Tradition Tuesday: If You Don't Knowshon's TD Celebration, Ya' Betta Ax Somebody

Is Jamaal Charles doing his own or making fun?

(clip courtesy of Arrowhead Pride)
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Monday Magnificence: A Win for the Ages

I have spent much of the last two years inside this House of Georges being a crabby prick. That's not what I aimed for, initially. Honest. I'm not asking for any pity parties here, but life just ain't that easy when your sports teams seldom give you anything positive about which to write. When your Sunday is miserable, and that bleeds into your Monday, Tuesday, and sometimes Wednesday, and that happens in more weeks than not, you become a very miserable human being. There are two sides to yesterday's 24-27 overtime win against the Steelers at Arrowhead, and they are this: 1) It's important to not get too hyped up about one win. Period. Exclamation point. Etc. 2) As much as I'd like to pipedream about running the table, and stealing a division win, I know that the reality of the optimistic side of things is nothing more than this: That was, regardless of all details, a great win, the best victory this franchise has seen in a long damn time. A quick expansion of that second aspect, after the jump.


In 2006, the Chiefs lost to the Bengals in the home opener, gave a valiant effort in Denver in an overtime loss the following week, destroyed the 49ers in week three, and handled the Cardinals in week four. In the second quarter of the season, they had their Passion-Party embarrassment, defeated the Chargers, Seahawks, and Rams. For the third they dropped games to Miami and Cleveland, but beat the Raiders and Broncos, and in the fourth they lost to Baltimore and San Diego, but downed Oakland and fended off Jacksonville, in that epic New Year's Eve Day where no team has ever needed more help from more teams to get into the post-season, and gotten it.

There were some borderline good wins that season, but there were almost as many games lost that shouldn't have been.

Year two of the Herm Edwards regime went, uh, much worser:

After dropping two to Houston and Chicago, KC beat the Vikings and Chargers to even things up. They then lost to Jacksonville, but beat Cincinnati and Oakland before going on an epic nine-game losing streak, including a sweep at the hands of Denver, and season-concluding losses to the Lions and Edwards' former team in the Jets. All of those losses came after the bye.

The 2008 season is, of course, still fresh in everyone's memories: One home win against Denver, and one road win against the Raiders. Everything else was a loss, and most of them were not even close, save for the pair of San Diego games, which were both decided by a point. For the record, they got destroyed by Atlanta, Carolina, and Buffalo.

Through 10 games this year, the Chiefs have managed to contend in most every game, save the whooping dropped on them by Philadelphia, which was a 20-point loss, that, in my opinion, signified a lesson from Coach Haley for his players. One that can basically be summed up as "I don't care how bleak things look, this team will run the damn football."

Ultimately, it goes without saying that this run of 58 professional football games has been largely terrible. Not only is the number of losses overwhelming, but there aren't really any significant victories in there. You could make an argument for the final game of 2006, the win against Jacksonville that got the Chiefs into the playoffs, but what's the point, if you're just going to get embarrassed the following week to the eventual champions.

Yes, it's always fun to beat Denver, but nine years without a road win against them really takes the fun out of that.

So there's yesterday's game. Yesterday's overtime victory against the defending champions is, in my opinion, the most important win this club has earned in 58 tries. It's possible that we can look at the 2005 season, and make the stretch even longer, but that was a 10-6 season, so there's at least some positive in that fact alone.

Fifty-eight games, though. Fifty-eight games to get one significant win. I don't care who you are, that's darn brutal right there. Feels great to write about a win that means something, even if that something is on a scale smaller than winning Super Bowls.

(photo courtesy of The Kansas City Star)
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Monday Mystification: The Ugly, The Fugly, and the Chris Fuamatu-Ma'alafugly

When attempting to tackle a problem of this magnitude, the angle, the focus, the crux all slip in and out of visibility, like tailbacks in the seams of lines. Yesterday at Arrowhead Stadium, the Kansas City Chiefs had more points scored on them than in any other game in franchise history. There are more parcels of what's wrong with this team than there are gifts under a Mission Hills Christmas tree, but considering that this football club has been around for almost half a century, that simply has to be the beacon in this bog of murk. Both columnists from The Kansas City Star brought up a few good points in today's paper and we'll touch on those later. This drubbing, however, that occurred at the hands of the still-last-place Buffalo Bills yesterday, is a symbol of the gaspingly ugly Kansas City Chiefs of the Herman Edwards era.

To put what this team is or isn't doing into perspective, let's have a look at all 10 head coaches in Kansas City Chiefs history.

