefully it will work out. I was amazed when they called & offered me the gig.
The guy you were referring to is exactly the type of caller I like, someone who challenges me, I hope to have calls like that every week.
Boy we did watch a lot of shitty football back in the day didn't we? But few had better tailgates than us huh?
Reply to this