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One of the things Kansas City Chiefs head coach Todd Haley talks about a lot is "mental toughness" with his team. It's one of those things that's not easily defined (which means you can tweak it to mean whatever you want) but I think I know what Haley's been getting at.
It's like the start of the season, going 0-3. If the Chiefs didn't have some sort of mental toughness, I don't think they'd rebound and win three straight games. In that sense, I think Haley has started to accomplish his goal of having a mentally tough team.
Jason Cole of Yahoo! Sports has a story out today and writes about this very topic. Specifically, he says that the San Diego Chargers, and head coach Norv Turner, aren't a mentally tough team.
"I love 90, maybe even 95 percent of what Norv does," one of Turner's former quarterbacks said on Monday. "But when the pressure is on and something goes wrong, it totally sticks in his mind and distracts him. He won't say it out loud, but he completely loses track sometimes of what he's supposed to do next."
This is a reason why starting fast is going to be important for the Chiefs, like they did last year against San Diego getting a 21-7 first half lead. Get the Chargers out of sorts, make them change their game plan and watch Norv work his (lack of) magic.