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2006

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS BEST OF

MEDIA CLIPS

These media clips provide an overview of the Chiefs 2006 season. For a more extensive selection please see www.chiefsmedia.com.

Posted on Sun, Aug. 27, 2006

Herm’s journey

The cocky kid who dreamed of escaping his hometown did it by talking — and playing — a good game.

By JOE POSNANSKI The Kansas City Star

PHOTOS BY DAVID EULITT | THE KANSAS CITY STAR

Herm Edwards gets back home only about once a year these days, but memorabilia from his NFL career still covers the living room walls. Mother Martha Edwards shows off two oil paintings of Herm during his playing days in the secondary with the Philadelphia Eagles. The painting in her hands is of Edwards breaking up a pass to 49ers great Jerry Rice. “One of the few I didn’t catch,” Rice wrote next to his signature.

When the Edwards family first moved to this house in Seaside, neighbors tried to force them to leave. Herm has offered to buy his mother a new home, but after more than 40 years here, she wouldn’t be anywhere else.

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SEASIDE, Calif. | Follow closely because the story moves fast, fast and furious, a bit like Herman Edwards driving his Land Rover through Seaside, his hometown. He takes the turns hard, drifts through the stop signs, and when the Land Rover reaches the hills, he mashes his right foot down, and the car surges upward fast enough to make your ears pop. Herm is getting out of Seaside fast. It’s been that way all his life.

“I knew I had to get out of here,” he says.

That one thought — get out — filled his days and nights.

All the kids in Seaside watched television, of course, but they watched for laughs and thrills. For Herm Edwards, television was an instructional video. He watched the way cowboys walked, the way football players hit, the way rebels talked. He mostly watched Muhammad Ali, the heavyweight champion of the world. Herm copied the way Ali preached, the way he rhymed, the way he smiled, the way he mugged for the camera, the way he opened his mouth wide just before telling Howard Cosell that he was the greatest of all time. Herm copied everything except for the punching.

See, it wasn’t the violence that captivated Herman Edwards. It was the escape.

“I had to be famous, too,” Herman Edwards says. “I had to travel the world. I told everybody, ‘You watch, that’s going tobe me on television. You watch. I’m going to be like Muhammad Ali.’ They laughed at me. But I knew. I knew. I was going places.”

Then, Edwards points out the window at deer that rush by. He says: “Look at that! Beautiful! You have to slow down to enjoy the scenery sometimes.” The needle on the speedometer points to 85 mph.

•••

KANSAS CITY | Herman Edwards, first-year head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, screams in the rain. Nobody else seems to know exactly why the Chiefs are practicing in the rain. Players slip and slosh in the mud. Coaches try to look stern while water drips from their caps. It’s May. It’s minicamp. Real football will not begin for four months.

Edwards screams that this is football weather. It would be a sin to go inside on a day like this, he shouts. A sin! Edwards has been often compared to a preacher, and not always as a compliment. A couple of months earlier, people in Kansas City voted down a resolution to build a rolling roof to cover Arrowhead Stadium. The reasons were complicated, but simple too — nobody really wants indoor football.

“You’re not getting a roof, boys,” Herm Edwards yells at the players in the rain. “No, sir. No roof. You’re going to have to play the game outdoors, the way God intended. You’re going to have to play in the rain and the snow and the wind. You better get ready for it, because there are no excuses in football. No excuses!”

•••

MONTEREY, Calif. | The bus ride from Seaside to Monterey was 20 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes — longer still on the way home — and young Herm Edwards stared out the window of the school bus every day. He called the bus his 52-passenger limo. He stared out the window and watched the houses grow larger and farther apart, watched the cars grow

DAVID EULITT | THE KANSAS CITY STAR

Chiefs coach Herm Edwards took time to sign autographs for kids who participated in his football camp this summer in Seaside, Calif. Edwards returns to the town where he grew up once a year to put on a free camp.



longer and shinier. Even the Pacific Ocean seemed bluer in Monterey.

Herm wore an afro then that would rise 12 inches above his eyes, and he talked back to anyone who wasn’t his father. It was the 1960s. You bucked authority. Like Ali did. Herm talked back especially to his high school football coach. Why are we running this drill? Why do we have to do that? The first time Monterey High coach Dan Albert noticed Edwards, it was because Herm was in the back of the room bragging to everyone how he was going to make the varsity. He was a skinny 10th-grade receiver then.

“What’s your name?” Albert said with all the harshness he could muster.

And Herm Edwards said: “Call me Mr. Bob.” This was after Bullet Bob Hayes, the fastest receiver in the NFL and Herm’s football hero. He took Bullet Bob’s number, 22, and he told Dan Albert to get ready because he was going to catch more passes than anyone who ever lived in Monterey.

Albert smiled. He was charmed by the kid. But there was something Herm didn’t realize: Monterey didn’t throw the ball. Albert didn’t care for the forward pass — he figured only three things could happen when you threw the ball, and he didn’t much like any of them. Young Herm Edwards constantly jabbered about wanting more passes, let’s throw the ball, are we gonna throw the ball, why don’t we throw the ball more, Coach?

“We play the game to win,” Albert told young Herm, who stewed and complained and finally determined that if he couldn’t catch the ball on offense, he would get his thrills on defense. In three years, he intercepted 48 balls — 22 in one season — which is absurd if you think about it. Dan Albert, now the mayor of Monterey, remembers that whenever an opposing quarterback dropped back to throw, the Monterey offensive guys would stir on the sideline and start putting on their helmets.

“It was amazing,” Edwards says as he looks at his old high school. “I mean, I don’t want to brag, but any time somebodythrew a pass — any time — I was there to pick it off. I mean every time. I would read the quarterback’s eyes or I would jump a receiver’s route. But sometimes, man, this is hard to explain … sometimes, I could just sense where the ball was going. I could see the play before it happened. I can’t explain it. I just had to get the ball. That ball was my ticket out.”

•••

RIVER FALLS, Wis. | Herman Edwards likes cocky rookies. He can’t help it. All young players at camp drown: The game moves too fast, the playbook is thicker than Will Shakespeare’s collected works, the coaches throw out more conflicting ideas than a weekend getaway at James Carville and Mary Matalin’s house. Nobody keeps up, not at first. Some players go into a shell. Edwards likes the ones who talk loud and brash.

“You gotta believe in yourself,” he says. “That was something I learned a long time ago. There were always people tellingme I couldn’t do something. Always. I had to decide for myself that they were wrong, I was right, and that’s not as easy as it sounds.”

Herm showed up for training camp in Philadelphia in 1977. He was not drafted, even though the NFL draft went 12 rounds then. Edwards had played for three colleges — he transferred out of Cal twice — and though he led all three schools in interceptions, pro scouts noticed something: He would not show up to be timed.

“I never believed in stopwatches,” Herm says with a wink. There was a reason he didn’t want to be timed. Carl Peterson, then a coach for the Eagles, had known Edwards since high school and got him to run the 40-yard dash for the clock. Then Peterson couldn’t get him to stop.

“What was that?” Edwards asked Peterson.

“I got you at 4.62.”

“Let me run it again.”

“You’ve run it three times. That’s your time, Herm.”

