Mellinger: Clark Hunt needs to make major changes

[FloridaMan88]

Wow when did the KC Star columnists finally grow balls?

More good reading...

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/09/16...r-changes.html

Hunt needs to make major changes to fix this Chiefs mess

By SAM MELLINGER

The Kansas City Star

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. -- The last drops of reasonable belief that the Chiefs aren’t wasting their fans’ time and money are now dead, kaput, ashes from a fire of fail burning so white-hot it needed just two games to turn a hopeful season into a lost one.

This is a level of ineptitude beyond even what Kansas City has sadly become accustomed to, and because owner Clark Hunt is not his father, a shameful, 35-17 loss to a bad Bills team here on Sunday should be remembered as the tipping point of general manager Scott Pioli’s job security.

Last week, you heard talk about the Falcons being good and the Chiefs being injured. What’s the excuse now?

Football is the most team of our sports, and top-to-bottom incompetence like this doesn’t happen without every coach and player doing their fair share. So blame whomever you want. The offense is terrible, the defense is worse, and the special teams have given up touchdowns in both games.

For a symbol of the Chiefs’ problems, start with their knuckleheaded star receiver pointing to the name on the back of his jersey after scoring an irrelevant fourth-quarter touchdown. Romeo Crennel is in charge of what might become the most talented 3-13 team in recent league history.

Pioli, of course, oversees it all with a misplaced faith in Matt Cassel and an overly conservative and think-too-much style that’s four years into trying to replicate what Bill Belichick and Tom Brady created in New England.

Four years is enough time to fairly judge an NFL GM, and so far Pioli looks like a substitute teacher. He is failing — badly — and to save his football reputation, and shelve serious questions about his job, he needs the kind of turnaround over the next 14 games that is quite unfathomable at the moment.

Pioli wants time, patience and understanding but hasn’t earned any of it. The first year was for building. The second year was promising.

The third year was a drama-filled mess. The fourth year has the look of something even worse, because the Chiefs don’t have injuries or former coach Todd Haley to blame.

Only one man has the power to make the necessary changes now, and Hunt isn’t doing his job if he’s not brainstorming who his next general manager should be. Let’s hope the list includes men willing to be bold, comfortable in their own skin and able to properly position the Chiefs in what is firmly an elite quarterback’s league.

Because this isn’t working, and Hunt doesn’t have his father’s patience and blind faith. The Chiefs are broken, from top to bottom, and the solution has to stand up to the grand scale of these problems.

Last year, it took an embarrassing loss and childish sideline display against the Jets for Haley to lose his job.

This year, the focus turns to Pioli, and it’s on Hunt to make it clear this isn’t good enough.

Last year, Pioli and the Chiefs dumped as much blame as they could shovel onto Haley.

This year, Hunt has to see the same problems.

Pioli came to Kansas City promising multiple championships and a consistent approach focused on building “The Right 53,” not necessarily “the best 53.”

Instead, he’s on his second head coach and fifth offensive coordinator, and his four years in Kansas City are known much more for middle-school-type drama than consistency. He came here talking about modeling after the Steelers but created something closer to The Real Housewives of the NFL.

After four offseasons and four drafts, it remains true that most of this team’s best players were here before Pioli: Tamba Hali, Jamaal Charles, Derrick Johnson, Dwayne Bowe and Brandon Flowers, among them.

I don’t know how much Pioli’s obsession over every detail is to blame here, but I do know he spends far too much time worrying about the wrong things: negative media attention, how one player’s contract might feed another player’s jealousy, and inner-office minutiae that should be handled by middle managers.

The previous GM essentially served a 17-year appointment of near-complete control under Lamar Hunt but lasted just two years under Clark, who then made sure to split football and business decision-making.

Clark Hunt headed an Arrowhead Stadium renovation that drove increased profits to the club, and then played a key role in the NFL’s avoiding a work stoppage last year. He and Pioli have overseen a massive turnover in the work force, transcending what used to be an organization driven largely by loyalty into one obsessed with the bottom line.

Four years into what was supposed to be a different era for the Chiefs, they are instead a bumbling mess.

Pioli is believed to have one more year on his contract, and Hunt hasn’t shown himself to have the tethered loyalty of his father.

A defensive coordinator hired to be head coach won’t give up his old job, and the defense has given up eight touchdowns in two games. An offensive coordinator plucked from Pioli’s past can’t figure out how to use a loaded group of skill players.

It’s not just that the Chiefs have loads of problems, it’s that they appear so completely out of solutions. Things move fast in the NFL, and Pioli hasn’t shown himself able to keep up.

