This is only a blog after all. :)

It gets under my skin a little when everythings laid in the lap of one guy (ok, two) while other circumstances are completely ignored, but thats your opinion and you’re entitled to it.

I’m very patient and while most fans have believed we were “one good player away” from being a Super Bowl contending team since Schottenheimer came to town, for about the last 8 or 9 years I have seen that the Chiefs were hopelessly spiraling downward and badly needed to be rebuilt. At the same time, I knew Peterson knew what he was talking about that Chiefs fans couldn’t stomach the horrors of a rebuild.

When Vermeil came to town, I saw it for what it was. An all out push mortgaging the future to win within a couple years. At that time most people were more than willing to take that gamble and enjoyed the run while it lasted, but everyone HAD to know that what we are seeing now was the inevitable result of that. Trading away high draft picks for players with a couple years left in them and then drafting very poorly with the picks they had remaining. It was fun while it lasted, but was NOT a recipe for future success.

I don’t really put much stock into or care that much about Herm as a coach because right now, we don’t need a tactically brilliant head coach (Although that doesn’t mean that if I see someone picking on a guy unjustly about his past record I won’t stand up to it to make sure all the information is accurate). We are a team that is essentially starting over completely from scratch, which is something that I can’t think of a whole lot of teams in the last 20 years having to do, so it doesn’t surprise me a whole lot that they are struggling.

I don’t think that was the plan when Herm came to town, I think he had hoped to ease into it, but circumstances (Willie Roaf and Will Shields retiring, Trent Green getting knocked out and then freaking out about even the possibility of having to compete with a younger guy for a job, Peterson being unable to sign Jared Allen, etc) didn’t allow it.

So you have a guy that is generaly a pretty good motivator that the players like to play for, but probably a pretty average coach inheriting a team that crumbled within a year of his taking over through no fault of his own. There are so many holes on the team that we are stuck playing an undrafted free agent at the most important position on the defense and retreads on the offensive line because they can’t bring in quality guys fast enough.

Personally I can see all the variables that have led up to the Chiefs being this bad and it doesn’t surprise me. It is a result of decisions that were made years before Herm came to town.

Maybe a better coach could get more out of the players we have on the squad now. But there is no guarantee that we would have the quality of players we have begun to collect. Vermeil was a good coach, but a horrible judge of college talent and the same can be said for many coaches in the NFL. So right now, I’m content to keep Herm around to bring talent in. Once the team is stocked with talent if its determined we need a new coach to take that talent to the next level, I have no problem with that.

But just like I’m not willing to give up on Croyle because he played badly when surrounded by a bad team, I’m not giving up on Herm for the exact same reason.