“I’m faster than that.”

He was not faster than that. But he knew: A cornerback who runs the 40 in 4.62 might as well get a day job. So he avoided the stopwatches. Eagles coach Dick Vermeil would not draft him, but he did invite Edwards to camp. Herm Edwards announced his presence.



“I came here to start at cornerback, Coach,” Edwards remembers telling Vermeil. “I didn’t come here to play special teams. If you’re not going to start me, you need to cut me.”

Peterson does not remember Edwards being quite that brassy, but he does recall Edwards telling the coaches that he expected to start, which was a ridiculous thing for a slow, undrafted, three-time-college transfer to say.

“I don’t know that I’ve ever been around a player who was so sure,” Peterson says.

“I wasn’t that sure,” Edwards says. “But man, I could talk.”

Edwards did start his first game. He started every game for 10 years after that. He was slow — and he got beat some — but he also picked off 33 passes, third-most in Philadelphia Eagles history. And he was in the right place for the Miracle at the Meadowlands, when he returned a fumble for a touchdown in the final seconds and beat the Giants. It’s one of the most famous plays in NFL history.

“What would you do if some undrafted player told you to start him or cut him?” Edwards is asked. He smiles.

“I’d say, ‘Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be,’ ” Edwards says. “Then I’d watch him close. I love it when they talk. But they better back it up. Because if they don’t back it up, I’ll run them out of here so fast their heads will spin.”

•••

NEW YORK | People all around professional football don’t appreciate just how consistently bad the New York Jets have been through the years. Since 1970, the Jets have won their division exactly twice. They have had 11 seasons in that time with four wins or fewer. Even the dreadful St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals can’t match that.

Here in New York, where the memory of Joe Namath waving his index finger after Super Bowl III still resonates, you would find it hard to convince people that Herman Edwards coached more Jets playoff games than any other coach in team history.

He did. Then, maybe people in New York didn’t like the way Herm Edwards’ Jets reached the playoffs. Boring. Scary. They made the playoffs the first time in 2001 by beating Oakland on a long field goal. They made it the second time afterstarting the season 1-4.

And then the third time, oh man, everybody still remembers that 2004 team. Edwards pulled out Dan Albert’s old playbook. The Jets threw the ball fewer than any team except the Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers and Jets then met in the playoffs for a game so conservative, the players should have worn ties and cuff links. The score was tied late, and the Jets had two glorious chances to win. But Herm refused to throw, the Jets settled for two long field-goal attempts, and Doug Brien missed them both.

Pittsburgh won in overtime, and all over the city people cursed Edwards because nothing feels worse in pro football, absolutely nothing, than losing because of conservative coaching.

“I don’t think Herm ever got the credit he deserved in this town,” former Jets general manager Terry Bradway says. “He won games. He won playoff games. The only years he didn’t win, it was because our quarterback got hurt. Say what you want: Herm knew how to win games.”

The question: How did a bold, mouthy kid who patterned himself after Muhammad Ali and Bullet Bob Hayes turn into Captain Conservative? When he played ball at San Diego State, they called him “Herm the Germ” and “Bat News Edwards,” and he never shut up, never. He put Vaseline on his shoes so they sparkled under the lights. He would get into receivers’ grills and say to them, “You’re going to beat me? How are you going to do that when I’m the best corner on the planet?” This is the man having his quarterback take a knee late in the game?

Maybe it comes back to his father, Herman Edwards Sr., an army man, a yes-sir-no-sir man, the biggest force in young Herm’s life. He worked long hours, traveled often and died young, so his words pulsate through Herm Edwards’ mind. Sweep the corners. Don’t look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up. Don’t worry about garbage in other people’s yards. Do the right thing when nobody’s watching. These were the things that made sense to Edwards when he became head football coach in America’s biggest city.

And there it occurred to Herm Edwards that maybe he wasn’t really a rebel.

“Did your team quit?” a New York reporter asked him during the 2002 season. Edwards snapped.



“This is what the greatest thing about sports is: You play to win the game,” he shouted. “Hello? YOU PLAY TO WIN THE GAME!”

•••

RIVER FALLS, Wis. | Cornerback Ty Law has decided it’s time to wind up Herman Edwards. Why not? It’s training camp. The Chiefs are smack in the middle of the aching two-a-day monotony. “Hey, Coach,” Law says, “Why didn’t you work out today?”

“What are you talking about?” Edwards asks.

“I heard you didn’t work out today.”

Herm Edwards’s early-morning workouts are no joking matter. He gets to the weight room at 4 a.m., no later than 5, and he puts in his hour of work come rain, come shine, come blizzard, come tornado. Once, when he coached the Jets, they changed the number combination on the gates without telling him. Edwards stewed in his car for a few minutes and then, well, he climbed the fence. He wasn’t missing his workout.

“I was here at 5 a.m. working out,” Edwards says. Law shakes his head.

“That’s not what I heard,” Law says. He can barely stifle a smile. He knows it’s coming. And then, it comes.

“Is that right?” Herm asks. “That’s not what you heard, huh? NOT WHAT YOU HEARD? Well, it just so happens I was hereat 5 a.m., working out, while you were sitting in your little bed. Hear me? I was in here, working, while you were in your LITTLE BED, clutching your LITTLE SHEETS, holding your TEDDY BEAR, dreaming about whatever it is you DREAM about, and hey (he yells to a coach), what time was I in here this morning? Huh? Tell this fool right here, WHAT TIME was I … that’s right, 5 a.m., while you were sleeping in DREAMLAND, while you were …”

He goes on for a while longer, and Ty Law laughs and laughs.

•••

KANSAS CITY | A man walks up to Herman Edwards and asks him if he’s going to scale back the offense. In four years, the Chiefs have scored more points than any other team in the NFL. In those four years, they made the playoffs once, and lost that game.

“I’m not stupid,” Edwards says. “I’m not going to fool with what works.”

“So the offense will stay the same?”

“I’m not stupid,” Edwards says. “Let me ask you something: How many Super Bowls did that offense win? Zero. Right? Zero. We’re going to be a team. We don’t have an offense and a defense. You have to get used to that. We have a team.”

•••

RIVER FALLS, Wis. | Herman Edwards runs over and personally leads the Chiefs defense through the two-deep defensive drills … he loves the two-deep defense. He calls it the simplest defense on earth. That’s the defense he coached with Tony Dungy in Tampa Bay. When it was right, whew, nobody moved the ball, defensive tackles plowed over guards, linebackers crushed running backs, defensive ends blindsided quarterbacks, safeties picked off passes and broke receivers in two.

Then again, when the two-deep isn’t right, quarterbacks pick it clean.

“Watch my head, you hear me, watch my head,” Edwards yells as he drops back to throw. It’s the quarterback’s head that tells defensive players where they’re supposed to be. Of course, some quarterbacks purposely look the wrong way to fool defenders, and some defenders purposely go to the wrong place to bait quarterbacks — that’s the game within the game — but for now he just wants them to get the basics.

“Watch my eyes,” he shouts. “Simplest defense in the world, you hear?”



