Time for Chiefs to show The Patriot Way the way out
By KENT BABB
The Kansas City Star
The evidence has mounted, and the verdict is in: The Patriot Way is outdated, unreliable and unsuccessful. Oh, sure, it works in Foxborough, Mass., and it’s still useful with coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady, the best value draft pick of all time and one of the best passers in history, too.
But in Kansas City? It’s a failure, same as it was in Cleveland, South Bend, New York and Denver.
The Chiefs are 0-2, and barring a surprise, they’ll be 0-3 by dinnertime Sunday. They have been to the playoffs once in the previous three seasons, and a big reason for the disappointment is because Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli’s security blanket is leaning on all the lessons he learned from Belichick. Every time things go sideways with the Chiefs, Pioli pulls it closer, inhaling its comfort and feeling its familiarity.
It’s past time for Pioli to grow out of it, but the more time passes, it’s clear that team chairman Clark Hunt will have to forcibly wean his GM off this comfortable, but ineffective, habit. If the losses keep mounting, Hunt has all the proof he needs — an assistant GM, two offensive coordinators, a defensive coordinator, a starting quarterback, a head coach, too many former Patriots players to list, and losses in nearly 60 percent of the Chiefs’ games since 2009 — to insist that it’s time for his GM to finally pack away his blanket for good.
Here’s why it doesn’t work outside New England: Belichick isn’t just a marvelous coach with three Super Bowl titles; he’s also a master at putting his protégés in positions that hide their weaknesses. Former defensive coordinator Eric Mangini was a football prodigy, but he had no idea how to connect with people. So Belichick buried him in football work, shielding him from much social interaction, and it wasn’t until Mangini left the Patriots to become the New York Jets’ head coach in 2006 that his flaw was revealed. It cost him again in Cleveland in 2010.
Josh McDaniels, a former Belichick offensive coordinator, was best at adjusting to difficult circumstances. Give him Brady and a whiteboard, and McDaniels could somehow make it work. He could adapt to most anything — except having his immaturity exposed when Denver made him a head coach too early, at age 33. McDaniels again thought he could make something out of anything, even first-round quarterback Tim Tebow. He had no one to overrule him, to mask his arrogance, and McDaniels was fired before his second season was finished.
Belichick wouldn’t let anyone see that Romeo Crennel struggled at game management, and he didn’t tell anyone that it was never former player personnel director Pioli with the final say on draft picks and signings; it was Belichick himself. The coach made them all look like geniuses, and in the fuzzy glow of championships, who was going to believe otherwise?
The Patriots became a temp agency, sending their recruits on to high-profile jobs throughout the NFL. Time passed, and fans and administrators realized that Charlie Weis could coach offense in the NFL and recruit at Notre Dame but couldn’t identify in-game problems quickly enough as a head coach. Crennel couldn’t manage the clock or adjust during games as the Browns’ head coach. Time and again, the former Patriots masterminds were fired, and a question arose: Why wouldn’t it work anywhere else?
Finally, there was a reckoning. Hope emerged in Atlanta when the former Patriots scouting director became the Falcons’ GM.
Thomas Dimitroff’s team is 45-21 since 2008, and he’s the only Belichick student to make it big outside Foxborough. Only Dimitroff has done it by mostly abandoning the Patriot Way. Secrecy is of no concern to the Falcons. He hired a head coach with no connection to Belichick or the Patriots. Dimitroff, the son of a former coach and scout, drafted a quarterback at No. 3 overall in 2008, thumbing his nose at the deep-rooted New England phobia of top-five picks, and especially top-five quarterbacks.
Dimitroff did what Pioli has been unable or unwilling to do. He built the Falcons in his own image, leaning on his own philosophies and experiences, rather than trying to copy what Belichick would’ve done. Pioli’s best draft pick in Kansas City is safety Eric Berry, drafted No. 5 overall in 2010, and it was Dimitroff who talked his friend and former colleague into pulling the trigger.
It’s natural, especially in challenging times, to use a system that has worked and is familiar. Pioli hired an outsider, Todd Haley, as his first head coach but then surrounded Haley with Patriots retreads. Quarterback Matt Cassel, linebacker Mike Vrabel, coordinators Weis and Crennel and as many former New England players — 14 of Pioli’s 39 acquisitions in 2009, including six of his first seven, had played for the Patriots — as he could scour the earth for. Pioli’s assistant GM is Joel Collier, a former New England assistant coach. And when Pioli and Haley had the falling out heard ’round the NFL in 2011, Pioli promoted Crennel as Haley’s replacement, renewed his commitment to Cassel, and signed off on offensive coordinator Brian Daboll, a former Patriots position coach.
When Hunt hired Pioli nearly four years ago, he told Chiefs fans that he wanted to model the Chiefs after the Pittsburgh Steelers. That team’s way had worked too, to the tune of six Super Bowl titles since 1974, but that directive has been lost under a gathering of Pioli’s old football buddies and an inability to distance himself from a methodology that clearly works only under Belichick and with Brady.
The time has come for Hunt to re-assert himself and veto anyone else brought in only because they once worked or played in New England. It’s time, finally, for Pioli to do things his own way — and establish the Chiefs Way. Successful leaders take what they’ve learned, put their own spin on it, and establish themselves as individuals.
Hunt is unlikely to show Pioli the door, even if this season continues its disappointing direction. Hunt’s admiration of the Steelers is in part because longevity is a Pittsburgh hallmark. Fair enough. But it’s time to hand the Patriot Way its pink slip.
Editor's note This is Kent Babb’s final column for The Star. The recipient of numerous awards during his five years in Kansas City, he has accepted an enterprise reporting position for The Washington Post.
Babb: Time for Chiefs to show The Patriot Way the way out
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