JoePo: There’s no hiding the Chiefs’ rebuilding mode now

[DaKCMan AP]

There’s no hiding the Chiefs’ rebuilding mode now
By JOE POSNANSKI

There are two dirty little secrets that the Kansas City Chiefs have been trying (and, more or less, failing) to keep away from fans and potential ticket buyers all season long.

Secret No. 1: The Chiefs are not contenders. They are in full-fledged, all-out, no-joke, batten-down-the-hatches, release-the-hounds, all-capital-letter REBUILDING MODE.

Secret No. 2: It stinks to be in full-fledged, all-out, no-joke, batten-down-the-hatches, release-the-hounds, all-capital-letter REBUILDING MODE.

Yes, the Chiefs have tried to fool people all around into believing they are actually a reasonably good team. It isn’t remotely true, but that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that the Chiefs have tried to fool themselves into believing that same lie.

There’s no believing that after Sunday, not after the Chiefs lost to the Oakland Scallywags 20-17 at home in front of a lot of empty seats and even more seats filled with people wondering what the heck they were doing there. What a snoozer. There should be a label on Chiefs tickets warning people not to operate heavy machinery while watching this team. The team should have the wonderful Tony DiPardo play reveille at the end of games to wake up the few remaining fans and alert them to go home.

The plot of Sunday’s game — at least, for most of the game — was familiar if you have watched Chiefs-Raiders games lately. It involved Oakland players doing comical things in their patented effort to lose. Turnovers. Stupid penalties. Dropped passes. Oh yeah, I checked with the U.S. Patent Office, the Raiders have registered trademarks on these.

On Sunday, though, the Chiefs matched banana peel for banana peel. The Raiders fumbled deep in their own territory? The Chiefs committed a holding penalty and fell out of field-goal range. The Raiders dropped a couple of key first-down passes? The Chiefs completed three passes in the first half. The Raiders grabbed a facemask for a timely 15-yard-penalty? The Chiefs’ Dave Rayner flubbed a 33-yard field goal.

The Raiders defense caved in the fourth quarter? Chiefs coach Herm Edwards ended the drive by calling one timeout, blowing another with a hopeless challenge. The Chiefs then passed on a field-goal attempt and got stuffed on fourth and 1.

No, you can never feel too good about losing to Oakland because the Raiders played smarter than you did.

But if you spend too much time focusing on Edwards’ timeout polka or the mind-numbing play-calling or the way the Chiefs’ origami defense folded in the last minutes again or the team’s muddled identity (the Chiefs are a field goal-oriented team that can’t make field goals), you might miss the bigger story: The Chiefs, plainly, are starting over.

This is new. The Chiefs have been treading the waters of NFL mediocrity for TEN STINKING YEARS now, and finally they have run out of free-agent life preservers and stopgap players. Finally, they are going with young players and trying to build a team rather than patch together a playoff pretender with duct tape, shoe polish, a couple of big contracts and somebody else’s backup quarterback.

Starting over involves pain. That’s why the Chiefs have refused to even say the word “rebuilding.” Chiefs president Carl Peterson and the marketing wizards have not filled stadiums in small-market Kansas City for 15 years by using slogans like, “Hey, we’ll be really good in a couple of years.”

Well, now, like it or not, it’s happening. The Chiefs are rebuilding now. And I think Edwards is just the right coach to build from scratch. He may drive people nuts with his defensive mindset and game planning, but the guy has a special talent for finding good young players and developing them, which is more important. All year, Edwards kept telling us that rookie running back Kolby Smith —— a fifth-round pick who did not even start at Louisville — was a special young player. Many of us didn’t see it.

So what happened Sunday? Kolby Smith got his chance. And he was fabulous. He juked. He cut back. He drove his legs. He never gave up on the plays. He gained 150 yards and scored two touchdowns — this behind an offensive line that all year made Larry Johnson look like Larry, Curly and Moe.

It looks as if Edwards was right. And it’s no fluke — he has generally been right about young talent. The last two Chiefs drafts have been the team’s best in years — eight players from those two drafts started or played key roles on Sunday.

Say what you want about Edwards: He’s unafraid of youth and the inevitable mistakes. As good as Smith was, it appeared that he hesitated and cut back on the key fourth-and-1 play, costing the Chiefs a chance for a first down and a big play. That will happen.

Brodie Croyle, making his second start at quarterback, was erratic — he mixed good passes with some wild misfires all game long. Defensive end Tamba Hali, so good as a rookie last year, had a sack, but he also appeared to get manhandled on some running plays. Receiver Dwayne Bowe caught four passes and has had a terrific year, but he also seemed to have a tough time getting open much of the game.

And so on. This is the ballad of youth in pro football — high notes, low notes, flat notes. Nobody in Kansas City wants to go through rebuilding now; it has been more than 35 years since the Chiefs were in the Super Bowl. But there’s no choice. This season is gone. The Chiefs are a bad team. They have to develop Croyle and young players and get what they can out of the rest of this season. Then, in the offseason, there will be all sorts of work to do. The Chiefs will have to clean house — players, coaches, you name it — change the offense entirely, have a spectacular draft, you know, all those things that rebuilding teams have to do. Is Carl Peterson right for that job? That’s a topic for another column coming up.

It has been a long time since the Chiefs have gone through this process. The last time was in 1989, when Peterson and Marty Schottenheimer took over a team with nothing, changed the mindset, drafted some defensive monsters, put together a fierce offensive line and built a winning team that gave Kansas City thrills and heartbreaks. The Chiefs held on to that team too long. They flopped on some big-time draft picks. They gambled on some veterans. They let the team rot and decay. That’s where we are now.

And now, they have to start over again. Yes, this year has been miserable. If my guess is right, it will get more miserable before the season is out. Sunday’s loss was part of the misery, but maybe finally everyone can say the truth out loud: It’s time to build the Chiefs again. It’s way past time.

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/v-p...ry/376799.html