ChiefsPlanet - DAWES: CALL & RESPONSE

http://www.kcchiefs.com/news/2007/09...d_up_metaphor/
DAWES: CALL & RESPONSE – Mixed up metaphor
Sep 27, 2007, 4:23:46 AM by Rufus Dawes - FAQ

CALL: Latest article is your best ever. [Young but not Foolish] The Chiefs are rebuilding with younger players and will continue to do so for another year. Probably the most honesty from this web site. I can live with that….

RESPONSE: While it unnerves one who has spent considerable time listening to the team’s staff repeating the same seemingly memorized answers over and over again in the manner of a person saying them for the first time, I like what I’m hearing now.

A successful GM must look first and most intently on what can be done to make his actions or ideas as attractive to as many fans as possible. That has not happened enough here. As boring as it may be, once a GM finds the single strongest claim that can be made for his actions or the steps he will take, he should not tire of repeating it, or lose faith in its efficacy simply because it hasn’t paid off yet. If he tells us what the team’s plans are most reasonable people can accept it, but we need to hear it and hear it often. Rebuilding is not a bad word. Neither is transition. Neither are they excuses, if that is his concern for not using one or the other.

But in order to understand why we should be more optimistic about the future, it is necessary to view it in the light of the past.

The Chiefs should have cleaned its ranks of elder players back in 1999 after Marty Schottenheimer stepped down. But even had team officials done that, the club’s drafting was less than helpful. There is not a single player left on the team from either the 2001 and 2002 draft classes. Not one. If selected properly, the players from those classes should just be hitting their stride.

Moreover, in players taken on the first day of the draft in 2003 there is only one player remaining, in the 2004 draft only two, and in the 2005 draft only two. Your first day in each draft is crucial since those are the players you would expect to make your team. Not enough did.

When you examine these facts you can understand why you have a roster today that is comprised of very young players and very old ones. The team was forced to turn to free agency to make up for the disappointments of the draft, or so a case can be made.

But two years ago things changed. The people now charged to conduct the draft are different today and would seem to know what the head coach wants in players who will fit his system.

How can we tell the direction is different? In the last two drafts the team has ten players on its roster including three picks from day one in 2006 and three picks from day one in 2007. Something has changed and we should be heartened by it.

CALL: While I can appreciate Herm’s frankness and honesty when things are going badly, he still seems to be an unrelenting optimist. He needs to admit that the glass is really half empty and isn’t going to fill up any time soon.

RESPONSE: You fail to understand the metaphor of the glass half-empty and half-full. It’s not “really” one or the other but both simultaneously. But let’s put aside that error and examine the notion that the situation may be better than it looks.

The defense appears to be in the process of becoming what it was in the early to mid-90s. We’ve discussed on this site the obvious advantage of building on defense. While the folks in Detroit were charged with emotion as the Lions jumped out to a 2-0 start this season, they came crashing back to earth after taking a shellacking by Philadelphia. The Lions offense, predicated on passing, threw the ball again and again – more than 40 times this past week – and put their defense on the field again and again. The game seemed to last forever as Philadelphia ran up the score.

But fans like offense better than defense. We know that. We saw it when Vermeil and the Flying Circus came to town back in 2001. Apparently, so do players, probably some of the Chiefs players who recall those heady days when the team was throwing and scoring, seemingly at will.

While much has been made this week about player upheaval – perhaps some of it the result of play-calling – let’s understand a few things. The human personality is an instrument to be played with a living touch. Edwards doesn’t appear to see his players as puppets on a string or insist on blind obedience to the letter of his and his coaches’ commands. I would imagine he does not expect players to be passive – he says as much – waiting, like regimented automata, for orders from above, orders they may not like or, better said, plays they may not like. This is hardly unique and to make more of it is to turn imaginary mole hills into hallucinatory mountains.

But put aside media bombast for a moment. This is Edwards’ team now, as it was Vermeil’s before him, and he appears to be designing it in his image and an image that he references was oddly the one Vermeil had once fashioned the Eagles when he first went there. One newspaper characterized the Chiefs’ offense as scoring “points so far this season the way a drunk walks. They occasionally stumble and weave into them.” (St. Joseph News-Press, September 24, 2007) Forgiving the hyperbole, the offense is going to be more plodding than prolific for sure. In other words, this week don’t expect a repeat of the team’s 30-27 upset of the Chargers last year.

The players, today’s and certainly tomorrow’s, will ultimately fall in line with Edwards’ plans and so will we. I now long for the defensive days as I think about them. I welcomed the offensive air show and ole “extended handoff days,” but thinking about it through the absence of years, preferred being in the playoffs more. That’s why I’m optimistic about the defense and consequently the team’s future.

CALL: How does Edwards respond to everyone questioning his play-calling? I thought this was a running team….

RESPONSE: Obviously, this email came prior to last Sunday’s win over the Vikings. But who might “everyone” be? If you listen closely to Edwards’ press conferences on live radio broadcasts you often hear questions begun with “some people” or “everyone.” Who are these “people?” Who is “everyone” we may ask? That’s a media cop-out to give the person asking the question cover. When media use that entry into their question they mean everyone I hang around with, or the media which I am now writing or reporting to flatter.