The ability to consistently draft well is one of the keys to building a good football team. Peterson’s teams struggled largely because he couldn’t do that.

Especially when considering the Chiefs have always relied heavily on veterans and free agents throughout the Peterson era.

Those are part of player evaluation as well. It wasn’t just drafting that was a problem for Peterson’s front office…it was evaluating talent altogether, as well as determining a good price to pay for that talent. They’d find some steals like Priest Holmes, Joe Phillips and Dan Saleamua but they had way too many guys like Kendrell Bell, Priest Holmes (at age 31), Larry Johnson (with his contract extension), Dan Williams, Chester McGlockton, Donnie Edwards, Napoleon Harris, etc.

Petersons draft record is not outstanding, but neither was it the worst in the league either.

Never claimed it was. I think Matt Millen laid claim to that mantle pretty convincingly.

The Chiefs had many Pro Bowlers during the Peterson years, whether drafted or brought in via free agency, Peterson was responsible for bringing the majority to KC.

Pretty much every team in the league’s had Pro Bowlers on their roster. Even teams like the Lions and Cardinals. It’s how well the talent evaluators do overall that matters, not how well they do on just the best players they find.

In his first 12 years KC had a record of 117-74-1, a winning % of .610 and went to the playoffs 7 times and won the division many times.

And how many playoff games did those teams win in 12 years?

Yes, most of that was done during the Schottenheimer years, but Carl is the one that brought Marty and they worked well together.

And if Carl had left with Marty we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion and we’d all be saying that Peterson did a pretty good job with the team, and I’d be right on board with that. But he didn’t…he overstayed by a long stretch and left the team in pretty much the same condition he found it.

But most importantly, Carl Peterson is the man almost solely responsible for the fact that we even care about the Chiefs in Kansas City, because not very many did before he arrived.

I think that’s giving Chiefs fans too little credit and Peterson too much credit. Fans just want to see a successful football team…they don’t really care that much about the sales pitch. They went to see the Chiefs because the Chiefs with Marty and Carl won a lot of games…a lot more than they lost. The reason they don’t go now is that it’s been a long time since the Chiefs won like that. In fact, I’d say it’s more a credit to the fans than Peterson that they’ve stuck around as long as they have considering the team’s performance for the last decade. Peterson made some good changes, but he’s hardly been the savior of Chiefs football…that was more about Schottenheimer (as the record bears out). Peterson was just a GM with questionable skills at evaluating personnel who made a really great hire on his first head coach, had plenty of success for the first decade, then lived off that reputation well past the point where he was actually helping the team. I appreciate what he did here in the ’90s, but Peterson deserved to get fired a long time ago.

What’s on second and I don’t know’s on third.

But I think I could go the remainder of my lifetime without mentioning our Former GM by name. Honestly its something I would love to forget!!
LOOK TO THE FUTURE!!!!!! THE TIME IS NEAR!!!!!!!!! A NEW CHIEFS ERA!!!!!!!!!!! BRING IT ON!!!!!!!

He is a good man and I wish him the best, just not against the Chiefs!