Mellinger:Bowe the knucklehead still vying for attention with Bowe the receiver

[Tribal Warfare]

Bowe the knucklehead still vying for attention with Bowe the receiver
By SAM MELLINGER
The Kansas City Star

Dwayne Bowe hasn’t dropped a pass. Not yet, not in a game. And that would be a good thing, except he hasn’t caught one either.

The second preseason game is Saturday night in Tampa, and Bowe is still looking for his first catch. The Chiefs coaches insist this doesn’t matter.

“That’s really insignificant,” offensive coordinator Charlie Weis says. “We didn’t go in game-planning to get the ball to Dwayne.”

Those words are fine. One preseason game isn’t a big deal. But Bowe’s performance this year is a ginormous deal for the Chiefs, and if they want to know if they can count on him in the regular season, it would be good to see him do something in the preseason.

Because for all his popularity and attention, Bowe is entering his fourth NFL season as more potential than production.

The Chiefs led the league in drops last year, a key reason for Matt Cassel’s struggles, and Bowe was the biggest offender. Despite missing five games, he still managed to tie for the NFL lead with 11 dropped passes.

By all accounts and appearances, Bowe is having a very good training camp. He’s in better shape. He makes some plays in drills and scrimmages. Bowe is praised by Weis and head coach Todd Haley and whichever teammate is speaking for him that day. Fans scream for Bowe’s autograph.

The accepted narrative is positive.

But we’re still waiting for him to live up to it.

This is a critical season for Bowe. For all the improvements on offense — a better line, Thomas Jones, Dexter McCluster and no more Larry Johnson — the most important players were here last year.

The central piece is Cassel, and his most important ally or enemy will be Bowe.

They are both good players who need to be good, and that may be the team’s mantra this year. It applies to Cassel and Bowe more than anyone else.

Cassel needs to get closer to the guy who threw for 3,693 yards with an 89.3 passer rating for the Patriots in 2008.

To do that, he needs Bowe to play — not just act — like a first-round talent.

We can see that Cassel at least cares, that he’s doing everything possible to be good. With Bowe, he is still too easily distracted to say with any confidence.

So far, Bowe is showing occasional flashes, which is good, but also more of the obnoxious behavior the Chiefs have spent so much energy trying to quash. That’s not so good.

Bowe isn’t talking to the media — a smart move for him and his teammates’ marriages — but his inner knucklehead is still very much here.

He has talked to fans during drills in which he’s going the wrong direction and stood away from his teammates toward the end of last week’s game in Atlanta to hold the TV boom mic.

The Chiefs’ power structure puts a direct tie between how much D-Bowe they see and how much production Dwayne gives them as a receiver. The more D-Bowe, the less they want to count on him, so a healthy skepticism is warranted.

Bowe is not a star receiver — at this point, he may never become one — but the Chiefs need him to at least be an adequate lead receiver so that Cassel has a better chance to at least be an adequate starting quarterback.

Dropped passes, the saying goes, are more about concentration than talent. The coaches’ rhetoric says Bowe is much improved in that area, but the lapses are too easy to notice.

The Bowe-is-a-new-man storyline falls flat when we see him acting like the guy from years past.

Bowe will rise or fall with what he does on the football field. He showed nothing during the first game, which is fine for now but could soon grow into a problem.

The Chiefs don’t have many players more central to their success this year than Bowe. And they don’t have any with more legitimate concerns around them than Bowe.

We’re still waiting for answers. This weekend would be a nice time to start seeing them.