|
A take from Gretz on the Bowe situation from this morning...
August 17, 2009 - Bob Gretz | Comments (31)
From River Falls, Wisconsin
If I’ve used this story before, then excuse me. But I think it’s very illustrative in explaining WR Dwayne Bowe’s situation with the Chiefs.
Years ago the late defensive coordinator/NFL head coach Bud Carson was talking about players. He said something I’ve never forgotten. Bud said the players on a team fall into three categories: those that know what it takes to win, those that don’t know, and those that don’t know that they don’t know.
“It’s that third group that will get you killed as a coach,” the crusty Carson said. “I’d rather have a guy without a clue, than a guy that thinks he has all the answers but doesn’t know squat.”
So on a rainy Saturday night at Arrowhead Stadium, Bowe fights his way out of the head coach’s doghouse, has a nice game and now everybody wants Todd Haley to take his mercurial wide receiver off the choke chain and let him run free again in the neighborhood.
Whether Bowe is back running with the first-team offense this coming Friday night against the Vikings over in Minneapolis remains to be seen. But it wouldn’t make much sense for Haley to suddenly stop what has obviously begun to produce some results.
Bowe definitely falls in the category of players who “don’t know what they don’t know.” There have been a lot of those guys on the Chiefs roster in this decade. They believed they had the plan and answers to create a winning team, but it’s turned out over 10 years that they didn’t even have the right questions, let alone the correct answers. In two seasons, Bowe has caught 156 passes for 2,017 yards and he believes that gives him credibility. Of course, those catches and yards came for a team that finished 6-26.
Bowe and many other young veterans on this Chiefs team have no idea what it takes to be a consistent winner in pro football.
That’s what Haley is trying to create with this team. It doesn’t mean he’ll get that accomplished, or that Haley’s way is the best way. But it’s a tried and true method that has worked dozens of times before in the NFL. The first step in the process is personal responsibility. The second step is consistency.
Go back to what Haley said in the first week of camp: “I don’t want a yo-yo team and I don’t want yo-yo players. I really want to be the same every day. If we get fractionally better each day, or each week, then we’ll be OK.”
Yo-yo: that’s what Bowe has been during this training camp and over his three seasons with the Chiefs. To qualify under what Haley wants requires a consistent approach to practices and meetings. It’s a focus and motivation that gets turned on not when the stadium lights come on, but when the meeting room lights go off and the tape is being reviewed.
It doesn’t just come when there can be a “Bowe Show” with tens of thousands of people watching. It comes when there are less than 100 folks enjoying a sunny afternoon in River Falls and barely making a sound.
It comes every single day, without fail and without question.
Bowe has problems putting all those elements together for any length of time. His focus can waver from play to play, let alone practice to practice. He’s gotten close to some consistency during two practices last week here in the northwoods and then in Saturday night’s pre-season game against the Texans.
Close enough that he’s got the head coach’s attention. Calling Bowe’s five-catch, 70-yard performance against the Texans a “definite positive”, Haley also made it plain there remains work to get done.
“Like I said, we are going to play the guys that we think are doing it the way we want it done,” said the head coach. “That was the way we went tonight (against Houston), but again that can change. But Bowe … definitely showed something.”
It’s hard to imagine Haley taking Bowe completely off the chain and letting him run free again. That would defeat the purpose of what he’s been trying to get done. More than likely Haley is going to have to pull that chain at various times to get Bowe’s attention.
This is the chance that Haley and his coaching staff have of getting Bowe with the program. Fines and discipline don’t make a dent with most of today’s NFL players. The only thing that really grabs their attention is messing with their opportunities to perform.
With the ‘09 Chiefs, Bowe is the most physically gifted receiver on the roster. That doesn’t make him the best at the position, but it should and could, if he’ll become a true pro and learn how to handle himself. Yes, Matt Cassel needs Dwayne Bowe in the lineup. But not the Dwayne Bowe that drops too many passes, runs too many bad routes and doesn’t always get to where he’s supposed to be in the play.
The Chiefs have already proven then can go 6-26 with that Dwayne Bowe.
They need a different one.
|