© 2006 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved. http://www.kansascity.com

The drill ends as quickly as it begins. Drills move fast in River Falls. Practices go 90 minutes except when they go just 75 minutes. Classroom sessions, by Herm decree, are not allowed to go more than 20 minutes at a time. Scrimmages move; the faster the team runs the plays, the quicker the scrimmages end. Dick Vermeil’s practices were 15-round heavyweight fights with plenty of body punches. Edwards’ practices are Oliver Stone movies — a blur of shouts, thuds, air horns and then it’s over.

“I was a player,” Edwards says. “I know what these guys want. I know what they need. I’m not trying to make robots. I’m making football players. I want guys who, when they get on the field, will play football, they will do what the situation demands, they will rise to the occasion. Because once the game starts, I can’t do it for them. I can’t control them like some video game. I need them to play. That’s the kind of practices we run.”

•••

SEASIDE, Calif. | Herman Edwards sits in his mother’s living room, and he’s surrounded by … Herman Edwards. Here’s a photograph of Herm and Chad Pennington standing in front of the New York skyline. There’s a painting of Edwards breaking up a pass intended for Jerry Rice (signed by Rice with the inscription: “One of the few I didn’t catch”). There are two different Herman Edwards bobblehead dolls, there’s Herm on the cover of Sports Illustrated as one of sports’ most influential minorities, there’s another painting of Edwards in his playing days.

“What do you think of my Buby?” Edwards’ mother, Martha, asks. Her Buby — her German term of affection for Herm — has tried to buy a new house for Martha, but she wouldn’t hear of leaving this house. It was the first house she and Herman Sr. ever bought. That was 1961. At the time, the neighbors sent a petition demanding the house be sold to someone else. They did not want a black Army man and a white German woman living on their street. In time, the neighbors softened, and in more time they all moved on or died. Martha is the only one left. She won’t leave. Herman Sr.gave his son discipline. Martha gave him passion.

So Herm returns at least once a year. He puts on a free football camp. He visits old friends. And, mostly, he drives. After a moment or two in the living room shrine, Herm Edwards bolts to his feet. He says, “Let’s go.”

“Where you going, Buby?”

“There’s something I need to do.”

Herm gets in the car, and he drives fast and furious through Seaside. He talks about how beautiful it is there next to the ocean, but he does not slow down to look. He talks about how crazy it is, him becoming a football coach.

“You should have seen me when I was young,” he says. “I was the craziest kid you ever saw. I’d say stuff you wouldn’t believe. I told them all I’d make it big. I wonder how I knew.”

He smiles and seems to relax as his Land Rover rushes up the hills, into the sunset. The funny thing is, he isn’t going anywhere. He doesn’t really have anything to do, except get away.

To reach Joe Posnanski, call (816) 234-4361 or send e-mail to [email protected].



Pardon Chiefs coach if he doesn't panic over QB's injury

Sep. 12, 2006

By Clark Judge CBS SportsLine.com Senior Writer Tell Clark your opinion!

So Kansas City quarterback Trent Green is sidelined with a concussion, and nobody's certain when he'll return. You think that's going to rattle new coach Herman Edwards?

Please.

Edwards has been down this road too many times. In fact, in six years as a head coach he has become an expert on playing without his starting quarterback. He did it last year. And the year before that. And the year before that.

"You know what's ironic?" he asked Tuesday. "The first year I was with the Jets (2001) was the only year I had one quarterback play all 16 games."

You can look it up. In 2001 he went to the playoffs with Vinny Testaverde as his starter. The following year, New York returned to postseason play with Chad Pennington, who supplanted Vinny after four games. In 2003, Pennington was hurt in the third preseason game and missed seven starts. The following year he missed three, but the Jets made it the playoffs anyway. Then, last year Pennington and what seemed like half the Jets roster bowed out with injuries.

"I got it all," said Edwards.

That's not necessarily bad. In fact, it can be constructive considering what Edwards is up against now. And, let's face it, it's not good. It never is when you lose your opening game and starting quarterback at the same time.

But I remember Edwards backed into a corner in 2003 when he lost Pennington with a broken left wrist suffered in a meaningless preseason game with the Giants. The coach was supposed to panic. He did not, and the Jets finished 6-10 -- losing

six games where the margin in each was no more than seven points.

OK, so they didn't make the playoffs, but that experience benefited Edwards when he lost Pennington again in 2004 and won two of three games with Quincy Carter. And the experience should benefit him now.

"It gives me an advantage because I've been there," said Edwards. "What a lot of people don't realize is that when we first made the switch to Chad (in 2002) we weren't the same offense early as we were the last seven games. We let him grow into it and gave him the ability to throw more as the season went along. Then, at the end, we were really rolling."

There are a couple of differences between what Edwards is going through now and what he went through then: First, the switch to Pennington in 2002 was voluntary; it was not necessitated by a debilitating injury to his starting quarterback. Second, once Pennington joined the huddle that season he never left, playing the last 14 games -- including two playoff starts.

Trent Green shouldn't be gone that long. Edwards, who spoke with Green by telephone, said the quarterback would be discharged from the hospital Tuesday and will recuperate at home. He also said he has no intention of signing a veteran quarterback to replace him.

Herman Edwards will speak from experience when he tells his team, 'We have to play a little bit different, and we'll be OK.' (Getty Images)

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Both are indications that the Chiefs don't anticipate a prolonged recovery. Nevertheless, it's the first time in Green's six years with the Chiefs that he'll be out of the lineup, and Edwards is prepared.

"You can make it," he said. "You just have to play differently. You can't ask Damon Huard to do what Trent Green does. It's not fair to the player, and it's not fair to the team. But what you have to do is play a different game. I look at this team, and it has veteran people in the middle of the line, a heckuva running back and two good tight ends. So, all of a sudden, you tell your team, 'We have to play a little bit different, and we'll be OK.'"

If he wants to draw on someone else's history he can go back to 1992, when Bobby Ross first coached the San Diego Chargers. He lost his starting quarterback in his first game, a preseason loss to Arizona, then dropped the first four starts of the regular season.

But that was it. Ross won 11 of his next 12 and became the team's first head coach in 11 years to reach the playoffs.

Edwards could also point to the 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers, a club that ousted the Jets from the playoffs. They were forced to turn to rookie quarterback Ben Roethlisberger in the third quarter of their second game after starter Tommy Maddox was injured. I think you know what happened.

"I'll probably talk to the team about (overcoming adversity)," Edwards said. "You can do some different things, but the important thing is you can be OK."

You better trust him. He's been through this too many times not to know.

Copyright © 1995 - 2006 SportsLine.com, Inc. All rights reserved. SportsLine is a registered service mark of SportsLine.com, Inc. CBS "eye device" is a registered trademark of CBS Broadcasting, Inc.

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GRETZ: HOW WE ALL GOT HERE SEP 22, 2006, 4:08:18 AM BY BOB GRETZ - FAQ

There’s a pretty swift current of uncertainty rolling through the Chiefs Nation right now. At least there is if my e-mail box and voice mails are any indication.

“Bob, what’s going on? Are the Chiefs really this bad? … How can the offense go from being the best in the league to one of the worst? … Does Herm Edwards have any clue what he’s doing? … Why can’t we have a high-scoring offense and a great defense at the same time? … What’s the story with Herm and his conservative ways? …

As we all head into a weekend without a Chiefs game, it seems a good time to talk about where the Chiefs are as a team, where they are heading and how they and their fans got to this point.

