MERRIL- Coming undone (after reading this article, I hate Herm even more)

[Chiefs Pantalones]

Coming undone
The Chiefs unraveled during their losing streak, and now their wild-card hopes hang by a thread.

By ELIZABETH MERRILL
The Kansas City Star

A plane ticket back home to Texas was cheaper online last week, and Derrick Johnson’s mama the schoolteacher is itchin’ to see him. Johnson knows the odds, how he has a better chance of getting bitten by a longhorn, but he couldn’t bring himself to click.

“You never know what happens in the playoff picture,” Johnson said. “It’s kind of bad luck to be planning ahead.”

As a second-year linebacker in Kansas City, Johnson knows this late-December drill all too well. Leave your calendar open, your locker ready to pack, and then sit, wait and hope. Today marks the second year in a row the Chiefs are hanging by a playoff thread, only this one is so thin that the rookies were walking through the locker room late last week passing out keepsake footballs to be autographed in the traditional season’s-over ritual.

Some players are hopeless optimists. They can’t help it. They’ll eat, drink and spit the Jaguars, they’ll watch the scoreboard today to see whether the Steelers can knock off the Bengals and the Patriots can beat the Titans. Even if all that falls into place, the biggest long shot doesn’t start until later in the afternoon, when San Francisco must win at Denver.

Guard Brian Waters said he didn’t even know the scenarios and frankly didn’t care. He said the Chiefs have a hard enough time just dealing with Jacksonville.

“It’s not even an issue, man,” he said.

He may have been fibbing a little.

“I think it’s just a natural instinct that you will (scoreboard watch),” Waters said. “But you look at those matchups. … You really try not to lean too much on that because you don’t want to be disappointed. I think we’ve had enough disappointment as the season went on.”

This is the third time in the last five years that the Chiefs have gone into the final weekend needing help. Last year may have been the hardest. They hammered Cincinnati and needed one team to help. Problem was, it was Detroit, which was playing Pittsburgh.

The Steelers taunted them for much of the afternoon, almost bungling the game away. They went on to win the Super Bowl, and the Chiefs went home at 10-6. They’ve been to the playoffs just once since 1997.

Coach Herm Edwards wasn’t around for the 2005 fade, but he has some theories as to why Kansas City has had so much week 17 heartbreak.

“To me it’s a mind-set,” he said. “We might have to change the culture a little bit, too. It’s work. But it can be done. It’s got to get done, to be quite honest. We can’t keep sitting in this situation.

“It’s a process. Once you feel it … it’s similar to what happened in New York for us. They kind of got it, they understood it. That’s what this team has to come to grips with. All of us. When we get it, it’s a good thing because then you don’t have to talk about it any more. And that’s what they’re going to talk about again in the offseason, that they almost got there. It’s a sick feeling. It’s a sick feeling for everybody.”

Edwards suggested the Chiefs lack a killer instinct that permeates teams like Denver that have been there before. On Thanksgiving night, the Chiefs beat the Broncos and had the inside track to the playoffs with a 7-4 record.

What happened in December makes the average disappointment-weary Chiefs fan toss their face paint. Kansas City went to Cleveland, blew a 14-point, fourth-quarter lead, and started a spiral of three straight losses.

Hold on for that one game against the Browns, with their 3-8 record and their backup quarterback, and the Chiefs are in the playoffs with a win over the Jaguars and no outside help.

This year’s Cleveland was last year’s Buffalo. Another playoff picture in focus, another inexplicable road loss.

“We had our opportunities,” Edwards said. “We were a 7-4 football team and a fifth seed with five games left. And we didn’t handle it very well. I don’t know why that is. We prepared the same way, we did everything the same. It’s a little bit on everybody, and I guess that’s what we’ll have to swallow if we don’t get in.”

When their postseason hopes dimmed two weeks ago at San Diego, Edwards did his best to steer the team toward weekly goals. “We need to win a game,” was a phrase spouted by at least six players in the week leading up to Oakland. It was the same thing Edwards had been saying for weeks.

So now the Chiefs sit at 8-7, all geared up with probably nowhere to go. Defensive end Jimmy Wilkerson said it’s a bad feeling in his stomach, but it hasn’t affected practice. He called last week’s workouts spirited and lively.

He doesn’t dare think about whether they’ll be back on the field next week.

“I try to block it out,” he said. “I know it’s going to be hard because there’s going to be a lot of people, friends, family, who are going to be calling, ‘What are you going to do next week? Are you coming home?’

“I’ve just got to keep my mind focused on what we’ve got to do this Sunday.”

Even if that includes a little scoreboard watching and wishful thinking.

Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson instructed the scoreboard operators last year not to flash the Steelers score, though Peterson peeked and some of the players kept up with it on the sidelines.

There was no word late last week whether the scores would be blocked out again today. This year, there may be too many what-ifs to really matter.

Edwards, whose optimism could normally make Julie Andrews jealous, didn’t know want to think of where his head would be at late today if everything fell into place on the field and his fate were left somewhere on a snowy field in Denver

“Like everybody else, you’re hoping,” Edwards said. “Ahh … it’s not a good feeling at all. I don’t like being in this situation. I haven’t been in this situation a whole bunch.

“Sometimes you have to change peoples’ thoughts on how they do things.”