DeezNutz
12-10-2006, 11:33 PM
I enjoyed this column very much and agree, almost entirely, on his assessment of Herm. Before Edwards leaves KC, I firmly believe he'll build a defense that can suck the life out of most teams. Unfortunately, he'll take us just far enough, that the crash will leave the rest of us sucking our thumbs from the trauma.
Another side of Edwards is now in full bloom
By Joe Posnanski
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
The scouting report from New York on Herman Edwards had three parts:
1. He will be very impressive.
2. He will get the players to play hard and, at times, above themselves.
3. When it comes down to the big moments, he will go into a shell so large you could buy gasoline and Snickers bars in it.
Here we are, 13 games into this odd Chiefs season, and we've seen the entire array of Herm, the complete Hermography. For much of the year, he did have this Chiefs team playing inspired football. They lost their Hall of Fame left tackle before the season began, lost their quarterback in the first game, and they dealt with various other setbacks, issues, problems. Still they won games. They rebounded. One week after a devastating loss at Denver, they blew out San Francisco 41-0. One week after getting their helmets handed to them in Pittsburgh, they beat San Diego, probably the best team in football.
In a five-day span, they beat their two biggest rivals - Denver and Oakland.
It was amazing to watch. The Chiefs have average talent. That's pretty clear now. Coming into Sunday's game, they were ranked 13th in the NFL in offense and 14th in defense, so that's about as mediocre as you can be. But Herm Edwards could make a rock believe, and it was fun to see him transform the Chiefs from the offensive circus/defensive nightmare of the Dick Vermeil years tightly knit team that played hard through everything.
Ah, but there is that third part of the equation, isn't there? We saw a little bit of the Herm-shell last week in Cleveland, when the Chiefs built a 14-point fourth-quarter lead and then dropped the defense back into some sort of pillow-soft "hope they don't score" zone. The Chiefs lost the game and a chance to go 8-4. It was a real blow.
But Sunday, for the first time, we saw the full Herm-shell, the ultra-conservative game plan that created a baldness epidemic on Long Island - because people pulled out their hair watching it. The Chiefs trailed 6-0 in the third quarter, which tells you the first half was hardly an offensive drag race. But the Chiefs were about to downshift even more. They got the ball, and the play-calling matrix looked like this.
Run. Run. Pass.
Run. Run. Pass.
Pass. Run. Sack.
This, of course, led to a punt (Olathe Northwest baseball coach Jay Novacek used the Chiefs' play-calling pattern to write a little song that goes to the "Jingle Bells" melody_Run, run, pass/run, run, pass/punt the ball away/Oh how hard it is to watch/the Chiefs just fade away, hey!).
The next time the Chiefs got the ball, they were down 13-0. You would expect the Chiefs offense to have a little more urgency. You would expect wrong.
Run. Run. Pass.
Run. Run. Pass.
Run. Run. Sack.
That led to a meaningless field goal. To be fair, there were obvious reasons why the Chiefs went into hiding. When they tried to throw in the first half, quarterback Trent Green got hit, and quarterback Trent Green made mistakes. Those were about the only two options. Before he padded his stats with a meaningless final drive, Green completed nine of 20 passes for 102 yards and two interceptions. That makes a lovely quarterback rating of 21.2. Throw in five sacks and a lost fumble, and that shows you pretty clearly why Herm's Chiefs went to the Woody Hayes cloud-of-dust offense.
We interrupt this column to point out the following without further comment:
Damon Huard: Eight starts. Record 5-3. Eleven touchdown passes. One interception. Quarterback rating of 97.6.
Trent Green: Five starts. Record 2-3. Five touchdown passes. Five interceptions. Quarterback rating of 82.7.
OK, back to our regularly scheduled column. It looked as if the Chiefs plodded and punted their way right out of the game in the third quarter. Then something amazing happened. A holiday gift. Early in the fourth quarter, with the Chiefs down 10 points, the Ravens' Ovie Mughelli fumbled the ball. It was really a double gift_replays showed pretty clearly that his elbow was down when the ball popped loose. But Baltimore coach Brian Billick, perhaps for reasons of charity and mercy, did not challenge the play.
So the Chiefs got the ball on the Baltimore 43 with a chance to save the season. Naturally, they ran the ball on first down. But on second down, Green threw. It was an incomplete pass. On third down, Green threw again. And again it was incomplete.
So it was fourth down and 6, ball on the Baltimore 39, season and playoffs on the line, and what did Herm Edwards do? You already know. Herm Edwards punted.
"I wasn't going to give them the ball on the 40," Edwards said.
And there you go. With the ball on the Baltimore 39, down two scores, in a game the Chiefs absolutely had to win_Herm Edwards punted for 25 yards of field position. Let's take a moment to look at the two scenarios.
Go for it. Best-case scenario: You make it, score a touchdown and get right back in the game, perhaps save the season. Worst-case scenario: You give the Ravens the ball on the 39.
Punt. Best-case scenario: You pin the Ravens back, stop them, make them punt, drive for a score against a defense that has owned you all day, kick off, stop them again, get the ball back, drive for another score, all before the clock runs out. Worst-case scenario: Anything else.
"There was still enough time," Edwards insisted. Only, in the end, there wasn't. The Ravens went on an infuriating 9-minute drive, and the Chiefs' playoff dreams ended before they got the ball back. It was like watching a pool hustler run the table. And it hurt most of all because it seemed as if the man famous for saying "You play to win the game" had not.
Herm Edwards, I believe, is a tremendous football coach. He was given a flawed Chiefs team, and for a long time he had them playing like one of the better teams in the NFL. He is a guy who, given the right players, can rebuild the Chiefs into a playoff team. Sunday, though, he showed his one vice: He refused to take the chance when the game was on the line.
