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sling58
10-26-2007, 10:38 AM
As we head into a weekend without Chiefs football it seems as good a time as any to pause and consider just where this football team is going.
With their 4-3 record and victories in four of their last five games, the Chiefs have shown they are an improving team. Whether they are a contender for a spot in the playoffs remains to be seen. The offense is too inconsistent and the offensive line play has been too suspect to mark them as one of the better teams in the AFC.
New England and Indianapolis are the class of the conference. The second level of the AFC is Pittsburgh, San Diego and Jacksonville. The Chiefs are on the third level right now, with Baltimore, Tennessee and possibly Denver.
Do the math and the Chiefs are in the same position they were last season. If they can make the playoffs in the tough AFC, it will be as the sixth seed, the final wildcard participant.
Is this an indication the Chiefs have not made any progress this year? Not at all.
What every Chiefs fan needs to remember is one single fact: what Herm Edwards is trying to pull off is the hardest coaching task in the game. Edwards is trying to reshape the roster, rebuild the franchise and he’s trying to do it without taking a major step backwards.
He’s trying to rebuild and win at the same time.
Those two items do not have to be mutually exclusive. But it’s nearly impossible to do in the NFL especially the way Edwards is pushing the team. The Chiefs are getting younger. They are not rebuilding by jumping into the free agency market and signing a lot of veteran players.
They are rebuilding through the draft and development process. Plant an apple tree seedling and fruit does not immediately spring from its tiny branches. It must grow, mature and become strong enough to bear fruit. So too must players. They must develop and become capable of helping a team win.
Again, that’s the hard part: rebuilding and winning. But it’s vital that those two happen at the same time because if they don’t, a franchise ends up in a perpetual rebuilding state. That seedling will not grow with sunshine and water.
Last year, Edwards was one 10 head coaches taking over their teams. After one full season and almost half of another, here’s how those coaches are faring as they go into this weekend:
http://www.kcchiefs.com/media/images/A413867AF4544CB2947C13CA6813C375.GIF?0.76239884003 4469
Payton, Jauron, Kubiak, Marinelli and Shell all took over teams that have struggled in recent years. Shell has already lost his job. Among the others, only Payton has a winning record right now after a season and a half. Marinelli is trending upward with a 4-2 record. Kubiak’s Texans started strong but have fallen off. Jauron continues to have trouble winning games, even with a victory last Sunday over Baltimore.
What happens to teams that are rebuilding and not winning is that the young players never learn how to win. When a team is finishing 3-13, 4-12, or 5-11, they are not playing in late season games that matter. They are not going on the road in November trying to position themselves for a possible spot in the playoffs down the line. They are not hosting a December game where the winner continues to have post-season hope, while the loser sees his chances destroyed.
These players never taste that type of pressure, and there’s only one way to learn how to compete under those circumstances and that’s to be part of it.
That’s why what happened to the Chiefs last January was so important. While the results of that post-season trip to Indianapolis were ugly, it was an experience that’s impossible to buy for young players, guys like Page, Pollard, Hali, Derrick Johnson and Larry Johnson.
Why do teams like Detroit and Arizona never seem to be able to get out of the rebuilding process? They draft and develop players who never get the opportunity to play in games that count. They don’t know what they don’t know.
Herm is trying to teach his young kids about the work habits and attitudes necessary to compete at the highest level of the league without getting their brains bashed in. It would have been easier for Edwards if when he came in last year, he cleared the decks. He could have gone nuclear with his rebuild for 2006 by blowing up the roster and wiping off names like Green, Kennison, Wiegmann, Shields and others.
He could have done that and done a 3-13 or 4-12 last year. But what would youngsters like Page, Pollard, Hali and the others really learned from that type of season? You would just have a young team with very few players that knew anything about playing a game with consequences.
Instead, Edwards went about the difficult task of blending the remnants of an older team with the faces of youth. That dichotomy is even more pronounced this season, as there are more younger players and the ranks of the older players grows smaller.
Coaching for the future, it would have been easier for Edwards after the team’s 0-2 start this year to go with even more youth. He could have easily benched RG John Welbourn, RTs Kyle Turley and Chris Terry, QB Damon Huard, CB Ty Law and even C Casey Wiegmann and allowed the youngsters to play. With the possible exception of Huard, none of those veterans figure to be part of the mix for the 2008 season.
There’s a good chance the Chiefs would not be 4-3 had he gone in that direction. They would not have won a pair of division road games on the road. No, they aren’t challenging the frontrunners like New England or Indianapolis. But they are reshuffling the deck and they haven’t fallen to the depths of the recent Raiders teams, or Miami, or Buffalo.
The league rules give the bottom feeders in the NFL every opportunity to get better, whether it’s through the draft, the waiver claim system, or in scheduling. So why do these teams so frequently spin their wheels and continue to struggle?
Because they rebuild and they do not learn how to win. Teams that win, don’t want to rebuild, because winning is hard. Rebuilding narrows the margin of victory. Coaches are afraid of youth and inexperience.
Herm Edwards is not afraid. He also plans to win. It’s the NFL’s hardest daily double. There are nine games remaining in this 2007 season for the Chiefs and what we’ve seen is they are among the top half of the teams in the AFC.
If they can stay there, it will be another strong block in the foundation of the new Chiefs and will pay huge dividends in 2008 and 2009 when this team’s talent level has had two more years to improve.
Right now it’s a bit of a roller coaster, but the experiences and the roster turnover is building a rocket ship for the Chiefs future: a talented, experienced team that is balanced and within salary cap sanity.

