Babb:Chiefs’ changes must start with Crennel’s actions and attitude

[Tribal Warfare]

Chiefs’ changes must start with Crennel’s actions and attitude
By KENT BABB
The Kansas City Star
Romeo Crennel finally indicated this week that he has his defense figured out. His own defense, that is.

The Chiefs coach’s plan didn’t seem to have anything to do with what will happen Sunday in New Orleans or in any of the winless Chiefs’ remaining 14 games. No, Crennel began defending himself this week and deflecting blame for his team’s two embarrassing, blowout losses — and intimating that the fault lies not on coaches’ shoulders, but with the players.

“If they do their job the way they’re supposed to do it,” Crennel said, “then we’ll be able to make plays.”

Maybe that’s not what he meant. Maybe the words just got twisted, or came out wrong, or maybe we’re reading into them too deeply.

Crennel is 65 years old and has been an NFL coach since 1981. You don’t hang around that long or move up without being a good coach, and this isn’t meant to kick mud onto that fact. But being a head coach isn’t for everyone, and it tests all who dare by amplifying their words and shining a spotlight onto everything they say. No one knows yet if Crennel can prove, in his second stint as a head coach, that he can handle this job. But now that he’s in crisis mode, his words suggest he’s in over his head.

There’s time to change, but it starts with Crennel admitting that things actually need to change — starting with a more energetic and focused showing from himself. He doesn’t have the personality to consistently get in players’ faces, and he apparently has lost the public-speaking chops to adequately explain what needs to be done to curb this horrible start.

“I really thought that we would be better, and we’re not,” Crennel said after Buffalo’s 35-17 win on Sunday. “We’ve got to try to really figure out why that is.”

He also doesn’t seem to have the self-awareness necessary to identify an obvious weakness in the defense — and strip himself of coordinator duties and focus only on being the head coach. Coaches make this mistake all the time, and it almost always costs them.

“I’ve done both jobs before,” he said Monday before quickly clarifying. “I haven’t done both of them at the same time before. I’ve been a defensive line coach and a defensive coordinator before, so I’ve done dual roles in the past. I kind of understand what it takes.”

Crennel, who lost and was fired as Cleveland’s head coach even with a coordinator, had to have misspoken there. Surely he knows better than anyone that being a position coach is nothing like being a coordinator, and neither of those jobs is anything like being a head coach. So what if he worked with linemen on the same days he designed a defensive game plan? He never would’ve been asked in those jobs to also sit in on offensive and special-teams meetings, have daily news conferences, and appear in marketing material as the team’s face.

His job means he is asked, almost continually, to use his words to inspire players, win over reporters, articulate his needs to the personnel department and his vision to assistant coaches, and keep a community of battered fans from staying home on the seven remaining Sundays that Arrowhead Stadium is supposed to be full.

Instead, he says things like this about the upcoming contest against the 0-2 Saints:

“I know we will try to look at it as a must-win because we want to win it,” he said, “but we’re not going to fall off the earth if we lose it.”

Nothing is quite as stirring as a coach whose words suggest he’s OK with the idea of losing his first three games of 2012.

The issue is that Crennel will have to use his voice, now more than ever, to rally so many people who have turned to him for guidance, comfort and confidence. Losing is certainly no fun, particularly when there are so many problems that Crennel is being asked to fix. It’ll change your outlook and your attitude. But nothing encourages hope or leads to change when he sulks through a news conference or looks downtrodden on the sideline — in the first two or three weeks of the season.

Difficult as it might be, he has to fight this with all he’s got. With three games remaining in the 2011 season, Crennel took over a 5-8 team after Todd Haley was fired. In his first news conference as interim coach, he stated in clear terms that quarterback Tyler Palko was out, Kyle Orton was in, and the days of misdirection from Haley were finished. Crennel on that day was the leader the Chiefs needed. No more confusion, no more nonsense.

“We’re changing some things,” he said on Dec. 14.

Crennel took charge of a team in shambles and won two of the Chiefs’ final three games, the first one against the previously unbeaten Green Bay Packers. They dumped Gatorade on Crennel after that game, and the future seemed in good hands.

Crennel was comfortable in his skin back then, and even since training camp ended, that seems to have changed. Haley spent an offseason studying old news conferences of Bill Parcells, trying to pattern his answers and behavior after the master. He learned too late to be himself, but at least he learned it. Crennel seems to be going in reverse; once unafraid of how his words might sound to Big Brother watching in the general manager’s office, now he hesitates when Star beat writer Adam Teicher asks him things like whether his team was going for it on a fourth down in Buffalo.

“You saw the play,” the coach said flatly.

Regardless of the reasons, a Crennel who sounds defeated, or resigned, is bad for the Chiefs and bad for a wounded Kansas City. If it appears he has stopped believing, or if he has so little energy or confidence that he can’t explain what he expects and wants, then who would trust that he can say the right things to motivate players to pull out of this funk anytime soon?

So often, a team takes on the personality of its head coach. This team has, for two games, seemed to do that. Crennel lacks liveliness and answers, and so do the Chiefs.

Luckily for the coach and everyone who plays for or follows this team, there’s plenty of time left for Crennel to rediscover himself — and what made the Chiefs so good for two of three weeks last December.