Whitlock: Blame Moe, Larry and Curly for this Chiefs mess
 

Blame Moe, Larry and Curly for this Chiefs mess
By JASON WHITLOCK
The Kansas City Star

There’s no mystery here. Teams lacking an adequate amount of talent eventually collapse under the weight of trying to play perfectly.

Four days before Thanksgiving, inside two-thirds-full Arrowhead Stadium, the Buffalo Bills snapped the back of the Chiefs, thrashing and humiliating the home team 54-31.

There’s no reason to blame Tyler Thigpen, Glenn Dorsey, Tamba Hali or any of the nameless, faceless jerseys masquerading as starting NFL linebackers. It’s not their fault. They didn’t assemble this team.

Carl “Moe” Peterson, Herm “Larry” Edwards and Bill “Curly” Kuharich put together the worst team in Chiefs history, a squad with a two-year, 19-of-20 losing stretch.

For a solid month, the Chiefs feigned competitiveness by avoiding turnovers and penalties. Error-free football allowed the Chiefs to keep games close and fool some of us into believing they were making real progress.

Sunday, against a Buffalo team that had lost four straight, the disgusting truth reared its head like Putin staring down Sarah Palin’s lake house. The Chiefs jumped offside, picked up a personal foul, turned the ball over five times and played like the inexperienced, talent-deficient team they truly are.

The result was a franchise-record, 54-point meltdown that all but ensured Arrowhead will be less than half filled when the Dolphins and Chargers visit later this season.

It also ends the debate about whether the Chiefs are on the right path being blazed by Moe, Larry and Curly.

No way.

You could see in July that they had constructed a roster more capable of finishing 1-15 than 8-8. In fact, when I arrived at training camp, a Chiefs official told me that Herm should be praised if he took this team to a .500 finish.

I laughed out loud and said, “Herm should be coach of the year if this team wins four.”

I’m sure the Chiefs employee thought I was being flip. Allegedly, I’m prone toward bluster. I was dead serious. Without Jared Allen, the defense didn’t have a proven playmaker. On offense, I had no faith in Brodie Croyle, thought the QB depth chart was midmajor, assumed Larry Johnson wouldn’t handle the adversity and figured the offensive line would get exploited.

We have no reason to be surprised. The lone surprise of the season was Kansas City’s 33-19 trouncing of the Denver Broncos. Twenty years from now, football historians will still be trying to determine how these Chiefs won that game convincingly.

This team just isn’t built to win football games. It’s built to be $32 million under the salary cap while Arrowhead Stadium undergoes renovation. The season is a success. We’re getting exactly what Clark Hunt was willing to pay for and what Moe, Larry and Curly could conceive given their operating budget.

That in no way excuses Moe, Larry and Curly. They drafted Glenn Dorsey with the sixth overall pick. He has been completely ineffective. His rookie season has been far worse than Ryan Sims’ rookie season.

We knew the loss of Allen would destroy the Chiefs’ outside pass rush. The theory behind drafting Dorsey was that he would give Kansas City an inside push. He is supposed to disrupt the pocket from the inside. It just hasn’t happened.

Opposing quarterbacks don’t even need to wear a helmet and shoulder pads when playing the Chiefs. Bills coach Dick Jauron so enjoyed playing against KC’s front four that he left his struggling QB, Trent Edwards, in the game well into the fourth quarter just so Edwards could pad his passing stats.

“They kept throwing the football because they wanted to get their quarterback going,” Edwards acknowledged.

Kansas City’s defense is a confidence-builder for opposing quarterbacks. Runners, too. The Bills ran for 171 yards and averaged 4.5 yards per carry.

Dorsey hasn’t helped Kansas City’s run or pass defense.

This is a horrendously bad football team. Lucky for the Chiefs, they play in the equally horrendous AFC West. It’s going to be tough for the Chiefs to win just one more game this season. They get to play the Raiders, Broncos and Chargers again. The Chiefs also have a season-ending date with the Cincinnati Bengals. And the Dolphins are beatable.

Kansas City will win — in my estimation — two games down the stretch. But the inevitable victories will not excuse the game plan that put this roster together.

That comment is to the extreme

Tell me something I don't know.

not really, he hasnt played well at all and through 11 games he's made less then a handful of good plays.

He's still on par with how almost every other rookie DT ever plays. He comes from playing at a level of competition where he can simply out-muscle everybody to the NFL where everybody is as strong or stronger than him. He is facing the same problem as every other young DT. He needs to learn technique and then his game will come. He has the tools to be a dominant DT. Those who are dissapointed in his play are those who expected too much out of him.

No more DT's with our first round pick. We'll just agree on that right now. Not to mention we had the fifth pick not the sixth, but what can we expect from Witless.

Again, why no more DT's in the 1st round? Dorsey is on par with just about any other rookie DT and those who are dissapointed were expecting too much. Were people expecting what Houston got out of Amobi Okoye (5.5 sacks)? Well what a big help he has been this year with 0 sacks and 11 total tackles.

Just think about how much more money the Cheaps would have saved if only they had the 6th as opposed to the 5th.

To say that Dorsey is ineffective is not fair, is Whitlock really expecting him to completely dominate in the NFL as a rookie? He is on pace to tie if not exceed Warren Sapp's rookie stats.

We have NO pass rush, and other teams know it. I am convinced that even if we do get a few more defensive players in the draft, what good is it going to do when we run an outdated defensive scheme and have completely inept coaching/management.

Everyone on the coaching staff, save Gailey should be fired.

Now, even seasoned fans are waining from this team, if something isn't done by Clark, a lot of people are going to give up on the Herm experiment perminately.

You can't win period when you cant stop the run (teams avg over 4+ ypc against us) and you can't create a pass rush and the QB passes all over you.

We will still lose every game if Thigpen goes 25/30 350 yds 3 TD/0 INT for the next 5 games. We simply can not win games when the defense is this bad.

Exactly. Sure we can score, but we are good enough to score on every drive like in the early part of this decade. Our defense then couldn't stop an opposing team's drive but we just outscored them.

This shows Gunther's ineptitude, he can't hide under the guise of a win, he is exposed as a talentless coach.

God, that Dorsey comment was reeruned.

He's putting up perfectly acceptable rookie DT stats while being coached by the worst D-Line coach who has ever ****ing sullied this franchise, and coordinated by a ****ing fool.

Cover-Blew defense. Can't Gunther be called Shemp in all this, too?

Didja wax a chump like a candle? Didja?

JWhit is right about Dorsey. When your drafted thaty high, your EXPECTED to produce immediatly.


Dorsey might become somthing eventually, but for now hes been completely ineffective.