Babb goes the dynamite - Baldwin’s play limiting Bowe’s importance

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http://www.kansascity.com/2012/08/01...mportance.html

Baldwin’s play limiting Bowe’s importance

Baldwin is all in; Bowe still absent

BY KENT BABB

ST. JOSEPH -- The first segment of Chiefs training camp ended Tuesday with a night practice at Spratt Stadium, and whether you were there or not, you probably know about the first week’s biggest storyline.

Yes, that wide receiver everyone keeps talking about. It’s a shame he has baggage, because we could all be a little more certain about him if not for that. As it stands, this young wideout with so much talent — you’re not a first-round pick without big skills — could be a significant reason why the 2012 season is a success and not a failure.

Jon Baldwin, not Dwayne Bowe, has been the most important player for the Chiefs during this first week of the preseason, and boy, has he answered the challenge. Baldwin, not Bowe, is not only in attendance but is emerging as a player who looks like a young star who could give quarterback Matt Cassel a tall, powerful option down the field. Baldwin, not Bowe, is doing everything right when the man who was supposed to be his mentor is making a career mistake by refusing to sign his franchise tender — and allowing a second-year receiver to show the Chiefs how it’s done.

Let’s discuss Bowe for a moment. This is actually bad news for him. When a player decides to skip practices or weeks or an entire camp, it is to remind the team that it would be in trouble without him. Think this week was tough? Just imagine what it’d be like to go an entire season like this.

As it stands, with each passing day and each time Baldwin leaps to catch a touchdown pass in the back of the end zone, as he did Tuesday night, Bowe’s value and importance to the Chiefs drops. Oh, the Chiefs still want and expect Bowe to be on the practice field at some point, and would likely still pencil him into the starting lineup, but the absence of their 2007 first-round pick is being overshadowed by the presence of their 2011 first-round pick.

Baldwin has been so good that there’s no panic here. Cassel already looks more comfortable with the youngster than he ever has with Bowe. There’s more confidence that Baldwin will run a perfect route, will be there when the ball arrives, will hold onto it when it hits his hands. Baldwin has, in offseason practices and in a week of training camp, been everything you want a first-round receiver to be. For months now, Baldwin has taken such an impressive step that there’s not just hope but budding certainty that the Chiefs will be, for however long it’s necessary, just fine without Bowe.

There was suspicion last year that Baldwin might have been built in the same, undependable mold as his veteran teammate. When he stepped to running back Thomas Jones during last year’s camp, suffering a broken hand that would sideline him the first six weeks, it was easy to think that Baldwin was a high-risk player whose future already looked murky. He couldn’t even finish camp without finding trouble — a fight with a respected team leader, no less.

Time passed, though, and the Chiefs started asking questions and hearing encouraging answers. The first was whether Baldwin, a rookie, had been intimidated by Jones, who’s maybe the last person on Planet Earth that anyone should pick a fight with. When the team learned that Baldwin hadn’t been scared and had defended himself, coaches were disappointed that he’d been hurt, sure, but they kind of respected that he hadn’t been rattled.

Later, they asked whether Baldwin was doing all the right things in rehab and in the downtime that can make or break a rookie’s career. The kid kept his mouth closed, did what was asked, and when the cast finally came off and Baldwin made his NFL debut, he was well-conditioned, focused and able. A week later, in a home win against San Diego on Monday night, he came down with an acrobatic 39-yard touchdown catch that began to show what the Chiefs had been waiting for.

Those are the kinds of catches that Baldwin has been making consistently in OTAs and so far in training camp. If the Chiefs asked a new question — how will Baldwin respond when the spotlight shifts in his direction? — they’re learning the answer.

He’s making it look easy, while Bowe is just making life difficult.

It’s understandable that Bowe has no interest in participating in practices that’ll earn him zero additional dollars on top of his $9.5 million tender. These weeks are hot and thankless, and if you ask any veteran player what he won’t miss when it’s time to retire, he’ll likely say training camp. But the problem with Bowe is that there’s no way to know what he’ll look and play like when he finally does join the Chiefs, whether that’s Thursday (almost inconceivable) or shortly before the regular season begins (looking more likely by the day). This has been discussed and written to death, but Bowe doesn’t have a spotless history when it comes to these matters. With a new coach and quarterback in 2009, he arrived to camp around 30 pounds heavier than his target weight, and whether it was an accident or not, as he said at the time, Bowe turned to a diuretic to shed the extra pounds — a move that got him suspended for four games by the NFL.

So life with Bowe has been an adventure, and it continues to be. If he arrives out of shape and with no knowledge of the offense, there will be no hurry to rush him back into the starting lineup. That’s what he must have thought it would be like when he opted to skip practices and remind the Chiefs of his value. But that plan has now blown up in his face.

What’s interesting is that another receiver with a spotty history seems to have vowed to erase the doubt that lingers from the past; without a new contract to play for or a statement to make, Baldwin keeps making the dazzling plays and the easy ones, saying the right things, and just being a player the Chiefs can depend on day after day.

Now that Baldwin has made us think about it, none of that has ever been true of Bowe.