Dunn was still playing at the end of the season. He mght not have been at his best, but he probably would have helped. On CP, that one.

You ignored the fact that C2/T2 is built to /beat the west cost passing O. You ignore that LJ was still a elite RB at the time, and the O-line was supposedly a strrength, and pretend that stating what was obvious to every sportswriter in the country like Herm was giving away some big secret. You also ignore the fact that the team Herm inherited wasn’t good enough to enter the playoffs in a decisive fashion, but backed in. If Herm’d been handed a playoff caliber team, your blaming him for the Indy loss would have merit. He didn’t get one, and he was forced (according to the insider report I mentioned) to try and keep that carrot dangliing so Arrowhead would stay full, and CP could keep those ticket prices high. That Solari’s first year as OC, as well. Herm’s got a piece of that bad move, but I seriously doubt that it was just Herm. When CP wants a guy in place, that’s what happens.

I understand your argument quite well: Good riddance to Carl, bt never cut Herm one millimeter of slack. All failures are his, and his alone. CP didn’t have anything to do with anything, and all suckiness in KC will go away when Herm goes away. (Exaggerated to make a point. How much of an exaggeation, I leave for you to define, if you care to bother.)

WhatI don’t think you understand is my position, so here it is: Herm isn’t a great NFL HC. He may not even be an average HC, but what CP did to him has made him look far worse than he really is.

If Herm had been allowed to start rebuilding from the get-go, and dump a bunch of age (As the insider report indicated he wanted and planned on doing), everyone would have expected a bad first season, but he might have been able to be a little more selective about the older players he was dumping. He might have been able to keep some O-line talent, f’rex. Ergo, the rebuild woudn’t have been quite as drastic, and his season one rebuild might not have been as bad, and likely not the wreck this season was. (Solari would have still been a problem, though, because Herm isn’t networked enough to have a “guy” to bring in at OC, and probably still would have been stuck with him by default). Thing being, that would have been rebuild year 1, and people would have held still for it, and given him some time to work.

What Carl did was steal that grace period. In year 3, Herm /finally/ got his way, and started a rebuild. Finally. And now that it’s going, when things went worse than expected (remember when people were talking 4-12, maybe 6-10, 9-7 at best, at the beginning of the season?), there’s no patience left for Herm, and he’s gotta go.

Now, here are some problems I see in Herm:

1) I think he has real problems evaluating his staff. He went along with Solari, for one. He saddled Gun with the C2./T2 D, and it’s become clear that he wasn’t suited to run it (and if he just can’t cut it at DC, it amounts to the same thing: poor evaluation of coaching personnel).

1A) Herm doesn’t appear to have networked very well. Said it before, but again here: Most HCs come into a new team with a list of people they want to work with them, and they are pretty firm about having some portion of that list on their staff. This is actually a controlling factor which both underlies and overlays point 1, and taken with 1, is a crucial flaw in a HC. It may be a product of point 1 and point 2, coupled with Herm being a nice guy that produces a very bad mindset: Herm, by all acounts is a nice guy, and easy to get along with. This might lead him to believing that because he can get along with ‘most everyone, that he can succeed with ’most anyone. This simply isn’t true in the NFL. In the NFL, it takes the right mix of people, not a group of buddy-buddies who all get along swell.

2) He over-values loyalty. He trusted Carl. Mistake. He may not be able to differentiate from where personal loyalty ends, and Business begins. So yeah, he owns a piece of the hosing he got from CP, just like Kiffin owns a piece of the hosing he got from Davis (Kiffin didn’t get everything in writing, and trusted Al, which allllowed Al to screw him over in various ways).

3) He appears to be lacking in evaluating players, especially on O-line & D-line. Since CP managed to head up the effort to land Tait, maybe Albert was CP’s win., and not Herm’s. OTOH, given CP’s notorious fails on D-line of late (Allen don’t count, being one of those late-round gems, and those are luck as much as anything else), perhaps Dorsey was Herm’s win, or possibly Gun’s, or a scout’s. In the end, we fans don’t really know what goes on in the off-season personell eetings, we can only guess.