When Carl Peterson and Marty Schottenheimer walked in the front door of Arrowhead in 1989, the franchise was in disarray. In the 17 previous seasons, there had been just one appearance in the playoffs and the front office responded to that success by firing the head coach about a week after losing that post-season game.

Through the down years, interest in the team cooled considerably. Those of us who were there will never forget the 11,902 fans who saw the final game of the 1982 season or the 11,377 that came through the turnstiles to see the last game on the 1983 schedule. In essence, there were about 30,000 die-hard fans. Actually, there were only 26,594 seats held by season ticket holders during the 1988 season.

Peterson-Schottenheimer changed everything. Within two years of taking over the team, the Chiefs began a streak of sellouts that continues today. Nearly 50,000 others who just had to be there every time the team opened the doors to the stadium joined those 30,000 die-hards.

The Chiefs did it by putting a winning team on the field, one built on defense and the running game on offense. Derrick Thomas, Christian Okoye, Neil Smith, Barry Word, Dan Saleaumua … those were the names in the headlines.

In the 1991 season, the Chiefs had the ultimate running back by committee as Okoye, Word and rookie Harvey Williams totaled between them 2,162 yards. But by the end of the next season, Schottenheimer knew he had to change the offense. Those people who say Marty Ball dominated the ‘90s in Kansas City don’t know what they are talking about. Before the ‘93 season, Paul Hackett was brought in to coordinate the offense, which moved to the West Coast/Bill Walsh scheme built on the short passing game. Joe Montana was acquired to play quarterback.

The Chiefs changed dramatically. After having a 1,000-yard rusher in each of his first three seasons at Arrowhead, Schottenheimer did not have another runner break that standard in his final seven years.

Point production did not increase dramatically, but the Chiefs kept on winning. The stands were filled. The passion was explosive. Arrowhead became known around the league as the toughest venue to visit.

But 10 seasons did not produce what the fans and organization wanted most: a championship. Peterson decided to stick with the same plan by going with Gunther Cunningham as head coach for two years after Schottenheimer walked away.

That two-year stretch of .500-football only increased fan frustration. They wanted something different. Without taking that into account, Peterson gave them something very different: a team where the offense was the top item. Dick Vermeil came in and after a stumbling first season, the offense became the center-point of the team. Trent Green, Priest Holmes, Tony Gonzalez were the names in the headlines. Defensive players came and went with little notice and fanfare. Greg Robinson replaced Paul Hackett and Jimmy Raye as the pundits’ favorite whipping boy. The fans kept showing up, kept believing and were willing to buy into the high-flying offense because it was different, it was entertaining and eventually, the team kept winning a lot more games than it lost.

But five years later, that dramatic shift did not produce a championship. It barely produced a spot in the playoffs. The Chiefs were too unbalanced as a team. The offense was productive and powerful, but the defense was none of those things. It was unreliable, inconsistent and could not be counted on in the clutch.

With the retirement of Vermeil, the pendulum has swung again in the other direction. What Herm Edwards is trying to build here is nothing more than what Schottenheimer tried to create in a decade where they made the playoffs seven times. He’s looking for a tough, nasty, turnover causing defense to be paired with an offense that can run and pass the

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ball with equal effectiveness, and has the ability in the fourth quarter to keep the ball on the ground, eating yardage and clock and protecting a lead.

So that brings us to the present, late September 2006. The Chiefs are 0-2, the offensive general is on the sidelines and they have but one touchdown in two games. The defense is starting to shown signs of life. There’s a transition going on and it’s been bumpy. The playoffs seem a pipe dream right now, although teams have made the tournament after losing their first two games.

Eventually, Chiefs Nation will come to understand and ultimately embrace what Edwards is doing largely because history shows us this style provides a more realistic and reliable path to the post-season.

But like Schottenheimer, Cunningham and Vermeil before him, Herm Edwards will be judged based on one thing, and one thing only: whether he wins a championship or not.

And that’s how we all got here.

The opinions offered in this column do not necessarily reflect those of the Kansas City Chiefs.

A former beat reporter who covered the Pittsburgh Steelers during their glory years, Gretz covered the Chiefs for the Kansas City Star for nine years before heading up KCFX-FM's sports department. He is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Board of Selectors. His column appears three times a week during the season.

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IN THEIR OWN WORDS SEP 24, 2006, 4:56:09 AM

The Chiefs slow start has some fans wondering how someone who played under Dick Vermeil and enjoyed success on his teams could express such different views on the game. In all his public statements, Herm Edwards has emphasized defense whereas his mentor put his stamp on the offense.

Now, Edwards has been quick to say that the Vermeil we know in Kansas City espoused different views in Philadelphia during the decade of the ‘70s. Calling his offense “perimeter friendly,” Vermeil’s approach here had its roots in the offensive systems of Don Coryell and Ernie Zampese with later refinements courtesy of Norv Turner and Mike Martz.

By contrast, Herm Edwards can point to his time with defensive coach Tony Dungy, who he worked with in Kansas City and later in Tampa Bay. Dungy took his cues from his former coach, Chuck Noll, who built the Pittsburgh Steelers into a four-time Super Bowl champion.

In so many words, here’s what the two men have to say about how they approach the game. It is told in their own words rearranged from quotes culled from this web site dating back to 2001.

The Vermeil model

“I don’t like playing a game so close from an offensive standpoint that one play…gets you beat or one mistake…gets you beat. You have to score. Our plan is to attack, try to get a lead, and then run the ball. We’re trying to get some points on the board and secure a lead.

“If you’re going to move the ball in this league and score points the wide receivers have to get the ball in their hands. You’re not going to score any points unless your receivers have the ball. We’re not thinking about four yards at a time. We’re thinking stretching the field and going vertically up the field with the passing game. The number one thing is to get the ball in the hands of the wide receivers earlier in the ball game and downfield.

“You have to be productive in the passing game. For us to be successful we’ve got to throw the ball in the 60 percent area…we’ve got to complete 20 out of 34 completions and even more from time to time…be a quality third-down conversion team…stay out of a lot of third-and-longs. How you do that is have a fewer number of third down situations by converting on first down or first down on second down.

“We’ll gradually build up the running game…and eat up the clock. You’d get a lead then you would build up the run reps within that time period to eat up the clock.

“You have to score. I am not hung up on offensive points scored or defensive points given up. I’m hung up on winning margin points. I’m not of the mindset of just playing and hoping nothing bad happens and the defense will win it for you.“- Dick Vermeil, Chiefs head coach, 2001-2005

The Edwards model

“If you look at the playoffs obviously defense wins. You have to be able to run the ball and play some defense – particularly in scoring defense (points given up).

“It’s come to a point where people bring so much pressure all the time that offensively it’s very difficult to say you’re going to sit back (in the pocket) and say you’re going to throw the ball a bunch. The way people attack you on defense it’s almost a blitz frenzy now…a mindset that we’re going to bring pressure – we’re not only going to bring pressure on first down but on all kind of downs and from everywhere. It’s become a fast-moving league of defensive guys trying to attack the line of scrimmage by different means. If you can’t hit a big play on offense it’s going to be a minus play…you’ve got to get ‘em in minus situations to be successful.

