At one point in Sunday's game against the Denver Broncos, Kansas City Chiefs RT Barry Richardson racked up two penalties in one drive which ultimately caused the Chiefs to yank him from the game in favor of RT Ryan O'Callaghan. We all know Richardson's response by now (video of it here). He was upset and ended up pushing special teams coach Steve Hoffman on the sidelines.
After the offense got off the field on that drive, Todd Haley sat down next to Richardson on the bench presumably to talk to him about what happened as multiple players came up to give Richardson a pat on the back as if to say it's going to be OK.
Asked about it after the game, Haley went in a different direction choosing to call Richardson a "prideful guy" instead of lambasting him for pushing an assistant coach.
"I think that what you’re seeing out of our guys, and what’s exciting to me as the head coach, is we have a lot of guys that really care. We had the penalty in the red and I think Coach Muir and our offensive staff just wanted to calm him down a bit and let him re-group. He’s a prideful guy that didn’t want to be out and was upset at himself and that’s a good thing."
A strange response, no? I remember watching a recent Bill Parcells documentary and one of the folks interviewed said that Parcells will tell you it's not good enough when you're doing well and he'll show some compassion when things aren't going well. Maybe that's what we're seeing here.
On Monday, Haley said any punishment with Richardson would fall under the "family business" umbrella.
That's going to fall under the family business area. Like I said yesterday, I was unaware of the complete situation yesterday but I will say that we've got a lot of guys that really, really care and it means a lot. They're being pushed hard every day, developing, getting better and Barry's been just a model citizen. He's bought in and he's one of those young, developing guys that's done so much for us. That's family business and we'll do the right thing there. I don't have a problem with passion and emotion, just within reason."
I'm not sure what "do the right thing" means. Does that mean a fine? No fine? Any punishment? Asked again about the incident, Haley declined to get into anymore details.
My take out of that is that there will be some sort of punishment because, clearly, you can't push an assistant coach. There's no reason for Haley to publicly embarrass the guy. What'sinteresting about this whole incident is who is happened with -- Richardson is one of the calmest, quietest guys on the roster as far as I can tell.
I suspect we won't be hearing one way or the other whether Richardson was punished unless it comes in the form of a suspension (which seems unlikely).
(H/T MissionJayhawk)