Charles’ greatness goes to waste on this Chiefs team BY SAM MELLINGER

[Hammock Parties]

The bold line describes JC so perfectly.

http://www.kansascity.com/2012/12/23...-to-waste.html

There is no way to know what Jamaal Charles’ life is like right now. This is how he wants it. If the conversation moves too close to his heart, he reminds you that he will not talk about the day his friend and teammate shot a beloved family member multiple times before turning the gun on himself.

So football questions only from you. Football answers only from him. This is how he chooses to cope.

“God gave me a gift,” he says. “I can just run.”

Charles is showing it, too, the shining diamond lodged in a manure pile of a Chiefs season that’s been wildly disappointing, consistently infuriating and heartbreakingly tragic. He’s been in the middle of all of it. In a week or so, some of Charles’ bosses will almost certainly be fired. When they’re replaced, Charles will be in the middle of the new guys’ optimism, too.

The NFL has never seen a situation quite like Charles’ this year. And that’s never been more apparent than now, after Charles rushed for 226 yards and a touchdown and the Chiefs lost anyway, again, this time 20-13 to the Colts in front of a lot of empty seats at Arrowhead Stadium.

Charles is one of the league’s most gifted players, stuck on one of its limpest teams. Only two other men have ever rushed for this many yards in a game and lost. Nobody in the history of the NFL has been this good (1,456 yards and 5.4 per carry) for a team as bad as the 2-13 Chiefs. That fits the sad pattern, actually.

Charles’ 5.8-yard career average is ahead of even Jim Brown’s; that best-ever NFL mark now officially Charles’. But the Chiefs are 18-46 in the games in which he’s played. So this is Spielberg doing public-access television, or a Maserati being wasted on a man who wraps it around a tree.

Charles will say only that “it hurts.” He fumbled when the Chiefs were inside the 20, and he calls that “heartbreaking.” Says he hurt his team, and won’t remember much else about the game, even as some teammates are already describing this season in the past tense.

It’s impossible to know whether Charles’ perspective on football has shifted in the 23 days since his life changed. He rushed for 127 yards the day after Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed Kasandra Perkins and then himself. Perkins was Belcher’s girlfriend. She was also the cousin of Charles’ wife. Charles loved both killer and victim, and none of us can know what that does to how a man sees the world.

Maybe someday he will talk about this publicly. Maybe someday he will tell us if he came to see football’s structure as a way to clear his mind, or whether seeing Belcher’s old locker every day kept death in his thoughts. Chiefs quarterback Brady Quinn says he kept thinking about what he could’ve done to stop the murder-suicide. Maybe someday Charles will say the same thing.

For now, all we know is what we see. And what we see is a man who has every reason to drift who has instead doubled-up an already famous focus. This is a man bearing unimaginable family grief playing his heart out for a dead-end team that’s incapable of making the effort worth his while.

His 86-yard touchdown on the first play of the second half gave the Chiefs hope. For Charles, it was a typically brilliant run around the left end, a good push from the line and diving block by fullback Patrick DiMarco allowing him to show the world those gifts. He sprinted the first 20 yards or so, that speed from his days as a college track star always there for the right opportunity. Then, he cut back behind teammate Jon Baldwin and leaped to celebrate in the stands — where, perhaps fittingly, a Colts fan was among those who patted the back of his jersey.

The Chiefs eventually lost, of course, again in historical fashion: They broke a 68-year pro football record set by the Cleveland Rams for most rushing yards in a loss. To give you an idea how rare this was, NFL teams are now 29-3 when a running back goes for 226 yards or more.

This is the sad place Charles’ career now rests. His season is football’s version of Zack Greinke’s Cy Young year for the miserable 2009 Royals. Kansas City is again in the position of seeing incredible individual genius surrounded by persistent team failure.

Of course, there was a time not too long ago when nobody knew whether we’d see that individual shine again. Not even Charles. A year ago, he was limping, leg propped up on the couch watching football. That’s an empty feeling for a man whose livelihood and identity are wrapped in the game. He worked hard to return from torn knee ligaments but was never sure how far back he could come.

He talked about this openly in training camp. At first he thought a thousand yards would be nice. But when he broke that mark against the Panthers on Dec. 2, he decided to go for 1,500. He’ll get that with 44 yards in Denver next week, even if the game means nothing more than personnel evaluation.

Nobody will have to wonder if Charles is engaged.

“We really don’t have nothing to play for, but every guy on this team, you’ve got pride,” he says. “…You’ve got to go out and give it your all. Get deep down in your soul to find the player in you and go out there and perform.”

It will be, sadly, Charles in a completely representative moment of his career. He will be expected to be terrific, the team around him expected to be miserable, a man with nothing to prove intent on doing it anyway.