“The first thing you’ve got to do to get your defense better is get your offense staying on the football field. The more you can keep (opposing) teams off the field the better chance you have. You don’t want them to have a lot of possessions. To just go four or five plays and make tons of yards and all of a sudden it’s 35-to-40; you don’t want to play in those types of games. You want to control the clock; your offense has to move the ball; we have to stay on the field. Your offense has to make positive yards on first down. That’s key. First and third downs are very, very important. If you make positive yards on first down you stay out of third and long. If you don’t you’re in third and long and when you’re in third

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and long in this league you’ve got problems.

“It’s a field position game (and) if you do it enough times and a short field comes your way…you’ve got to score. You’ve got to score a touchdown or a field goal. When you’re in range to kick field goals you kick them. If your offense has the ball on the 50-yard line you only have to go 50 yards to score. You make two first downs and you’re in field goal range already.

“You’ve got to take the ball away…you’ve got to put (your) offense in position…so we’ve got to do something to create a short field so we have an opportunity to win, or we’ve got to stop ‘em.

“You never want to be more than one score down on the road. You have to stay out of two score situations. When you’re only one score down you’re always in the game. You’re a play or two away. But don’t get down by two scores and at the end have to throw the ball every play. You need big chunks (of yardage) and when you need big chunks you have to hold onto the ball. You’ve got to manage the game a little better.- Herm Edwards, Chiefs head coach, 2006-


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GRETZ: FOCUS ON - THE OFFENSE SEP 06, 2006, 8:47:02 AM BY BOB GRETZ - FAQ

Herm Edwards calls it “the vaunted offense” that he inherited when he took over as head coach of the Chiefs.

There’s no question that when the Chiefs have had the ball in the last few seasons, they’ve been very productive, whether it was in producing yards or touchdowns. And there’s also no question that one of the major reasons for that statistical success has been the continuity of the offensive roster, especially the starters. Here’s a look:

This year there are three new starters on the offense: left tackle Kyle Turley, right tackle Kevin Sampson and fullback Ronnie Cruz. That’s major turnover for this group. The last time there were that many new starters came in the first year of the Dick Vermeil’s Era, when six new faces were in the opening lineup.

As the Chiefs begin the Herm Edwards Era, the offense is very much in a transitional phase in attitude and approach. The playbook and most of the weapons remain the same; the head coach and play caller are different and that will bring change. What was considered the unit’s major strength – the offensive line – now has question marks and some of those weapons are a year older.

A breakdown of the offensive roster:

QUARTERBACKS: The transition affecting the entire offense can be seen at quarterback. Trent Green remains the starter and he ranks among the league’s top 10 quarterbacks. His greatest strength has been his availability; Green has started 80 consecutive games, which is a franchise record. Todd Collins is gone, Damon Huard has moved up from No. 3 to No. 2 and this year’s No. 3 is a rookie Brodie Croyle.

Last year, the Chiefs were one of the few teams in the league that had a No. 3 QB that had actually started an NFL game. This year, the Chiefs have just six NFL starts behind Green, which will be one of the lowest totals in the league (San Diego has only two quarterbacks in Philip Rivers and Charlie Whitehurst and neither has started an NFL game.)

RUNNING BACKS: There are few teams that have two Pro Bowl backs on the roster, as the Chiefs do with Larry Johnson and Michael Bennett. That duo replaces the duo of Priest Holmes and Johnson. While Bennett has run for 1,000 yards in his career, he’s never produced like Holmes did in his time with the Chiefs. Because he joined them with a hamstring injury, the Chiefs are still feeling their way with what Bennett can do, but understand this: he’ll be active in a number of different offensive roles. The Chiefs have traded veteran Tony Richardson for the untested Ronnie Cruz in what is a diminishing fullback role in this offense.

RECEIVERS: There’s the “old” guys in Eddie Kennison (33), Jason Dunn, (33 in November) and Tony Gonzalez (30.) Then there are the youngsters like rookies Jeff Webb (24) and Chris Hannon (22.) In between are Dante Hall (soon to be 27), Kris Wilson and Samie Parker (both 25.)

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At tight end the Chiefs have one of the best receivers and best blockers in the league in Gonzalez and Dunn. Wilson remains an unknown factor. On the outside, Kennison is a proven commodity, but the rest of the group has not made a place for itself as a go-to receiver. Hall remains a big-play option, but his snaps must be limited because of his value as a returner on special teams. Parker has gotten better each year he’s been in the league and that trend must continue.

This group is not fantasy football friendly, but they’ve gotten the job done well enough in the last three years that only Indianapolis can match the passing numbers the Chiefs have put in the books.

LINE: As Will Shields comes back from his sprained ankle, the interior trio of the starting group remains the best in the business. Shields, Casey Wiegmann and Brian Waters are the true engine of this offense, not only in the running game, but pass protection.

The question marks are suddenly at tackle. Kyle Turley is not Willie Roaf. But he’s a veteran NFL player, who has seen a lot of football action, albeit not in the last two years. The real question is at right tackle, where Kevin Sampson will open. He’s been inconsistent and troubled in pass protection. The first backup is Will Svitek, untested in the NFL. The next backup is Jordan Black, who has been tested at tackle and been found wanting. The only experience inside behind the starters is Black, who is a better guard than tackle, and Chris Bober, who struggled through the pre-season with extended playing time.

Like just about every other team in the league, the Chiefs problem is depth. Their vaunted offense may be on shaky ground already, but if they can keep their core on the field (Green, Johnson, Shields, Wiegmann, Waters, Gonzalez) they should remain productive, although maybe not nearly with as much explosion.

But, if Parker, Turley and Sampson can solidify their positions and Wilson and Bennett add some new wrinkles, this offense is capable of great production and capable of doing it within the concept of a full-team.




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KC's offense grounded Edwards believes in a punishing running game; defense should reap the benefits

11:20 PM CDT on Wednesday, August 16, 2006

RIVER FALLS, Wis. – The Kansas City Chiefs have led the NFL in offense each of the last two seasons. Don't look for a three-peat in 2006.

A change in head coaches has produced a change in offensive philosophies. Dick Vermeil and aerial football are out. Herman Edwards and the ground game are in. The ball will leave the hand of quarterback Trent Green and enter those of running back Larry Johnson this fall.

"When you have a runner who's your best player," Edwards said, "you've got to run the football."

Johnson is reason enough for the Chiefs to bash away on the ground. He started nine games last season after replacing the injured Priest Holmes but still led the AFC in rushing with 1,750 yards. He also finished second in the NFL in touchdowns with 21.

Johnson has started 12 games in his three-year NFL career but already has 13 100-yard rushing games. He takes a streak of nine consecutive 100-yard games into the season. He's averaging 5.1 yards per career carry.

But Edwards' commitment to the running game has as much to do with protecting his defense as it does featuring Johnson.

Vermeil won a Super Bowl at St. Louis in 1999 with the NFL's most explosive offense. He was hired by the Chiefs in 2001 and took that offensive mentality across the state with him.

