I was going to wait until training camp to billboard my next set of attempted witticisms, but if I don’t write now I’m in danger of being pushed off the main Warpath page by some excellent columns from the Warpath staff.

The 2008 Draft

On paper, the Chiefs had a great draft, although I was hoping they’d pick up a head coach in the 3rd round. Oh well, maybe we can get one in free agency.

If you follow football long enough, you will see every kind of draft, off-season & pre-season, and I have. Unfortunately, the off-season color wheel has not produced a Super Bowl in my lifetime, so until the ’08 KC draftees start producing wins, I will have to contain my excitement. And you know, the Lions have “won” the draft a couple of times this last decade.

Will the great Carl Peterson continue the draft success by signing all our picks before training camp, or will they miss camp and get injured for the year in the third game? Or will he cuss at them and make them want out of KC the first chance they get like John Tait and Jared Allen? One great draft does not wipe the slate clean for Carl. It’s about time Carl is doing the job he’s supposed to be doing, but it won’t mean a thing if he can’t get them into camp on time.

From the KC Star before the draft:
Edwards said the Chiefs had no free-agent visitors Monday and no visits scheduled for later in the week. They have three vacancies on their starting offensive line, at least one at cornerback and one at wide receiver, and Edwards said the Chiefs would load up at all three positions in the draft.

“There are a lot of good offensive linemen in the draft,” he said. “We’ve got 10 picks and we’re evaluating the guys who would be a good fit in our system, and we’ll get some good offensive linemen.”

JD: The O-line of the Chiefs has been a HUGE Achilles Heel, yet only two were drafted. I would’ve liked to have seen another lineman drafted instead of a second tight end, but that’s just me.

Floyd Reese said this on ESPN Radio on draft day:
“Herm Edwards has been the coach for what, two, three years? And he’s just NOW figuring out he needs to rebuild?”

Wow. A shot at Herm from the national media, must be a mistake.

Jared Allen

Trading Jared Allen at this time was the right thing to do, and on paper, it looks like the Chiefs got a good deal, on paper. I know some people don’t like the phrase “It’s too early to tell”, but it is.

That being said, it should have never got to this point. Regardless of what Jared Allen did or said, whether JA was right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. The job of the GM is to sign your star players and keep them on the team, and Carl failed. The DUI’s don’t matter. They can write up a clause that covers the team if Jared screws up again.

At his end of the year press conference, Clark Hunt blamed Carl for a lot of the Chiefs current troubles (after blaming Vermeil, of course), yet he didn’t fire him. I believe JA would’ve stayed in Kansas City if we had a different GM, so once again, this ultimately falls on Clark. Again.

Jared Allen is the poster child for the team that Herm and Carl want to create this week. He’s a young draft pick that blossomed into a star. And now he’s gone. What’s going to happen when Dwayne Bowe’s contract comes up? Or Derrick Johnson’s? Or Glenn Dorsey’s? Only keeping a draft pick for three-four years is really no different than signing a veteran free agent for three-four years. The point of building a team through the draft is to have them together for a long time, but we can’t do that if our GM is unable to keep our good players.

Wait, I change my mind, this is all Vermeil’s fault. If he hadn’t drafted JA, then we wouldn’t be in this mess. No, wait a minute, that’s not right either. Dick Vermeil didn’t draft any good players, he only drafted the bad ones. I know there’s a way to blame this on DV, but it will take some thinking (I know, first time is always hard).

From the KC Star:
When (JOE POSNANSKI) asked one Chiefs official how the Chiefs possibly could get better without the NFL’s sack leader, he asked back: “How many of those sacks were in the fourth quarter?”

The correct answer to that is zero. When asked what this was supposed to mean – after all, the Chiefs were trailing an awful lot in the fourth quarter, and sack opportunities were rare – the official shrugged and said, “I’m just saying. Zero.”

JD: This is just a bitter, sour-grapes, stupid statement from “one Chiefs official”. There are a lot of reasons for zero 4th quarter sacks that cannot be covered by a generic blanket statement like that.

Bottom line, Jared Allen led the league with 15 sacks. NO ONE had more. NO ONE. Just a typical “You can’t quit, you’re fired!” kind of statement. Pathetic.

We don’t have to discredit every Chiefs player who leaves for another team, especially when the great Carl Peterson is just as much, if not more at fault.

Letters to the Know-It-All (that’s me)

Today’s letter of the month is from Gordan Ramsey and it was posted on my last article:

RAMSEY: “Since you are the self appointed know-it-all of building an NFL team, why don’t you put in an application to for the Chiefs head coaching job, or GM for that matter.”

JD: This is a typical argument for people who don’t want to debate facts. I don’t need to be a chef to tell when my Big Mac tastes like crap, I don’t need to be a director to know that “Charlie’s Angels” was a stupid movie, and I don’t need to be a head coach or general manager to know that 4-12 is a bad record and the “plan” that Herm and Carl are using HAS NOT WORKED. But, to answer your question, when the Chiefs head coaching job becomes available next year, I will submit an application. I’m fairly confident of getting a callback, since Herm has proven you don’t need experience to be a head coach.

RAMSEY: “You blame coach Edwards for many faults of this team but many of the ingredients were not his contribution.”

JD: Really? Which ones? Ultimately Herm is in charge, so ultimately it is his fault. If he feels Hermcuffed by Vermeil’s players, why doesn’t he get rid of all of them? Marty cut half of Ganz’s team before training camp. Why hasn’t Herm done that? Because he wouldn’t be able to blame Vermeil anymore.

RAMSEY: “Two years to take the oldest team in the league, with fading stars, and turn it into a winner by filling holes with more old veterans.”

JD: A good coach, like Marty or Vermeil, can do it in less than two years, and they did.