hermhater
10-26-2007, 04:46 PM
Wow sling, that is the post of the month right there...

If you wrote it!!

Reference?

Great article though!

sling58
10-27-2007, 07:52 AM
Wow sling, that is the post of the month right there...

If you wrote it!!

Reference?

Great article though!

I didn't write it. Found it on the interweb, www.kcchiefs.com. take no credit for things I don't write.

Chiefster
10-27-2007, 09:04 AM
What happens to teams that are rebuilding and not winning is that the young players never learn how to win. When a team is finishing 3-13, 4-12, or 5-11, they are not playing in late season games that matter. They are not going on the road in November trying to position themselves for a possible spot in the playoffs down the line. They are not hosting a December game where the winner continues to have post-season hope, while the loser sees his chances destroyed.
These players never taste that type of pressure, and there’s only one way to learn how to compete under those circumstances and that’s to be part of it.

This just described the Chiefs in the 70's and 80's.

'Nough said.

wolfpack
10-27-2007, 09:34 AM
gretz is queen carl`s lapdog. he like dufus dont write anything without the written consent of the offices of carla peterson. he cant or dosnt have peterson permission to say anything bad about carl or hermmie or even solari. hermmie dosent know offense. i would almost bet carl told him to draft bowe. hermmie has never drafted a o-lineman.

hermhater
10-27-2007, 04:17 PM
gretz is queen carl`s lapdog. he like dufus dont write anything without the written consent of the offices of carla peterson. he cant or dosnt have peterson permission to say anything bad about carl or hermmie or even solari. hermmie dosent know offense. i would almost bet carl told him to draft bowe. hermmie has never drafted a o-lineman.

Carla Peterson...

You made me laugh!

:lol: :toast2:

Chiefster
10-27-2007, 09:37 PM
Carla Peterson...

You made me laugh!

:lol: :toast2:

I thought it was Herm Peterson.

Coach
10-27-2007, 10:06 PM
I didn't write it. Found it on the interweb, www.kcchiefs.com (http://www.kcchiefs.com). take no credit for things I don't write.

Thanks for posting this article. I agree with a lot of it. But I think Hermie is getting a lot of credit for Gunther's work.

Chiefster
10-27-2007, 10:11 PM
Thanks for posting this article. I agree with a lot of it. But I think Hermie is getting a lot of credit for Gunther's work.

Agreed!

chief31
10-28-2007, 06:00 PM
Thanks for posting this article. I agree with a lot of it. But I think Hermie is getting a lot of credit for Gunther's work.

I agree also. But if I am going to lay blame on Herm for the offense, then I feel I need to credit him for the defense. But I do believe that Gunny is the real reason this defense is doing so well.