Originally Posted by ChiefsandO'sfan
(Post 8341972)
Getting Away, Going Home … Wednesday Cup O’Chiefs
February 1, 2012 - Bob Gretz |
Comments (25)
Over the weekend I learned former Chiefs head coach Todd Haley would be visiting with the Pittsburgh Steelers about their offensive coordinator’s job that came open last week with the firing of Bruce Arians.
That visit went down Tuesday in Pittsburgh and the results remain unknown. By the time you read this, a decision yeah or nay could already have been made. Late Tuesday evening, things appeared all quiet on the eastern front.
I can tell you this, never have I rooted for a coach to get a job as hard as I’m rooting for Haley to land with the black and gold. I’m always the first one to say be careful what you wish for because you might get it. I know that Haley would like to spend his 2012 season back home with the Steelers, the team that was so much a part of his youth. There’s almost a magical feel to the mere possibility.
More than anything, it would be the perfect antidote for Haley to recover from what he lived with over his final two seasons as head coach of the Chiefs.
We’ve all heard so much from Clark Hunt about how he wants his organization to be like the Steelers, and then he turns around and does things that are completely opposite of what would happen with the Rooney family. Maybe if this job works out, Haley will actually get a taste of the Steelers Way.
It’s become more and more apparent that even though he was named coach of the year by some outlets in 2010, won a division title and got the Chiefs into the playoffs with a lineup far from championship caliber, the organization wanted to dump him after that season. Unfortunately, neither Hunt nor GM Scott Pioli had the guts to pull the trigger and make the move, so worried were they about the public reaction to firing a coach that made the playoffs.
Instead, they kept him on board and went about making his life as head coach as miserable as possible. Second guessing of decisions to his face, to others in the organization, to friendly media types began almost immediately. Hunt would have preferred the Chiefs have kept Charlie Weis as offensive coordinator and gotten rid of Haley, but that’s not how things worked out.
There was constant harping at Haley about little things. The head coach went to a Lil’Wayne concert on a Monday night in August with some of his players and word spread out of the Chiefs offices around the league that Haley was a slacker, unwilling to work hard. There were snide comments in the national media, passed down the pipeline from the Chiefs front office about his mental stability and his supposedly uncontrollable temper. There were willing partners in the local media who were fed this pabulum as well, and they repeated it almost with glee.
There was the talk of how he dressed; his raggedy hat, his shaving habits, his sweatshirts and the like. Those last items really infuriated the home office in Dallas. The talk out of Hunt Central was that Haley did not represent what an NFL head coach should look like. Wonder if Bill Belichick has ever had Patriots owner Robert Kraft walk into his office and question him about his choice of hoodie with cutoff sleeves for his sideline apparel?
One of the things that gnawed at Haley almost immediately upon his arrival in the building was how little things became big things, the old making a mountain out of a mole hill. Plus, there was the inability of the organization to move quickly and pull the trigger on various situations. There were constant conversations, back and forth between the offices and Dallas, more meetings and still sometimes a decision couldn’t get made.
For the last two seasons he was the head coach, Haley was one man in the boat with a single oar. There was nobody rowing in the same direction. I don’t buy a lot of conspiracy theories on any subject, but more and more it seems like the team’s unwillingness to spend money on new players going into last year when there were so many possibilities may have had motives other than saving a buck.
As has happened frequently with the powers in charge with the Chiefs, anything that happens even after a person leaves the building is blamed on the absent. The Kansas City Star story on the toxic environment around the team has been blamed on Haley around the bigwigs at team headquarters. Now, there’s talk that the team is not going to pay him the last year of his contract, because they fired him “with cause.” Cause was never a word that Hunt or Pioli used when they announced Haley’s firing on December 12.
Eventually, the Chiefs will pay Haley the money they owe him, even if he has to go to league arbitration and the court house to get the check. It will just be a continuation of the hapless behavior of a franchise that has become an NFL laughingstock. At the Senior Bowl last week there were 800 NFL team employees in Mobile. I didn’t talk to 800 or 400 or even 200. But over five days, I bet I spoke to 100 head coaches, assistant coaches, GMs, front office employees and scouts. Almost to a man, they wanted to know about the Star story. It seems that everyone in the league has read the toxic tale and not a single one of them made a comment to indicate they thought Haley was out of his mind for thinking his office was bugged and his phone tapped. Most of them were not surprised.
If Haley can jump to the stability that is the hallmark of the Rooney family and their operation of the Steelers, it will help wash away the last two years in the toxic soup of the Chiefs organization. In Pittsburgh right now, things are not perfect. Their early departure from the playoffs was not what’s expected each year. The team’s offense has been spotty and has drifted too far to the passing side, with not enough running game. Arians was fired and that has made quarterback Ben Roethlisberger unhappy. It seems like Roethlisberger is continually hurt, because he holds onto the ball so long and takes so many hits. They badly need to rebuild their offensive line, which has had massive injury problems over the last few seasons.
But, compared to what Todd Haley’s had to live with the past two years, it would be a day at the coaching beach, where he could coach and not have to constantly look over his shoulder.
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