What If Haley's Paranoia Is True, but for a Reason?

There's always some reason for rumors.

Maybe someone wants to start a rumor to cause problems or gain a strategic edge, or maybe the rumor has some truth to it.

Let's assume, for the moment, that Haley's paranoia about Pioli's excessive security measures are true.

So the question is, why would Pioli do that?

The 1995 season ending.

The 1997 season ending.

The 2003 season ending.

We had what was arguably the best team in the NFL each of those 3 seasons. We lost at Arrowhead each of those seasons.

The 1995 season is the weakest example, perhaps. We lost due to weather and a lousy kicker.

But if 1995 is the weakest, 1997 is the strongest.

Denver beat us in KC. They started the game with vaseline smeared on their O-line's jerseys. They delayed the start of the game to wipe the stuff off, but Denver was not penalized in any way, shape, or form. They barely won, then went on to win the Super Bowl.

Later, it turned out they violated the salary cap rules in their Super Bowl-winning seasons. So if they are willing to cheat the salary cap and try to cheat to give their O-line an advantage, what else are they doing?

I still believe they stole our Super Bowl win. And who knows how many Super Bowls Marty might have won once the monkey was off his back...he would have stayed the course and not gotten desperate and the Monday Night Meltdown would never have happened.

So maybe we were too open then. Maybe the Chiefs were too naive.

2003 is similar. The story is that our defense was too weak to stop anyone. That they figured out the formula to beat us and we just couldn't plug the holes. I also have believed the problem was losing Maz, that he read the other team's offenses and made adjustments that made our defense work, and w/o him we just weren't good enough on defense.

But although it is commonly pointed out that we never made the Colts punt in that game, they never made us punt, either.

But they won. Their offense wasn't as good as ours. Their defense wasn't as good as ours. But they won. What if they had an unfair competitive advantage to make the difference?

Lately, the rumor is that Denny Thum was let go after Pioli went through his archived emails and phone records...

What if Thum leaked information? On purpose or inadvertently, either one, it doesn't matter.

Other people have been let go, too. It is easy to build complete information by getting one piece each from a dozen or more people. No person gives up anything significant...but together you end up with a complete picture.

Is that what has happened in KC in the past? Have we given away games? Seasons?

Think of all the games we should have won that we have inexplicably lost.

Think of all the seasons we ended up just short.

Think of how many times we had a decent team but got totally humiliated in the playoffs.

1995. 1997. 2003. 2006. 2010.

Maybe we were too lax. Maybe someone leaked our game plan in 2006. We weren't *that* bad. We weren't *that* bad in 2010, either. Maybe the Raiders got some inside information, and being our rivals, shared it with the Ravens.

Sure, this is paranoia.

But it makes a lot of inexplicable failures and losses and humiliations much more understandable.

I don't know if I believe any of this, even as I write it.

But what if Pioli *is* obsessed with security, and what if he has a damn good reason to be, because the Chiefs have thrown away 2-3 Super Bowl winning seasons by being too lax about information?