Kansas City Chiefs owner Clark Hunt didn’t give specifics but for the first time he did address the firing of John Dorsey to reporters.
Clark Hunt explained that there were issues that led him to a full evaluation of the football department, which led to Dorsey's dismissal.
— Pete Sweeney (@pgsween) July 24, 2017
"I had concerns about the ability to sustain the success that we had," - Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt on the dismissal of John Dorsey
— Pete Sweeney (@pgsween) July 24, 2017
“John and I haven’t spoken since we parted ways,” Clark said (via 810’s stream). “I should come back to that. What I let John know is that we weren’t going to be extending his contract, really for his benefit and for ours once he knew that he needed to move on.
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“I expect John will have other opportunities in the NFL and this will give him a little bit of a runway to work on making sure he’s in the best position when the hiring cycle comes back around in January. And then also for us we needed to move on at that point. There’s no point in having a lame duck GM going into the season.”
There weren’t a bunch of juicy details, not that we expected there to be. Here are a few other things that Clark told reporters on Monday:
- Clark said there was no one thing that went down with Dorsey. It was an overall evaluation that started earlier in the year.
- Clark says he told Andy Reid on the day it happened he was firing Dorsey. He said that Andy has been around long enough to know the business.
- New GM Brett Veach has the final say over the Chiefs 53-man roster. It’s the same relationship Dorsey had with Reid, Clark said.
- Clark said the Chiefs interviewed several GM candidates to satisfy the Rooney rule.
- Clark on his evaluation: “In the course of that evaluation you learn things that maybe you weren’t aware of a year or two ago that factor into that decision.”
- On whether Dorsey was blindsided: “I don’t know if I would characterize it as catching him by surprise.”
- Clark says he hasn’t talked to Tamba Hali about his tweets. He says it’s best addressed with Andy Reid.
- “The decision was about making the Kansas City Chiefs better.”
- “If we’re going to build a championship team you have to have a personnel department that’s functioning at a very high level.”
- On Chris Ballard: “I’m not going to talk about Chris because he’s the GM for another team. But I will say Chris did a great job during his time with the organization.”