The Chiefs ranked in the top five in offense all five seasons Vermeil was in charge. Kansas City also led the NFL in scoring in 2002-03 and sent nine different offensive starters to the Pro Bowl this decade.

"Coach Vermeil kind of let the offense do our thing," said Green, the only NFL quarterback to pass for 4,000 yards each of the last three seasons. "It was about scoring points, moving the ball and attacking. It was almost like, 'Let's see how many points we can score every game.' "

But the defense became a second-class citizen under Vermeil, never ranking higher than 23rd. Offense is where the Chiefs spent their time, money and energy. But a quick-strike offense forced the Kansas City defense to play longer in games, and a tired defense is not an effective defense.

"Herm's a defensive coach," Green said. "He's made it clear he wants to put more emphasis on defense. He wants a team philosophy where the offense and defense are complementing each other. Sometimes that means running the ball more because you want to use up some clock."

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Makes sense, because what the Chiefs were doing this decade wasn't working. Despite all those glittery offensive statistics, Kansas City qualified for the playoffs just once in Vermeil's five season and failed to win a playoff game.

Now go back a decade. The Chiefs were one of the NFL's best teams in the 1990s, winning 102 games and qualifying for the playoffs seven times. The Chiefs won more games than the Cowboys in the 1990s – and did it by playing a physical brand of football under Marty Schottenheimer.

Kansas City pounded away on the ground with big backs Christian Okoye, Barry Word and Marcus Allen. The Chiefs also played an attack, swarming defense led by pass rushers Derrick Thomas and Neil Smith.

Kansas City finished in the top 10 in rushing six times in the 1990s and the top 12 in defense six times. Edwards spent six seasons with the Chiefs in the 1990s, three as a coach and three as a scout.

"They've always had a good back and good offensive line here," Edwards said. "That's been a staple of this organization since the days of Marty Schottenheimer.

"They've gotten away from that. But all the years we were going to the playoffs, that's what we could do. We were a physical offense. We could run the ball, play-action pass and play good defense."

That style of football will make a comeback in Kansas City in 2006.

"I'm not saying you can't pass it," Edwards said. "We're still going to pass it and try to score lots of touchdowns. But there needs to be a balance.

"There are times you need to run the football, control the tempo and help our defense. That's how Denver plays. That's how we need to play."

And Larry Johnson will be the face – and beneficiary – of that change in philosophy.

E-mail [email protected]

Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/columnists/rgosselin/stories/081706dnspogosselin.3229e1c.htm

DAVID EULITT/AP Running back Larry Johnson will have the ball in his hands more this season as new coach Herman Edwards favors the ground game.

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Chiefs offensive coordinator brings a new line of thinking

Solari didn’t coach QBs or receivers, but he believes he has a handle on the offense.

By ADAM TEICHER The Kansas City Star

Almost everything about Mike Solari’s impeccable background forecasts success as Chiefs offensive coordinator.

Seventeen years as an NFL coach, working with some bright offensive minds: Tom Landry, Bill Walsh, Al Saunders, Dick Vermeil. Generally known as one of the best offensive-line coaches in the NFL, Solari turned out 16 Pro Bowlers in his nine seasons with the Chiefs.

If he coached the quarterbacks or receivers, the 51-year-old Solari would have received his chance long ago. But he was a line coach — like a lead balloon when it comes to career aspirations. Almost all offensive coordinators come up after coaching positions other than the line.

A handful of this year’s NFL coordinators are, like Solari, former line coaches. Most, such as Tampa Bay’s Bill Muir and Green Bay’s Jeff Jagodzinski, work for offensive head coaches who call the plays, making them in effect coordinators in title only.

Solari will call the plays. Coach Herm Edwards handed him the keys to the Chiefs’ high-powered offense shortly after Edwards arrived from the Jets in January.

While the move is not revolutionary, it certainly goes against conventional wisdom that says line coaches aren’t as qualified to create game plans and design and call plays.

Solari would operate in the normal piercing glare of the NFL no matter his background. Because of that background — and because the Chiefs were so successful on offense under his predecessor, Al Saunders — the scrutiny is even greater.

“Up to this point, he’s had a great offseason, great training camp, great everything else,” quarterback Trent Green said. “But when things start flying and you’re in the game in the preseason, you’ll get a test. In the regular season, you’ll get a test right away playing two playoff teams in Cincinnati and Denver, one on the road. That’s where the growth part

Mike Solari, Chiefs offensive coordinator

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comes.

“I’ve been with new coordinators, old coordinators, everything, and there’s always that first third-down call, that first red-zone call. I’m sure he won’t hesitate at all. But until we get there, we’ll see.”

Today’s NFL offenses revolve so much around intricate passing games — thus the bias against line coaches.

Line coaches are intimately familiar with the running game and design the protection schemes for the passing game. The receiver routes and the timing and the quarterback reads — well, those are someone else’s specialty.

The assistants who know those things well — in other words, quarterback and receiver coaches — tend to get the first sniff when coordinator jobs pop open.

“Line coaches can make good offensive coordinators,” Solari said. “Because the game is won up front. You’ve got to run the ball to win games, and you’ve got to pass the ball to win a championship.

“I believe offensive-line coaches know the protections. I believe offensive-line coaches know the run game. I believe offensive-line coaches that have a history in the league know the passing game. Do they know it as well as a quarterbacks coach or a receivers coach? No. That’s not his expertise.

“I don’t know the passing game as well as anyone can know it. I have knowledge of the passing game. But my job is to coordinate the offense. I use the strengths of Charlie Joiner, Terry Shea, James Saxon. It’s all of us working together.”

In fact, even though it’s often portrayed to be, coordinating an offense isn’t rocket science. A coordinator designs plays while taking into account players’ strengths and weaknesses.

Solari will compile a game plan each week that attempts to exploit favorable matchups and attack opponents’ weaknesses. On game day, he’ll call the plays under the considerable influence of the conservative Edwards.

Some, like Saunders, are naturals. Given wide latitude from Vermeil, Saunders often drove opponents to distraction with his multitude of shifts and motions and his willingness to call any play at any time.

But even Saunders, now the coordinator with Washington, relied heavily on his offensive staff. He leaned on Solari and his knowledge of the running game. Now, Solari will turn for help in the passing game to veteran assistants such as Joiner, a Hall of Fame receiver, and Shea, the quarterbacks coach.

“Nobody prepares harder than Mike,” Green said. “I know he’ll have his list ready to go for those situations and he’ll haveto rely on his preparation: ‘Hey, this is what I’ve studied, this is what I’ve come up with, this is what I’m anticipating in these situations.’ ”

One of the biggest advocates for Solari and offensive-line coaches everywhere is Jim Hanifan. An NFL line coach for yearswho is now working in radio for the Rams, Hanifan was head coach for the Cardinals for six seasons.

“There’s no school to become an offensive coordinator,” Hanifan said. “That’s true for an offensive-line coach, a receivers coach, a quarterbacks coach, whatever. You take the training you have and then you either sink or you swim.

“Mike knows the game as well as anybody. That’s why he’s going to succeed.”

Edwards wanted Solari, and not for the first time. While with the Jets, Edwards once tried to pry Solari away from the Chiefs and make him the coordinator. Solari stayed, but Edwards kept him on his list of coordinator prospects.

