Clark Hunt's statement in response to the NFL's tampering allegations and punishment included a strong suggestion that the Kansas City Chiefs would be appealing the charges. According to Terez Paylor of the KC Star from the NFL owners meetings in Florida, Clark Hunt has confirmed that, indeed, the team has appealed the NFL's tampering charges. There are a few Clark quotes at that link.
Hunt's statement was pretty clear that they intended to appeal but many of you have asked in recent days whether that appeal actually went through. Now we have an on the record confirmation from Hunt that the appeal process has started.
So what's the timeline here? Considering the NFL has docked the Chiefs a third round pick in this year's draft, it sure would be nice to hear about this before the start of the April 28 draft. Considering the NFL didn't warn other teams of tampering until after free agency had started this year, we really have no idea what kind of timeline the NFL is on. They could announce a decision next week ... or next year.
The whole point here is the NFL's inconsistency. The Chiefs aren't arguing whether or not they're guilty. Absent a claim of innocence, I think we're all accepting that the Chiefs broke some rules here. What the Chiefs are appealing is the insane punishment levied on them from the league - a third round pick in 2016, sixth round pick in 2017 and fines to the organization, Andy Reid and John Dorsey. That third round pick seems especially difficult to justify given the punishments other teams have gotten for tampering.
With a few recent NFL investigations, it's becoming clear that the NFL doesn't really know what they're doing when it comes to the enforcement of their rules. Their recent behavior shows that, instead of telling a team to stop breaking the rules, they like to nail one team with their hand in the cookie jar and then impose ridiculous punishments on them as a message to other teams. This is patently unfair to the team that the league decided to punish, in this case the Chiefs.