This is an excellent synopsis of Carl Peterson’s complex career with the Chiefs organization. For me, he will be remembered as the guy who revived a struggling franchise and brought excitement in the names of Joe Montana, Marcus Allen and Dick Vermeil. In more recent years, however, Carl Peterson has created frustration as he seemed to become increasingly stubborn about free agency. His reliance on “personal connections” , rather than selecting the best possible candidate, to make hiring/drafting decisions exacerbated fan distrust. My only hope is that his successor can improve the proud Kansas City Chiefs tradition.

Then, something happened during Schottenheimer’s final season. Peterson apparently lost his touch to produce playoff teams.

The thing that cost Peterson the ability to build playoff teams was pretty much the loss of Marty Schottenheimer. Go look at the history of the Chiefs’ draft picks throughout Peterson’s tenure. His bust rate was pretty much the same with Marty as without. The big difference was that the coaches he hired after Marty weren’t able to do more with less like Marty was.

I appreciate that Peterson did a lot of good things for the Chiefs (kept them financially stable, kept them heavily involved in local charity work, kept fan interest high) but I’ve come to the conclusion after looking it all over that the only reason Peterson did as well as he did in the first half of his career was that he hired an outstanding coach who could overcome Peterson’s shaky ability to judge talent.

everywhere but the playoffs, lest we forget

the red plether shirt that Carl is wearing in that photo =)

I need to defend the man a bit. Sure he once damn near ran me over on the Plaza in his lil’ bitch Merc. But the one time I felt I was treated rudely while at Camarohead he handled the situation like a pro. I wrote him, identified myself as a 20 year season ticket holder, and told him I felt that a member of his staff had soured our otherwise remarkable experience. Carl responded immediately and personally, letting me know that the situation was being looked into and apologizing for the inconvenience. Carl knew who his customers were and knew how they should be treated. Cheers to that.

A good friend of mine whose dad owns a large construction company in KC (read:he’s loaded) was at a “western” style fundraiser out in southern Johnson County (some charity). My friend said he was talking to some guy wearing some really interesting western attire, in fact it looked as though it was taken out of the 60’s or something. Extremely tacky with giant bucket shaped cowboy hat. So my buddy proceeds to chide this fellow a little bit about what he is wearing. Everybody around the conversation was chuckling and according to my buddy “he was on a role”. Anyway the wannabe cowboy strolled off a little flustered and some people began giving my buddy a hard time about how he was kind of rough on the old man. About this time Brodie and Herm walk in together and start chatting with the cowboy….just as my buddy is watching that happen his friend turns and says, “I can’t believe you were making fun of Carl Peterson’s outfit, did you even introduce yourself??”. He had NO IDEA who he was talking to. At least Carl didn’t wear a black leather trench coat.

Bono in the background with the caption just makes this post by the way…he had a better record than Brodie, Damon and Thigpen put together…