The new coaching staff cut his ass after 1 training camp.

You seem to believe that a couple months is enough to make up for 2 years of poor coaching. Nevermind the fact that the Seattle game was clearly an example of a kid caught in the middle.

He was still working on trying to incorporate his hitter's instinct with the new scheme/technique. You could see how tentative he was in that game - he simply wasn't comfortable.

But hey, why give a 24 year old kid a little time to iron out the kinks when you can just cut him for Mike !@#$ing Brown?

You're absolutely wrong here. You are spinning in circles trying to defend the indefensible. Bernard Pollard has always been coachable, has always been talented and has always had a desire to crack some skulls. In Texas he's been coached better, placed in a better scheme (similar to one he'd see here, BTW) and his coaches have expressed confidence in him.

THAT'S why he's flourishing. There's no reason he couldn't have received the same things here; there's no reason we couldn't be getting above average SS play from a 25 year old. Instead we're getting arguably the worst SS play in the NFL from some dusty, broke-dick croney.

He didn't need to be cut, he needed to be taught.

In that sense, I guess you're right - he wouldn't be better here than he was, but only because Todd Haley can't coach anyone up for shit. Pollard would've progressed under Haley about like Bowe, Johnson, Albert, Cassel, Page, Flowers, Carr, etc... have.

He may not have progressed, but that's an indictment on the overmatched cockholster of a head coach we have, not Bernard Pollard.

All the arguments have been made 100 times over; I see no point in repeating them.

"You've got REP"!

Oh, garbage. Page improved his tackling. Page was just as poor a tackler as Pollard was last year but he didn't shit the bed in preseason.

Pollard improved in every area each year.

Gunther no doubt emphasized turnovers and Pollard always looked for the knockout before the wrapup.

He wasnt a great player, but you dont throw out average players that are young during a rebuild. Especially if that guy is a safety that lead your team in tackles the previous year.

Nothing about Pollard's play screamed "average."

And I wish people would stop bring up tackle stats. :shake:

Pollard had 1 bad game where he kept getting schooled in the open field.

First -- There are all of about 5 SSs in the NFL that will consistently make an openfield tackle.

Second -- THAT'S WHY YOU HAVE A PRE-SEASON!!

Pollard went out there trying to pick up the new scheme and had a bad game because he was struggling to figure out the new system. It's not the first time it's happened to a young kid, it won't be the last.

Instead of recognizing his talent and his work ethic, we cut him based on a lousy pre-season game and the fact that our head coach feels he is above developing the skills of younger players.

You're honestly trying to say that Bernard Pollard didn't care about improving his tackling because he hadn't been cut before? Nevermind the fact that the guy was going to be a free agent soon. Nah, lifetime financial security wouldn't have meant anything for the guy.

Your position here is completely assinine.

No, he had a long history of it.

The fact he went out and repeated that history in the most important preseason game said a lot.

I am always harping on people for using tackle stats, the reason is because they are usually not a good measuring stick to compare players between teams...Im not doing that, Im comparing players from the SAME team and pointing out that two of our top three tacklers were our safeties. It is 100% relevant in this case. If I was comparing his tackles to that of his with the Texans it would be IMO unusable because of the difference in how they are counted on the different teams...fair enough?

And right now, given the massive difference in the play of his defense before and since his insertion into the starting lineup...one would have to say he is above average, or have their head in the sand.

No it didn't.

It said he looked bad in a game that didn't matter, prior to a season that doesn't matter.

It was GD reeruned to cut the guy going into a knowingly lost season. He was easily more talented than 1/2 the chaff we kept on this roster. Now he's shown that, with proper coaching and a team that believes in him, he can be a well above average NFL safety.

Your boy Haley probably wouldn't have gotten that out of him because he's a worthless douchebag, but using that same logic we probably should just cut Bowe, Johnson, Albert...well pretty much the entire damn team, seeing as how every last player on it has taken a step back from last season.

