Babb:As a team, Chiefs’ identity was forged in adversity

[Tribal Warfare]

As a team, Chiefs’ identity was forged in adversity
By KENT BABB
The Kansas City Star

A year ago, none of this seemed possible. The Chiefs had just finished a 12-loss season, and their first-year coach had been polarizing within his own locker room. And in this league, when things don’t immediately go well, that clouds everyone’s future.

Sure, Todd Haley admits now, there were days when he wondered if he would turn the Chiefs around in time. Or whether the clock would expire, and he’d be back on some other coach’s staff, in some other city, trying to get some other team to its next big game.

Instead, in the 12 months since Kansas City’s final game of the 2009 season, Haley’s team didn’t revolt against him. It became him.

Players could have given up on their coach’s fiery, sometimes off-putting way, but they instead gave his way a shot — and, a year after things seemed as bleak as ever, here the Chiefs’ validated coach sits, three days from hosting a playoff game.

“We’re not letting things bother us,” he says. “We’re staying up through adversity, and when the whole country is saying we can’t do something, we’re doing it.

“These guys have gotten to know me.”

• • •

The easy thing to say now, after the Chiefs finished the regular season 10-6, is that it was a weak schedule that led to this. Or that it was Haley’s famous coordinators with the platinum pedigrees, Charlie Weis and Romeo Crennel.

Those things contributed to the Chiefs’ rapid improvement, but it’s difficult to doubt that this team now looks, sounds and behaves like Haley. This team, like its coach, had no business reaching the NFL’s promised land. Haley’s story is famous now: from golf pro to football scout to go-fer coach to face of a franchise. This is what can happen if a few things go right and determination and opportunity combine.

Haley’s team believed in that, even a short time after it had doubts. The Chiefs coach wasn’t easy to play for in 2009, and that part has become famous, too. All the screaming and cursing: He says now that most of it was an act to get his players’ attention.

As twisted as it might have seemed at the time, who could deny that it has worked?

“You have to know that some of the things you’re going to do are going to really rub people the wrong way,” says Trent Dilfer, a former NFL quarterback who’s now an ESPN analyst. “But you’ve got to do them, because you’ve got to set an edge.

“There has to be an edge set right away. ‘This is how things are done. This is who I am. You might not always like it, but it’s not going to change.’ That had to be set. That had to be established that first year.”

It was set, and players don’t deny now that they were uncomfortable. Haley doesn’t deny that was the idea. He says a shaken player, if he’s a certain kind of man and he is handled in a certain kind of way, is one who’s eager to make things right.

A year ago, when outsiders — and, heck, some insiders — questioned why Haley was picking on linebacker Derrick Johnson, moving defensive end Tamba Hali to linebacker and hounding Glenn Dorsey because of his weight, Haley kept at it.

Those players, whether it was because of their character or because they had just been beaten down, gave Haley’s way a chance — and it worked. Hali and Johnson became elite-level defenders who narrowly missed their first Pro Bowls, and Dorsey became a solid starter.

“There’s a lot of them,” Haley says. “I heard some of the ‘Dorsey has no chance here,’ ‘Tamba has no chance here.’ Derrick Johnson, all that, when everybody was saying, ‘What are you doing?’ ”

• • •"

Haley doesn’t forget many things, either. Not when they’re important. When he was a young assistant on Bill Parcells’ staff with the New York Jets, Haley watched as a 1-15 team became a 9-7 team. Parcells’ way wasn’t always popular, either, but he kept at it, and it eventually worked.

Haley also noticed during those years that the Jets took on Parcells’ personality, and that led to the team developing chemistry it had lacked during that losing season.

Players say now that, sure, the addition of Weis and Crennel helped Haley move closer to his vision. But they say that it was their head coach whose resolve trickled down, through the coaching staff and into the locker room, where players no longer cared how ludicrous it sounded that they believed in something big, because they believed it was possible if opportunity and determination combined.

“Everybody’s accountable,” Dilfer says, “to do their job every single day and get better. That’s the expectation; nothing less will be accepted.”

Dilfer says one of the most impressive things Haley did in these last 12 months was hire Crennel and Weis. Not because of their backgrounds, but because Haley realized he needed help. It was a sign that Haley realized Weis might steal some of the credit from his boss — but that the boss didn’t care as long as they were successful.

“It’s very hard for head coaches to hire coordinators who are high-profile guys,” Dilfer says. “It takes a really strong man to do that. Having Charlie come in, knowing he was going to get a lot of credit if it goes well, is hard for some coaches to do, and Todd has had no problem with it.”

Haley says he learned another thing from Parcells during those seasons in New York: It might have felt simpler then to abandon the plan, but it’s usually the difficult things that pay the best dividends. Haley says he thought about that often last year, and more than anything else, that’s what got him through those difficult 12 months.

“It would’ve been easy to say: ‘I’m pushing it too far,’” Haley says, “or, ‘I’m going to lose these guys.’ But I had that to fall back on.”

• • •"

In time, with the team taking on more of Haley’s personality, Haley began adopting more of the team’s mannerisms, too.

The Chiefs are determined, but they’re not manic or frenzied. This is a calm locker room these days, and the screaming, wild coach who paced the sidelines last year might not have been successful this season if he hadn’t changed a little himself.

“You don’t have to yell as much,” cornerback Brandon Flowers says. “He adjusted to his players.”

Tight end Leonard Pope, who played for Haley when he was Arizona’s offensive coordinator, says he sees plenty of change.

“He had a point that he had to prove,” Pope says. “He had to get the respect from his guys. He’s been laid-back. Not too laid-back. Because he has a vision.”

Haley doesn’t deny any of that. He says that the key to this improbable playoff run is that the entire team changed after last season, maybe because of last season. They endured that obstacle and grew because of it.

“I’m grateful for the situations I’ve been in,” he says, “because they have given me confidence that we know how to coach them and know what to do, and it’s going to be all right. That, though there’s a bunch of different ways to do it, the way that we believe in works. And it’s working again.”

[JOhn]