JoPo gives Herm one final blow

[Hammock Parties]

Pathetic. Utterly pathetic. Who cares if he had to wait a week. He gets $3 million and a vacation. Big ****ing deal. I'm disgusted. The shot at Pioli was unnecessary.

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/chi...ry/998818.html
Herm had to go, but the delay was cruel

Scott Pioli really had no choice, and everyone knew it. He had to fire Herm Edwards. He had to give himself a fresh start. He had to start over with his own coach. He had to do it for a hundred different reasons, and Edwards’ 6-26 record the last couple of seasons was only one of them.

So, I’m not sure why it took 10 days for Pioli to pull the trigger. I’m not sure why he left Herm dangling out there for those 10 days while his assistant coaches fled like high school kids on graduation day. I’m not sure why the Chiefs would throw Herm overboard late on a Friday afternoon with a news release and a couple of pointless statements. I’m not sure what it says about an organization that it would treat a loyal man like that. Actually, I’m precisely sure what it says about the Chiefs.

Put it this way: Scott Pioli better win fast. He isn’t winning anyone over with his class.

In the end, I suspect, most people in town won’t care how Scott Pioli fired Herm Edwards, because most people just wanted Herm Edwards fired. Sports is a hard business and a cold game. People forget fast. Just one day earlier, Gunther Cunningham bolted for Detroit, where he gets to coach the one team that had a defense worse than his own. And he did not feel like he could leave without first shifting blame for his defense to Herm.

“I’ve gone through three years of playing zone defenses because I was loyal to Herm Edwards,” Cunningham said. “That’s what he wanted. People here in town knew that I was different than that. My idea is to put a lot of pressure on the quarterback — always has been, always will be.”

Key phrase in that statement: “was loyal.”

And how true was the statement anyway? In 2006, when Herm Edwards became head coach, he kept Gunther Cunningham on as his defensive coordinator.

This was despite the fact that the two years before Herm arrived, Cunningham’s defenses finished 31st and 25th in total defense. They weren’t playing zone then — the head coach was Dick Vermeil. and he would let his defensive coordinators do whatever the heck they wanted. Half the time, Vermeil didn’t even know the Chiefs had a defense (and half the time, he was right).

But that’s how it goes in sports: When a man gets down, people will kick. Nobody really wants to rehash this, but Herm Edwards walked into a raging hailstorm when he took over as Chiefs coach in 2006. The Chiefs were the worst kind of football team: They were old and refused to admit it. The Chiefs also had a uniquely inflated view of themselves, considering they had been to the playoffs exactly one time in eight years. Before Edwards coached his first game, his star left tackle, Willie Roaf, retired (even as the Chiefs begged him to come back). In Edwards’ first game, his quarterback, Trent Green, got knocked unconscious and he was never again an effective NFL quarterback. And, as already noted, the defense was awful.

Somehow, Edwards coaxed that team to a 9-7 record — that “zone” defense actually improved the Chiefs to 16th in defense — and they won an improbable playoff spot. True, the Chiefs promptly were humiliated by Indianapolis; but I’ve always thought that only made Edwards’ coaching job more impressive. As the old Groucho Marx line goes: How that team got into the playoffs, I’ll never know.

It was then that Edwards pleaded with people behind the scenes to let him blow things up. He knew the Chiefs were about to collapse. The secondary was ancient, and the offensive line was old enough to be the secondary’s father, and Larry Johnson was going to be tough to deal with, and Will Shields retired and the quarterback situation was a mess — and yes, Edwards could see it coming. But Chiefs president Carl Peterson was not ready to blow up anything. He did not even want to use the word rebuilding.

So, Edwards played the good soldier. He put his team in position to win games. The Chiefs were actually 4-3 at one point. And then, Larry Johnson got hurt, and reality set in and the Chiefs lost their last nine games.

Then Edwards was asked, finally, to blow things up. And the Chiefs did. They spent hardly any money in 2008 — they were $30 million under the salary cap. Edwards went to camp with rookies and free agents and guys who happened to be driving by River Falls and a couple of people who were in town for a wedding. Then a bunch of those guys got hurt, and the Chiefs added people named Wallace Gilberry and Rocky Boiman and Curtis Gatewood. The season went badly.

And this is not to say that Edwards did a great coaching job — he patently did not. There are no arguments after a 2-14 season. Many of the complaints people have about his game management are perfectly valid. But he did do what the Chiefs asked. He did fight through a season with an understaffed team. He did have his team competitive in numerous games. He did play the rookies and the kids, giving them experience. If Edwards was right about some of these players — if he was right about Branden Albert and Glenn Dorsey and Brandon Flowers and Brandon Carr and some of the other recent picks — then the Chiefs might improve quickly. If he was wrong, well, we’ll find that out quickly, too.

But the point is that he did give his life to the Chiefs the last three years. He did a lot of difficult and unpleasant things to make the Chiefs better. He did not deserve to twist in the wind. Sure, Pioli had to fire him, everyone could see that coming a week and a half ago. That’s why it should have happened a week and a half ago.

Edwards deserved that, at least.