Would it have mattered Sunday? Nah. In the end, the Ravens are a better team than the Chiefs, and they played better Sunday. Still, we'll never know. And you kind of wish the Chiefs had at least gone down swinging.
Another side of Edwards is now in full bloom
By Joe Posnanski
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
The scouting report from New York on Herman Edwards had three parts:
1. He will be very impressive.
2. He will get the players to play hard and, at times, above themselves.
3. When it comes down to the big moments, he will go into a shell so large you could buy gasoline and Snickers bars in it.
Here we are, 13 games into this odd Chiefs season, and we've seen the entire array of Herm, the complete Hermography. For much of the year, he did have this Chiefs team playing inspired football. They lost their Hall of Fame left tackle before the season began, lost their quarterback in the first game, and they dealt with various other setbacks, issues, problems. Still they won games. They rebounded. One week after a devastating loss at Denver, they blew out San Francisco 41-0. One week after getting their helmets handed to them in Pittsburgh, they beat San Diego, probably the best team in football.
In a five-day span, they beat their two biggest rivals - Denver and Oakland.
It was amazing to watch. The Chiefs have average talent. That's pretty clear now. Coming into Sunday's game, they were ranked 13th in the NFL in offense and 14th in defense, so that's about as mediocre as you can be. But Herm Edwards could make a rock believe, and it was fun to see him transform the Chiefs from the offensive circus/defensive nightmare of the Dick Vermeil years tightly knit team that played hard through everything.
Ah, but there is that third part of the equation, isn't there? We saw a little bit of the Herm-shell last week in Cleveland, when the Chiefs built a 14-point fourth-quarter lead and then dropped the defense back into some sort of pillow-soft "hope they don't score" zone. The Chiefs lost the game and a chance to go 8-4. It was a real blow.
But Sunday, for the first time, we saw the full Herm-shell, the ultra-conservative game plan that created a baldness epidemic on Long Island - because people pulled out their hair watching it. The Chiefs trailed 6-0 in the third quarter, which tells you the first half was hardly an offensive drag race. But the Chiefs were about to downshift even more. They got the ball, and the play-calling matrix looked like this.
Run. Run. Pass.
Run. Run. Pass.
Pass. Run. Sack.
This, of course, led to a punt (Olathe Northwest baseball coach Jay Novacek used the Chiefs' play-calling pattern to write a little song that goes to the "Jingle Bells" melody_Run, run, pass/run, run, pass/punt the ball away/Oh how hard it is to watch/the Chiefs just fade away, hey!).
The next time the Chiefs got the ball, they were down 13-0. You would expect the Chiefs offense to have a little more urgency. You would expect wrong.
Run. Run. Pass.
Run. Run. Pass.
Run. Run. Sack.
That led to a meaningless field goal. To be fair, there were obvious reasons why the Chiefs went into hiding. When they tried to throw in the first half, quarterback Trent Green got hit, and quarterback Trent Green made mistakes. Those were about the only two options. Before he padded his stats with a meaningless final drive, Green completed nine of 20 passes for 102 yards and two interceptions. That makes a lovely quarterback rating of 21.2. Throw in five sacks and a lost fumble, and that shows you pretty clearly why Herm's Chiefs went to the Woody Hayes cloud-of-dust offense.
We interrupt this column to point out the following without further comment:
Damon Huard: Eight starts. Record 5-3. Eleven touchdown passes. One interception. Quarterback rating of 97.6.
Trent Green: Five starts. Record 2-3. Five touchdown passes. Five interceptions. Quarterback rating of 82.7.
OK, back to our regularly scheduled column. It looked as if the Chiefs plodded and punted their way right out of the game in the third quarter. Then something amazing happened. A holiday gift. Early in the fourth quarter, with the Chiefs down 10 points, the Ravens' Ovie Mughelli fumbled the ball. It was really a double gift_replays showed pretty clearly that his elbow was down when the ball popped loose. But Baltimore coach Brian Billick, perhaps for reasons of charity and mercy, did not challenge the play.
So the Chiefs got the ball on the Baltimore 43 with a chance to save the season. Naturally, they ran the ball on first down. But on second down, Green threw. It was an incomplete pass. On third down, Green threw again. And again it was incomplete.
So it was fourth down and 6, ball on the Baltimore 39, season and playoffs on the line, and what did Herm Edwards do? You already know. Herm Edwards punted.
"I wasn't going to give them the ball on the 40," Edwards said.
And there you go. With the ball on the Baltimore 39, down two scores, in a game the Chiefs absolutely had to win_Herm Edwards punted for 25 yards of field position. Let's take a moment to look at the two scenarios.
Go for it. Best-case scenario: You make it, score a touchdown and get right back in the game, perhaps save the season. Worst-case scenario: You give the Ravens the ball on the 39.
Punt. Best-case scenario: You pin the Ravens back, stop them, make them punt, drive for a score against a defense that has owned you all day, kick off, stop them again, get the ball back, drive for another score, all before the clock runs out. Worst-case scenario: Anything else.
"There was still enough time," Edwards insisted. Only, in the end, there wasn't. The Ravens went on an infuriating 9-minute drive, and the Chiefs' playoff dreams ended before they got the ball back. It was like watching a pool hustler run the table. And it hurt most of all because it seemed as if the man famous for saying "You play to win the game" had not.
Herm Edwards, I believe, is a tremendous football coach. He was given a flawed Chiefs team, and for a long time he had them playing like one of the better teams in the NFL. He is a guy who, given the right players, can rebuild the Chiefs into a playoff team. Sunday, though, he showed his one vice: He refused to take the chance when the game was on the line.
Would it have mattered Sunday? Nah. In the end, the Ravens are a better team than the Chiefs, and they played better Sunday. Still, we'll never know. And you kind of wish the Chiefs had at least gone down swinging.