RAMSEY: “You have not expressed this as your view, but you seem to imply that this is how you would stir the pot because you attempt to debunk the other rebuilding theories.”

JD: That’s not what I implied at all. There are only three ways to acquire players (trade, free agency & draft), and Herm only wants to use one. Why would you not want to use all three? But that’s Herm using the mentality he did on the field for player acquisitions. There are only three basic ways to move the football (long pass, short pass & the run), and Herm only wanted to use two. That is just plain dumb.

What I would like to see is Herm doing WHATEVER it takes to win, as opposed to just doing ONLY one thing, like building through the draft. For him to say free agency isn’t a good way to go is just silly.

Second of all, we wouldn’t have had the need to rebuild if Herm hadn’t run the franchise into the ground like he did.

RAMSEY: “I would wager that a few years ago you were complaining that the Chiefs need a few more pricey veterans to fill holes that would take them to the next level.”

JD: Had we had one stud defender who could’ve forced two punts, Kansas City would have beaten Indy in the ’03 playoffs. But yes, you are right, signing pricey veterans NEVER helps a team get to the next level. Can you believe how stupid New England was by signing Rodney Harrison, Junior Seau, Corey Dillon and Randy Moss? They couldn’t even go 19-0 with all those old guys!

RAMSEY: “The days of a high scoring Chiefs offense went into retirement with Willie Roaf, so in the words of Mr. Edwards, “get over it.”

JD: Actually, those days went out with departure of Al Saunders. Will you have another witty commentary when the Chiefs lose yet another 13-10 game next year? Or when the vaunted Texan Steel Curtain holds KC to 3 points? Hate to break this to you, but you need to score more than 14 points a game to win. As for “get over it”, that comment can be more accurately applied to the fact that Dick Vermeil is no longer a Chiefs employee.

RAMSEY: “You will never get out of the pot or pan anything better than what went into it.”

JD: I agree, anytime Herm wants to put something into the pan, he’s free to try.

RAMSEY: “So get of your soapbox and stop blaming the coach for every shortcoming of this team.

JD: Everyone blames the President of the United States for all the country’s problems. Why? Because he is in charge. The guy in charge is the only one who can do something about it. Tony Gonzalez can’t draft players. Derrick Johnson doesn’t call plays. Donnie Edwards can’t sign old, washed-up vets like Junior Seau and Randy Moss.

RAMSEY: “There is plenty of blame to go around.”

JD: Really? And who do you blame, Dick Vermeil? Marty? Ganz? Levy? Stram? How about instead of blaming and excuses, why don’t we try fixing? Herm brings this all on himself. If he would just shut up and get it done already, there would be nothing to say. But he doesn’t.

Clark Hunt

HUNT: “We’re going to be very focused every year on the draft as the key tool that we build this team with. Certainly there will be an occasional year where we might sign a free agent who the public considers to be a marquee player. That’s how it will shake out. I don’t want to say we’re never going to sign a player that has name recognition, because that’s not true. But the focus will always be on the draft. We need to make sure we have the people and the process in place that allows us to be successful drafting every year. We’ve seen that if you go two or three years with poor drafts, that eventually will catch up to you. There’s nothing you can do in free agency to make up for that.”

JD: You mean drafting good young players like Jared Allen?

Peterson Takes a Shot at DV, Again

PETERSON: “Our previous head coaches didn’t want to do it in this fashion. They wanted to play veteran players and were reluctant to play young players. Herm has a different philosophy, and you always try to go with the philosophy of your head coach because at the end of the day, he’s the one who has to get the most out of them.”

JD: You mean playing younger players like Damon Huard? Or do you mean drafting a defensive player with the 1st pick in the ’03 draft?

Hermisms

EDWARDS: “We were in all of our games going into the 4th quarter, we just didn’t finish” (4/23/08 on ESPN Radio).

JD: Really? Herm, you do know that a lot of people besides you watched your games this year, don’t you? It was 41-7 & 17-3 at Denver and Houston in the 3rd quarter. FORTY-ONE TO SEVEN. Maybe Herm still thought we could’ve pulled it off against the Broncos I guess.

EDWARDS: “If we don’t get anybody else (free agents), that’s OK. What I don’t want to do is go out and get a guy, any guy, just so people think, ‘Well, they got somebody, so they must be doing a good job in free agency.’ No, that’s not what we’re going to do. If that guy can’t help us win and he doesn’t fit what we’re doing, we will not bring him in here. That would be a waste of our time and a waste of his time.”

JD: Good thing you didn’t bring in Eddie Drummond then.

EDWARDS: “I believe in the draft. Free agency is great, but for what we’re trying to do, we’ve got to draft our football team. To me, I’m more excited about the draft. We’re going to pick guys we feel can come in here and start. That’s not a bad thing for us. That’s a good thing for us. We’re trying to build for the long haul, and we’re trying to build with youth. We’re trying to keep this team together for a long time.”

JD: Good thing we’re set at defensive end, Oops! I also love how Herm has to define good AND bad for us. I would’ve never known that things that weren’t bad could also be good. But that’s not a bad thing, that’s a good thing.

EDWARDS: “(Williams has) played both spots on the outside, and Donnie’s played in the middle and on the outside. So we’re going to create competition, and the best three guys are going to play.”

JD: Wow, competition for a position to find the best player? What a great idea! I wonder what Trent Green thinks of that concept.

EDWARDS: “The other thing about it is that when the workout (with Matt Ryan) was done, they had a (public-relations) guy at the school, and he asked me to come in and speak to the press. I said OK, figuring there would be one or two guys there. It was like after a game there were so many guys there. The whole room was packed. So I sat down and did a press conference for about 25 minutes.”

JD: Actually Herm did two shows that night, with three more this weekend. Tickets still available.