4) He doesn’t self-evaluate well, either. It’s a well known fact that Herm has trouble with clock management, game management, and (to a lesser extent in the latter half of this season) challenges. r at least it’s well-known to everyone but Herm. What’s going through his head, I do not know, be it denial, indifference, or out-placing the blame, but that’s not important. What /is/ important is that he hasn’t shown much in the way of improvement in any of those areas over the years, going back to his time with the Jets. Those /are/ learnable thngs, and yet Herm hasn’t learned them, for some reason. But there’s no discernable difference between “can’t” and “won’t”, at his level.
(I regard this to be a more critical item than his history of failures in these areas, which has been done to death, anyway.)

5) Herm’s too devoted to his O & D schemes. Most HCs are known for favoring particular schemes, but the ones who survive adjust those schemes to fit their people. Herm appears to lack the flexibility to bend /before/ the season is wrecked. I still think that our D would have been better if Herm had let Gun re-vamp the scheme at the same time that Chan got to abandon the power-run for the spread. Might have picked up 2-3 more wins that way. Which leads to…

6) Herm places too much emphasis on the season as being “practice”. Yes, you have to play young players in order to develop them. Not being willing to do that was Marty’s great weakness (Joe Horn being a shining example of Marty’s failure in that area, but there are other things, as well. But this is about Herm.) But If he really did plan on treating this season as a giant training camp, he should have had the balls to say it right out: “KC fans, this isn’t a football season. I don’t priomise you win one this year. This whole season will be devoted to traiing the youngsters. This year, We Play to Learn the Game. Period.” While I’d have admired him for taking that stance, and personally strung along with him on it (for this season) (and I pretty much have, which may be why I am slower with the tar & feathers than some ;-). But if he had come out and said that, he may well have been fired on the spot – and with good reason. Fans expect wins, and rightly so.

7) finally, Herm doesn’t manage pre-season well. I don’t mean the games, I mean training camp, and probably OTAs as well. One thing that I won’t blame on CP is that Herm’s teams look sloppy in preseason, and don’t start decisivly. Not here, not over the last 3 seasons. The first 2-3 teams are /not/ when you get your team gelled up and on the same page. It occasionally happens to various teams and various coaches (usually due to circumstances – the Colts because of some problem of Manning’s, this year.). Herm’s teams have started every year disjointed & confused. That cannot be an accident. One team of vets, one team mixed, and one team of rookies. Were it just this year, I’d give him a pass on this point., but not over 3 years.

There you go. Seven serious flaws that can be attributed to Herm, and all good reasons to let him go, and most points sufficient for termination on their own, since they are long-term faults. Perhaps being sent back to the minors, so to speak, would allow hm to learn to correct them.

One more comment to follow

I can see possibilities for keeping him here under a new GM.:

1) The new GM & owner agree he has to go, but the GM only has a limited number of HC options that would be available for 09, and they agree that none would fit well in KC. In this case, Herm’s retained, surrounded with some new assistant talent (preparing for the kind of HC the GM & owner want,probbly a loger list of candidates, maybe accompanied with some phone calls & such.)

2) The new GM wants a college coach to step in. Clark agrees, but points out that college guys who come into the NFL at HC level don’t have a good track record. Again, Herm’s surrounded with new asisstants, including the college guy (in the role of OC or DC, prehaps, with the tag assistant HC), and spends a year understudying Herm before succeeding him. There’s an added benefit to this one: New HC gets to learn the staff & personnel, and probably have a say in the Draft (not control, mind, but influence). Herm would probably hold still for it, because I suspect he views himself as a teacher, at heart, and it would allow him to exit his last year here with something resembling honor, rather than utter disgrace of being booted. Besides, one year under Herm won’t seriously taint NHC in this case. I’ll admit, I rather like this one, if we can’t land an experienced, competent NFL HC along with GM. (one who won’t waste what talent we do have.)

Damn, I had a third, but watching the Cards stomp the Panthers distracted me, and I lost it.

Anyway, I’ve been rather extensie here, so it will be easy to nit-pick me to score points. If that’s what you do, so be it. Personally, I’d rather discuss things, rather than (as some do, but I accuse no one in particular) simply squawk “Herm SUCKS!” followed by text of varying length which are designed to do little more than to justify the poster’s assertion.

Besides, don’t you think this site would be less interesting if the only discussion of Herm was in how badly he sucked, without a few voices of dissent? Me being me, if this site were nothing but a love-fest for him, I’d probably be pointing out drawbacks & flaws for him, instead… ;-)

And a big TY to anyone foolish enough to actually /read/ all my screed. It’s worth every penny you paid me for it. There’s an old saying about opinions…