This is an awful look for the GM in a season we’ve said will ultimately define how he’s remembered in Kansas City.

We are only two games into the season, so the ultimate narrative is yet to be written.

But if the results don’t drastically change, then the general manager should.

[MahiMike]

This part made me sad - "over the next 14 games".

[Chiefs Pantalones]

Originally Posted by tk13

Bill Cowher!

Lol please no. I don't want to wait 14 years for a title.

I just hope if changes to happen, QB is first on the list by the new regime.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by tk13

Bill Cowher!

[The Bad Guy]

Originally Posted by BlackBob

It's ****ing homers like you that are brining it down. I get it. Screw Pioli, Hunt, and RAC but those guys I mentioned did what I said. It's getting old man. These players aren't doing their jobs.

Yeah, like I'm a ****ing homer. Get over yourself, ****stick.

I hate this team more and more each minute. However, saying Dwayne Bowe is the problem is a ****ing joke.

Dwayne Bowe, on the list of things wrong with this team, resides around #25.

[Black Bob]

Originally Posted by the Talking Can

you would please go away and ****ing die of aids

god damn, you're ****ing stupidity is ****ing endless...shut the **** up, you ****ing idiot

Bowe is the only player on this team worth a ****ing nickle, and i hope you are raped to death by a herd of buffalo

You ****ing homer. He sucks and he's overrated. He didn't show up last week because Atlanta had a good corner. This week, no good corners and he has a nice day. Same old ****ing Bowe.

He's douchebag and I'm not suprised you love him. I hope you get bathed in honey and ****ed with a strap-on by angry obese trucker bitches that smell like B.O. and anti-freeze.

[ShowtimeSBMVP]

I was asked the question which qb will be the first to loose their job and i said Cassell. He's nice guy but I think he's a quality backup cRT @ChiefsOrioles12: @jamiedukes Jamie i cant wait till Cassel gets Pioli fired this year.

[Black Bob]

Originally Posted by The Bad Guy

Yeah, like I'm a ****ing homer. Get over yourself, ****stick.

I hate this team more and more each minute. However, saying Dwayne Bowe is the problem is a ****ing joke.

Dwayne Bowe, on the list of things wrong with this team, resides around #25.

His character is a problem. When you are getting your ass kicked and a guy acts like that, it should be written about and it was. Why stick up for him? Answer me that guys.

[mcaj22]

Originally Posted by BlackBob

I don't care who. We aren't winning anything this year. We aren't winning anything with those guys.

It's time to rebuild again. Understand?

These guys are not the answer. They are ****ing overrated, overpayed, gold diggers.

havent we been "rebuilding" the last 4 years. Wasnt that the point from the Herm era and bring Pioli in?

So youre saying Pioli is SO bad that you want to rebuild from a rebuilding era. So rebuild the rebuilding process.

Do you know how awful that makes this team/FO look.

[mcaj22]

Bowe shows up because hes the only WR on this team worth a shit lol

[CoMoChief]

[CoMoChief]

Originally Posted by the Talking Can

accept for the idiocy of blaming Bowe - oh no! he flexed once! - that is sufficiently blood thirsty to please me...

that's one of many examples.

Bowe is showing off doing "his own" thing after the TD catch.....when the team is getting their ****ing asses kicked in the dirt.

[rtmike]

Originally Posted by The Bad Guy

Someone should punch you right in the dick.

...or ear.

[Chiefs Pantalones]

Who cares that Bowe does that? He has a right. He made a play. I don't care if we're beating a team and a player celebrates, dude made a play. Go ahead and celebrate, even if the game is out of reach.

Bowe has been through shit on this team. He's had a billion OCs, a ton of crappy QBs and he's getting treated like shit by the front office. If anything, I'd give him more than he's wanting for psychological damages he must have sustained with the shit he's had to put up with on offense during his career here. If I were Pioli I'd say "thank you."

[milkman]

Originally Posted by BlackBob

His character is a problem. When you are getting your ass kicked and a guy acts like that, it should be written about and it was. Why stick up for him? Answer me that guys.

This is the mentality of athletes today.

Everyone celebrates and bring attention to themselves in a team sport even if their team is getting their asses handed to them.

Dwayne Bowe is the only legitimate threat on this team, the only guy that makes any plays out of teh shit at QB.

Michael Irvin, on expectations for his rookie season today on NFL Network said "I couldn't do it wothout a QB".

Well, Bowe is doing it without a QB.

[L.A. Chieffan]

Originally Posted by BlackBob

His character is a problem. When you are getting your ass kicked and a guy acts like that, it should be written about and it was. Why stick up for him? Answer me that guys.

GO draft a corner in the first and kill yourself.