“I know how he can communicate,” Edwards said. “He has a great feel for this offense and these players. He’s willing to listen, and that’s important because we’re going to do some things a little differently. I didn’t want to sit there fighting with the offensive coordinator.”

In fact, coaching for the Chiefs and Edwards might be the best break Solari could get. He knows Saunders’ system and the players, while Edwards is a like-minded coach.

Solari’s biggest transition will come on game days, when he will be charged with calling plays in rapid-fire succession. Forthe endless behind-the-scenes work coordinators do just to prepare an offense for a game, none of it matters if his play selection is faulty.




It’s not a totally foreign concept to Solari. One of his game-day jobs was to keep Saunders supplied with a fresh list of running plays Solari believed would work under the current game conditions.

“I’m excited,” Solari said. “Play calling is preparation. Somebody said, ‘Are you nervous about play calling?’ Well, no, that’s the fun of it. What I’m nervous about, if that’s a true word, is that week’s preparation.

“I’ve got to do a great job of giving those guys situations they’re going to be in and getting them prepared.”

For his part, Edwards isn’t expecting Solari to be Saunders. Not immediately, anyway.

“He’ll learn how to do it,” Edwards said. “He’ll be better after four games. He’ll be a better coordinator next year than this year. He has to go through the growing pains. I know that. I also know nobody is going to work harder. I trust him.

“Whether he calls the perfect play all the time, I’m not worried about that. We’ve got enough good players to make whatever he calls a good play.”



Posted on Sun, Sep. 03, 2006

Shields remains on guard for KC

Chiefs’ Pro Bowler returns for another year, but he isn’t saying that much about it.

By ELIZABETH MERRILL The Kansas City Star

Go find Joe. He’ll tell you what’s eating at Will Shields. The clock hand clicked past 3 on Saturday afternoon, Shields emerged from the training room, and in seven days, one of the longest streaks in the NFL could effectively end because of a bum ankle.

How do you feel, Will? Is it ready?

Shields let out one, “Can’t complain,” several, “I can’t tell yous,” then conceded after 13 years in the league, he’s grown a little grumpier.

The awkward pauses never really change. But at some point, you understand him.

Joe Linta tried to take Shields out to a fancy dinner once when he was at Nebraska, because that’s what prospective agents do, and Shields said no, he was going to the gym. Linta got his gear, played one-on-one and lifted weights with Shields, and 14 years later, they’re still together.

“I would assume he’ll be fine,” Linta said.

“He’s the old sage. He listens, and when he says something, it’s powerful stuff. When he yells at his kid, it’s like the Lion King. By his very nature, he commands respect, and you’ve got to be around him more to understand that.”

The king’s followers, at the moment, are getting restless. Pro Bowl tackle Willie Roaf retired, the Chiefs offense has struggled, and Shields has been out for two weeks because of a high ankle sprain. In times like these, Kansas City turns to its veteran, an 11-time Pro Bowl guard, an iron man who’s started in 207 straight games, for some sort of pulse.

And Shields is a difficult read. Ask him about his health, and he’ll say that for the first time in years, he isn’t starting the season tired and sore like he did after Dick Vermeil’s two-a-day grind. Ask him about anything else — the ankle, a season in which in the Chiefs are picked everywhere from AFC West champs to big-time busts — and Shields is vague.

“You go into every season thinking you’re going to be pretty good,” Shields says. “I don’t think in any season you ever face you say, ‘Oh, we’re going to suck this year.’

“There are a lot of little new things we’re learning about each other, especially having a new coach. There are going to be those growing pains, but I think we’ll be OK.”

•••

At 17, Shields left the wide-open spaces of Lawton, Okla., for the blank prairie in Lincoln, Neb. His daddy told him to go to Nebraska because it was a good place. His coaches say Shields went home just once in the next four years, loading up on homework in the summer so he could graduate in four years.

“When he got here, he had no fear,” said Milt Tenopir, his offensive line coach at Nebraska. “He was a very mature young man, but he didn’t have a boisterous bone in his body.”

Get-r-done and shut-it-up. That was always Shields. And you never knew when he was hurt. Most offensive linemen, Tenopir said, get injured when they flop around on the ground. In four years, Tenopir never saw Shields hit the ground. His balance was that good. But being a 13-year starter in the NFL carried a whole new set of demands. Shields developed arthritis in his knees, then his back.

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The end looked imminent during training camp last year in River Falls, Wis., when Shields had to leave town because of his back. He’ll spend as much as 12 hours a day at Arrowhead getting treatment for his various ailments, and he was in the training room for roughly four hours Saturday to work on the ankle.

“I know he’s hurting,” Tenopir said. “Anybody who’s played that game as long as Will’s played it has got to have pain. But Will’s never complained to me personally about it. He just loves the game and will play as long as he can. I don’t know how long that is. Hopefully, he can stay healthy a while longer.”

With a long, painful future in mind, Shields and Linta had a long talk about the end in early 2005, during the Pro Bowl. Atone point, Shields said he knew it was near, but he also knew he was in good enough shape to still compete.

The 2005 season started slow and was tough on Shields’ body, and many speculated that he’d announce his retirement after the season. Then came new coach Herm Edwards, who promised to limit Shields’ practice load. Shields said he felt better this summer than he had in years.

“You think about (the end) before the season even starts,” Shields said. “When your back is out, you try to find different ways to get it back. You think, ‘Man, I hope I can keep my body together to get through this one.’ That’s the nature of anyone.

“But there’s always that competition factor. Those young guys can come in and take your job, and other guys want to prove they can beat you. As long as I have that … it works pretty well for you.”

•••

After the final preseason game Thursday night, Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson stood in the locker room,talking about the final cuts. But the conversation eventually drifted to the status of Roaf, which, for more than a month, hasn’t changed.

Nobody asked about Shields.

They’ve been friends for a while, and word has it that Roaf was the one who talked Shields into playing again in 2006. Shields won’t confirm or deny that. Roaf went weeks without talking to his teammates, but Shields said he didn’t hold it against him.

“I just sort of stay out of it,” Shields said. “I don’t worry about it. I don’t worry about Willie. Willie’s gone doing his own thing, and I’m here to play football.”

That’s the main reason Shields is back, people close to him say. He loves to play football. There is the championship that eluded him at Nebraska, and the two national titles that came shortly after he graduated. There was the 2003 season in Kansas City, the one that ended with a 13-3 record but no Super Bowl.

Roaf’s absence means Shields, who’ll turn 35 later this month, is the elder statesman on the line. The title, in some ways, was already there. Shields has always been the quiet banker, the grownup in a little-boys dream.

He said he doesn’t feel alone as the last old sage.

“I’ve got Trent Green,” he said. “I’ve got Eddie Kennison, Eric Hicks on the other side … a bunch of guys who have been here a long time, been in the league a long time. You have to do some things to get some guys prepared. But you’re never really alone on a team. I think a whole bunch of guys are doing that.”

•••

The first couple of years of the Linta-Shields relationship were sort of a your-wish-is-my-command banter.