A competent, qualified NFL head coach would've made a solid NFL player out of Bernard Pollard. Unfortunately, we don't have one of those.

I think you are too readily placing blame on Haley.

The fact is, our defensive coaching has sucked ass for years, and blame should be placed on those guys for the failure to use Pollard ina role he could succeed in.

Blame Haley and Pendergast for giving up on him too soon, but let's give Haley some time to develop and also find out if he makes changes to the staff in the next offseason.

MM, the only reason he's gone, is because he was the first in that secondary to stand up and call that little bitch Pender****er a "little bitch".

And I for one have NO ****ing problem with that whatsoever.

Because he absolutely ****ing sucks. He got fired from a Super Bowl team. You know this, I know this; there's no argument for this guy and his bullshit.
He was a late hire who was seen as being easily pliable by the two men who hired him.

Let's not paint the toilet gold and call it Sinbad's ****ing treasure.

Please.

That's exactly what I'm blaming them for. I'm just adding the caveat that, in light of the 'performance' of the rest of the young players on our roster, there's little reason to believe that he'd have actually progressed this far under Haley.

So I'm merely conceding that Pollard probably wouldn't have improved much here in KC, but it's not because he 'needed to wake up', it's because Todd Haley can't coach up young players.

coach Haley = failure
 

why we released him in a 1st place? his replacement is not any better... at one point, he needs to learn how to coach. Cutting and looking for the most 'fit' players wont cut it

I wouldn't go that far. He's coached plenty of young guys as a position coordinator and was instrumental, by Fitzgerald's own admission, into helping him become an elite receiver. I think the thing with coaches is that they look for certain types of players with certain mentalities. And Pollard may not have fit that bill here. Or heck, he may have been a mistake like Donnie Edwards being let go was. It may have been a case of Pendergast thinking that Pollard wasn't going to be useful in his scheme. Whatever the case, Pollard is in a better situation right now. It didn't work here under Gunther, and it didn't work under Pendergast.

The thing I would be looking at is that it seems that Haley and even Pioli are coming from a couple of Super Bowl caliber teams, and they are starting out with the idea of a player that is a Super Bowl caliber player. This may make them think that a young guy who will never be better than OK is expendable. Pollard may be a solid player for the scheme that the Texans are running, but he'll probably never be anything more than OK unless he undergoes an extreme transformation. So Haley is probably thinking to himself that he can go get some other guy who would be more responsive to the coaching here to also come in and play OK, and that'll have to do until they find someone who can play at an elite level there.

Right now I think what we're seeing is a coach/GM who are installing a system that doesn't necessarily fit the players, and they are saying we're going to get this in place, see who can make the transition, and go out and sign/draft players who can fit in and get rid of those who can't.

My guess is that these guys believe in their systems more than anything because that's what they have used to build Super Bowl teams. And so looking at a 2-14 team, they felt that was the best way to get things right long term.

This is really on Clark Hunt. I'm sure Pioli would have made this clear prior to his hire. If he wanted to hire someone who would take the players we had, made a few tweaks, and created a system to fit the style of the players, then he could have gone that route. You could argue that with Herm and Gailey, they did a lot of conforming to the existing players, as you saw with the Pistol offense and the simplified schemes Herm ran to accommodate the young guys.

That difference in philosophy is another reason why Gailey got canned. I am assuming Haley feels the best thing for the long term of this club is to run a type of offense that he wants to employ and have guys conform to that and see who can run it and who can't, making minor adjustments here and there. Gailey probably wanted to stick with the spread type deal, which may have worked better short term, but long term maybe wasn't going to be viable in terms of building a contender.

I don't think either case is necessarily right, you have to take it situation by situation. But it appears this organization has elected to implement the hard change, and it's ugly. The only way it'll work long term of course is if moving forward, they can successfully identify guys who can be winning players on this team, they are able to sign free agents that can successfully contribute, and they can draft guys who are going to be long term cornerstones here.

Time will tell, but right now it's not pretty...