ChiefsPlanet - Teicher: Vermeil can see the light

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Vermeil can see the light
Chiefs coach says season is not lost

By ADAM TEICHER
The Kansas City Star

From all corners of Kansas City, in the privacy of living rooms and in public venues like sports bars, Dick Vermeil continues to take shots for the decisions leading to the Chiefs' 0-3 record.

Why call timeout after Houston's first down late in the first half Sunday? Why try on fourth and 2 rather than take the sure field goal? Why not insist the Chiefs import some defensive players and a wide receiver during the off-season?

As critical as any fan who saw dreams of a Chiefs Super Bowl season crash and burn — and with the luxury of an extra day this week because of the Monday night game in Baltimore — Vermeil is asking himself the very same questions.

He just might not be coming to the same conclusions, even as he acknowledged that many of his long-term and game-day choices don't look very good right now.

“Am I any different than I was last year at 3-0? I'm probably doing a better job now than I did last year at 3-0,” Vermeil said Wednesday. “Maybe I overlooked some things or I planned wrong or I let some things go because we were so good last year and won 13 games and maybe I said, ‘It's not broke, so I'm not going to fix it.' But in this business, you either get better or you get worse, and right now, we're not better. We're getting better from where we started the season.

“We can be a better football team than we were last year. I still believe that. I'm not saying we're going to win 13 games. I've said all along we could be a better team and not win as many games. But I'm not going to go back on what I thought.”

The Chiefs were, relatively speaking, improved on offense and defense against the Texans, even though they were beaten at home by a winless, third-season expansion team. Whether that's the first step in a dramatic turnaround or a product of the competition will be revealed in Baltimore against a 2-1 team that dominated its two most recent opponents.

If such a turnaround is going to come, it better happen quickly. The combined record of the Chiefs' next four opponents — games against Jacksonville, Atlanta and Indianapolis follow — is 10-2.

“I came into the season with what I think is going to be a good football team,” Vermeil said. “It's not as good as I thought it would be after three games. What I have to do is get it to the level I expected them to be.

“I also have to live in the real world. I knew playing three of the first four games against playoff caliber-teams, two of them on the road, would be a real tough thing to do because it's been a real tough thing to do for every other team that's had to do something like this.”

Like any veteran coach, Vermeil has experience at situations like this. He saw much darker days during his time in St. Louis.

Vermeil's Rams won a total of nine games in his first two seasons. Then, he was on a seat much hotter than the one he occupies now. His fortunes turned dramatically when he abruptly and unexpectedly, in his third season, guided the Rams to the Super Bowl championship.

“This is my third team,” he said. “At all three, I went through terrible periods of time. It's not going smoothly right now. But I don't know of one coach in the Hall of Fame that hasn't lost three in a row at some point. So I'm not going to jump off a bridge. I'm going to respond to our problems like I expect my players to respond to our problems.”

The difference for Vermeil is that until this season, he's never had a team that fancied itself as a Super Bowl contender go up in flames. His 1982 Eagles finished 3-6 a year after making the playoffs as a wild card and two after reaching the Super Bowl, but a strike that interrupted the season for several weeks can explain that.

Vermeil has no such crutch now. The Chiefs opted for continuity rather than upheaval during the off-season and at least so far are paying the price.

“We talked to Warren Sapp and we talked to the cornerback who came in here (Troy Vincent), but they were out of our ballpark moneywise,” he said. “Otherwise, who were we going to find as better players than the ones we already had?

“We wanted a wide receiver, and we wanted to get a first-round pick. But they were gone, so we didn't get one. You don't go out and buy a Mercedes with a busted axle. If you do, then you get him here and he's not as good as the guy you want him to replace. We haven't made many wrong decisions (in free-agency). I compare our free-agent signings and production with any team in the National Football League. It comes from not being impulsive and not being misled.”

It's not Vermeil's style to shake up the lineup, call out assistant coaches publicly or make any other such moves. Such things are, in his view, cosmetic and the result of panic.

“I don't attack people in this environment,” Vermeil said. “I attack the problems. Too many football teams jump ship on people and players and coaches and schemes just at the verge of when they were going to come through and get to that next level. I believe that will happen to our defense and our entire team. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I think.”