1) Hank Stram began as an assistant football coach at Purdue, then held the same positions with Notre Dame, SMU, and Miami. To begin his pro coaching career, he won three AFL championships, 87 contests, had six post-season appearances (with a 5-1 record), all of which will forever be AFL bests. In the NFL, he had two Super Bowl appearances, won one of them, and posted a 131-97 regular-season, a 5-3 post-season, and a 136-100 overall record, netting a winning percentage of .576.

2) Paul Wiggin was his replacement. Prior to becoming the Chiefs second head coach, he was an assistant on the San Francisco 49ers staff. He went 11-24 in less than three years with KC, a .314 percentage of games won attached to his tenure.

3) Tom Bettis, as interim coach, went 1-6, a meager .143. In hindsight, neither were good replacements for Stram.

4) Marv Levy was assistant football coach at Coe College, head coach of the University of New Mexico, Cal, and William & Mary, before becoming the coach of the kicking team of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1969. The following year he was the special teams coach of the L.A. Rams, followed by a head coaching stint in the CFL, which lasted five seasons, and earned his team three Grey Cup appearances and two championships. His runs as head coach in Kansas City and Buffalo combined yielded a 112-70 regular-season, an 11-8 post-season, and a 143-112 overal record, for a winning percentage of .561 and four AFC championships.

5) John Mackovic was the offensive coordinator at San Jose State and at the University of Arizona, then assistant head coach at Purdue. Next he was the head coach at Wake Forest, then the assistant head coach for the Dallas Cowboys before a brief stand as head coach of the Chiefs. Since leaving the NFL, he has returned to coaching in college, where he has a 94-78-3 overall record. His pro record, however was 30-34, a winning percentage of .469.

6) Frank Gansz replaced him and went 8-22-1 in two campaigns with the Chiefs. He had previously been the Chiefs special teams coach. His record produced a .258 winning percentage.

7) Marty Schottenheimer came next. He was a linebackers coach with the Giants and later defensive coordinator. With the Lions, he was also a linebackers coach before becoming the defensive coordinator for the Cleveland Browns. In 1984, he became their head coach, and later coached Kansas City, Washington, and San Diego. His regular-season record is 200-126-1, while going 5-13 in the post-season, making his total 205-139-1, garnering him a .594.

8) Gunther Cunningham replaced him. Prior to his promotion, he was an assistant coach with the Raiders and the Chiefs' defensive coordinator. In two seasons as head coach, he went 16-16 for a .500.

9) Next came Dick Vermeil. He was head coach at Stanford, special teams coach with the L.A. Rams in '69 (replaced of course by Levy) for one season, as he accepted an assistant-coach position with UCLA, but then went back to the Rams until '74. Then he went back to UCLA, where in two seasons, he went 15-5-3, won a conference championship, and a Rose Bowl. His next return to the pros was as head coach of the Eagles, then the St. Louis Rams, and finally the Chiefs. In total he went 126-114, boasting two Super Bowl appearances with two different teams, one of which he won. His winning percentage checks in at a cool .525.

10) Finally, Herm Edwards. Edwards was a defensive assistant at San Jose State, then a scout and defensive backs coach with the Chiefs. Next came another defensive backs/assistant head coach job with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Despite never having previously held a head coach or a coordinator position, the New York Jets hired him in 2001. As head coach of the Jets and Chiefs combined, he has gone 53-70, and 2-4 in the post-season, and 55-74 overall, which earns him a .426.

Now, let's look at those winning percentages from best to worst:

1) Marty Schottenheimer: .594
2) Hank Stram: .576
3) Marv Levy: .561
4) Dick Vermeil: .525
5) Gunther Cunningham: .500
6) John Mackovic: .469
7) Herm Edwards: .426
8) Paul Wiggin: .314
9) Frank Gansz: .258
10) Tom Bettis: .143

Of course each tenure is unique. Some have had greater successes than others; some have been short-lived. But, if we take this set of hard numbers, we ascertain that Herman Edwards doesn't even make it in to the top two-thirds of the winningest head coaches in Chiefs history; he is only better than the the three coaches who were in office on a short-term basis. Wiggin was not given three full seasons. Gansz served one full season and one strike-shortened season and saw his tenure come to an end with the end of Jack Steadman's run as general manager/president of the organization. Tom Bettis was not even given half a season. The man on the list above Edwards never went on to coach in the pros again, but managed to put together a better percentage than Edwards, and a .546 as a collegiate head coach. As it stands today, Gunther Cunningham won more football games as Chiefs head coach in two seasons, than Edwards has in three.

Now, there are various positions of the football team to analyze, but in strictly playing-to-win-the-game discussions, Edwards lands at spot seven of 10 in the books, a spot that clearly lends itself to not winning the game very often.
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