Posnanski: Chiefs a Joke

[DeezNutz]

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/chi...ry/797000.html

Punchless Chiefs have become a punch line

OK, see, we didn’t need this. Sure, we all knew the Chiefs were going to rebuild this year with young players. We all knew they were going to make mistakes, lose games, commit penalties. We all knew this was going to be a long season, and we would make the best of it by gritting our teeth and appreciating the little things. We braced ourselves.

But we didn’t need this. We didn’t need the Chiefs to become a national joke. We Kansas City folk have had enough Far Side humor with the Royals for a dozen years now, with their outfield burlesque, their base running antics, their managerial merry-go-round, their attempts to sign a professional softball pitcher. We didn’t need the Chiefs to step over that line. Hey, it was OK if they lost. We figured they would lose. We just didn’t need them to take the Nestea plunge into comedy.

Then, there they were on Sunday, playing three different quarterbacks, inventing a Scooby-Doo mystery about dizzy spells, allowing 300 yards rushing to a Raiders team that could not throw and, it goes without saying, losing for the 11th consecutive time. Oakland crushed the Chiefs 23-8. The only thing working Sunday was the concession stand.

“Um, please be patient,” the guy at the concession stand said after 20 minutes had passed and he still had not brought out the cheeseburger I ordered. To be fair, he had brought out a half-filled cup of French fries for $4.75, such an embarrassment that somebody behind us in line actually started yelling at the guy.

OK, so maybe it has come to this; maybe nothing actually works now at Arrowhead Stadium. Still, it was worth hoping that the Chiefs would not become a laughingstock. The hope lasted exactly five plays … and then on second down and 10, Chiefs starting quarterback Damon Huard ran off the field.

“Where the heck is he going?” we asked.

Then some rather small person wearing No. 10 stood behind the center.

“Who the heck is that?” we asked.

Then that small person with the No. 10 jersey took the snap and started running.

“What the heck is going on?” we asked.

That turned out to be Marques Hagans, a 5-foot-9 wide receiver from Virginia. Well, he was a receiver and a quarterback at Virginia. He was drafted by St. Louis in the fifth round last year (as a receiver, of course). He got released last year. So, to sum up, the Chiefs had a receiver that the St. Louis Rams cut who was now lined up at quarterback.

Hagans ran the ball, but the Chiefs’ Dwayne Bowe — no doubt as baffled as the rest of us — shifted illegally, the play was called back, and the whole thing was best forgotten, kind of like a bad dream. The Chiefs wouldn’t let it alone. Four plays later, Huard ran off the field again, and this little wide-receiver dude came back on the field, and this time ran for 2 yards. And it counted.

Things, if you can believe it, got goofier. The next series, Huard threw an interception. And the series after that, the Chiefs sent out a whole new quarterback named Tyler Thigpen. Really. Tyler Thigpen. He holds every passing record they have at Coastal Carolina, in part because the school did not have a football team before he got there. He was drafted in the final round by Minnesota last year and released before the season began. Well, it stands to reason — after all, the Vikings are overburdened with too many good quarterbacks.

Thigpen completed his first pass to Bowe. He promptly missed his next six, three of which could have been intercepted. It felt a bit like watching a reality TV show where they pull some guy out of the stands and make him an NFL quarterback. No offense to Thigpen, who seems like a nice young man and all, but we all waited for Huard — who, yes, is a 35-year-old NFL backup, but at least he’s a legitimate professional football player — to return to the game.

Only Huard would not come back into the game. Why? Well, Shaggy and Scooby, that’s the mystery:

“Damon Huard had a mild head trauma,” was the announcement made in the Chiefs press box two quarters later.

“Damon Huard had a little dizziness when he got hit,” was the pronouncement of Chiefs coach Herm Edwards after the game.

“My neck is a little sore,” was the diagnosis of the patient, Damon Huard himself. Apparently, the Chiefs had not told him in advance about his dizziness. He smartly did not want to go into any more detail. He did not want to talk about whether he could have played. He did not want to talk about next week. Hey, you don’t play as a backup quarterback in the NFL for 12 seasons without learning a few tricks of survival.

“We couldn’t put Damon back in,” Edwards said. “That wouldn’t have been fair to him.”

Instead, they left Thigpen out there to roast. You know how physicists figured that if Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt had gone all-out at the Olympics, he could have run the 100 meters in an astonishing 9.55 seconds? Well, those same physicists figured that if the Oakland defenders could catch, Tyler Thigpen would have thrown eight interceptions Sunday.

As it was, he threw only one interception — and he did have one touchdown drive, thanks to a Lynn Swann-like catch by Bowe and a couple of helpful penalties on the Raiders. Other than that drive, though, he missed 17 of his 24 passes.

Then, it would be wrong to blame Thigpen for the loss. He was one of the Chiefs’ better players on this day. The Chiefs defense could not tackle anyone — the Raiders ran for twice as many yards as they did a week earlier against Denver. Chiefs running back Larry Johnson managed 1.8 yards per carry (and moaned afterward that he thinks the Chiefs have lost faith in him), Marques Hagans sneaked back into the game as quarterback in the second half and actually completed one pass (for 5 yards).

“We got embarrassed,” Edwards said.

“It’s embarrassing,” tight end Tony Gonzalez said.

“I think we’re all embarrassed,” guard Brian Waters said.

Yes. Embarrassed was the word of the day. At some point during the Chiefs Comedy Hour, management flashed on the scoreboard that they are right now taking orders for season tickets in 2009. Apparently, that was the big punch line.