It was a rough year to be a Kansas City Chiefs coach, fan and player for a lot of reasons. For one player in particular things got rough early on. In Week 5 against the Baltimore Ravens, Matt Cassel took a hard hit, going to the ground. Some fans cheered. We all know what happened after that -- Eric Winston said this and everyone freaked out.
Winston talked with Danny Parkins and Carrington Harrison on 610 Sports this week and said he and some of the Chiefs fans "might have gotten off on the wrong foot."
"You know, it is what it is," Winston said. "It was a situation obviously where I felt I needed to speak up and say what I needed to say and that's it. I've never been one to hold grudges in the past and I'm not going to in the future. Some people didn't like what I had to say and some people really like what I had to say. It is what it is."
I really don't want to re-live that week. Do you? OK, let's move on to a few other things he said on the 610 Sports interview, which you can listen to here.
- On hiring Andy Reid: "I don't think you can win as many games as he has in this league by accident or just having good guys. I think you have to be a heck of a coach to do that. You can have all the talent in the world but if the coaching isn't there I don't think you can win those kinds of games. He's obviously done it in this league for a long time.
- Winston calls Reid an "offensive-minded guy."
- The best response to whether Romeo got a fair shake: "It matters what the scoreboard says."
- He has nothing but positives to say about his relationship with Scott Pioli. "I've been in this league long enough to know that new coaches and new regimes want their players."
- Does he have any regrets about the last year? "I really don't," Winston said. "I was talking to my high school coach recently, and I told him I learned a lot this year. Some good, some bad. I learned a lot. Just from a football standpoint on what I think are things that should be done and ways to do things and sometimes you're around the same kind of approach and you don't get to see other approaches. I saw things I really liked this year and I saw things maybe I didn't really like. But I'm not going to go into that too much because at the end of the day I'm a player."
- Outside of the Carolina game, Winston never thought the Chiefs offense got into a rhythm. Even in the Saints game, they only scored six points in the first half.