Linta was happy to have the Outland Trophy winner as a client. And Shields? Rumor is, he was happy sometimes, too. Shields said his mystery demeanor is the nature of an offensive lineman. They’re paid to work in the trenches, be the grunts, blast the holes.

Linta doesn’t understand it. He turns on the NFL Network, watches the Terrell Owens hype, and wonders when the love will come for Shields. Do they see how active he is in the community? Do they watch him around his three kids?




“There’s been times we’re out socially and I’m the kid and he’s the father,” Linta said. “You cannot find a person within the 816 or 913 area code who does not respect him. Why is that? Because he doesn’t make himself known. Because he does what he says.

“He doesn’t deviate from that. The guy doesn’t get drunk, has never done drugs, doesn’t run traffic lights, doesn’t beat his kids. He does everything the way the American dream should be lived. This guy should be on the tip of your tongue.”

Only Shields’ tongue, like always, is slightly bitten. He’s not saying whether he’ll be ready for the Bengals, though Edwards expects him in uniform. He won’t tell you if this is finally the season the Chiefs do something in the postseason.

Just before he was getting ready to watch the second half of the Nebraska-Louisiana Tech game late Saturday afternoon, the lion was asked for a Sunday prediction.

“Nah,” Shields said. “I don’t have anything to say.”

CUTDOWN DAY

Junior Siavii among Chiefs cut from roster Saturday. | C15

To reach Elizabeth Merrill, Chiefs reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4744 or send e-mail to [email protected]



Posted on Sun, Jul. 30, 2006

CAMP LARRY

Chiefs' Johnson happy to be center of attention VIDEOBy ELIZABETH MERRILLThe Kansas City Star

RIVER FALLS, Wis. | There are no T-shirts or bobbleheads of The Man on the downtown strip. Priest Holmes has his jerseys, Tony Gonzalez’s toothy grin is immortalized in plastic, and on one shelf, for the discriminating Chiefs souvenir shopper, sits a helmet that doubles as a nacho holder.

There’s nothing, really, of Larry Johnson, save for a custom-made baseball shirt printed recently that hangs on a wall near the door.

That’s how quickly The Man became The Man.

Across town, bodies are pressed six-deep against the wooden fence Saturday, Johnson is holding babies, and a security guard glances at his watch. Johnson has been out here 30 minutes … wait, longer … and finally Dee Brown shouts a crack about Johnson missing practice in three hours because he can’t stop signing autographs

“Are you gonna run for 2,000 yards?” a guy in a Hawaiian shirt asks.

Anything seems possible for The Man. Six months removed from the hysteria of nine straight 100-yard games, one year past the unsettling summer as a backup waiting to explode, Johnson is the face of the Chiefs, the biggest thing to drop into River Falls since Joe Montana.

Johnson is the fantasy football stud, the cover boy for ESPN the Magazine, the running back who will run and run in the new Herm Edwards offense, then come back in for a few more carries. This offense, many say, will be built around L.J.

Look closely, past the serious glare, and it almost seems as if Johnson is enjoying it.

“He’s taken another step,” Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson says. “You can just see it. He’s more mature, he’s more confident.

“I don’t want to speak for him, but when Herm came in and met with him and said, ‘You are the starting running back of the Kansas City Chiefs and you’re also going to be on my leadership group,’ I think Larry might’ve stepped back and said, ‘Wow, I haven’t had that given to me before.’ ”

There are many firsts for Johnson this summer. First walk to the practice fields at Wisconsin-River Falls as the bona-fide No. 1 running back, first mob scene in front of a cheese-curd wagon, first time, maybe since Pop Warner, that a coach has told him to buckle up because he’s going to get more touches than a petting-zoo horse.

First time anyone has referred to this as Larry’s team.

“I don’t think this is my team,” Johnson said. “It’s (quarterback) Trent (Green’s) team right now because Trent’s more of a steady veteran leader than I am. Right now, I’m just cool with being the guy in the back of the bus, playing this role for now.

“In the back of the bus, you see everybody in front of you. I like to look at the faces and the people who interact with each other. We’ve got a whole bunch of leaders … I like to be in the back because if everything goes wrong, then I can be the last guy to count on.”

•••

Before he was hounded as the next Mr. 2,000, before he went to Honolulu for the Pro Bowl, Larry Johnson stood in the locker room on a late August day and said he wanted to play more. It was old news — Johnson had been publicly yearning for more

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playing time long before 2005 — but it was enough to send then-coach Dick Vermeil into a mini-rant.

Vermeil said there would be no running-back controversy, chastised the media for trying to create one, and continued to start Priest Holmes. But the rumblings were getting louder for Johnson, especially when he ripped off a 97-yard touchdown run in a preseason game against Seattle.

Johnson was the backup, like he’d been so many times during college and high school, until Holmes went down after a helmet-to-helmet collision with Shawne Merriman at San Diego in late October.

The hype machine soon began. Johnson broke a franchise record with 211 yards at Houston. Torched Cincinnati for 201 yards in the season finale. The 2,000-yard questions began and followed Johnson from Honolulu to Overland Park. Nobody, except for Eric Dickerson, had done more in a nine-game span. Nobody, outside of a few friends and family, thought it would come so quickly and easily for Johnson.

“It’s fun blocking (for Johnson),” fullback Ronnie Cruz says. “It’s frustrating sometimes because he’s so dang good.”

The Chiefs have had their offensive heroes, guys like Green, Gonzalez and Holmes. All of them have brought the national media to River Falls. But not since Montana are so many coming to see one player.

Peterson fondly remembers that rock-star summer of Joe, when 15,000 people flocked to a scrimmage and fans waited at Bo’s N’Mine to swipe a beer can that touched Montana’s lips. Montana, Peterson said, was different. He came with the Super Bowl credentials and the legend status.

Johnson, at 26, is just getting started. But they both have an aura, a gravitational pull, history and hopes to chase.

“We talked about the expectations everybody is putting on him,” Edwards says. “I said, ‘What we have to realize is that you have your own expectations. Don’t get involved in that. Just come to work every day, because a lot of things have to happen for you to be successful.’ He knows that.”

•••

As the first practice wound down Friday in the sweltering heat, Peterson said Johnson looked in midseason form. He bulled through a pile, and kept running 40 yards downfield after contact.

Johnson knows he has to savor every carry this summer. He won’t be getting nearly as many once the preseason rolls around. With the hunt for the No. 2 running back still going on, and concerns about devastating August injuries, a la Rex Grossman, the Chiefs will taper off Johnson’s load in a few weeks.

Edwards said he envisions Johnson getting as many as 30 carries a game. He’s never had a problem with riding one strong back. Curtis Martin was a workhorse for Edwards in New York. In 2004, when Martin was 31, he had 371 carries for 1,697 yards.

“There’s no such thing to me as too many carries,” Johnson says. “In college, I would get 30-some carries and never even know about it. I never even felt it until maybe a day after. But after that, I seemed to always be in good enough shape to take the blows and take the shots.”

Johnson, the coaches say, came to camp in impeccable shape. Running backs coach James Saxon says Johnson went beyond what they asked him to do. Buoyed from a late-winter sit-down with Edwards, who gave him the starting job and a leadership role, Johnson decided to stay in Kansas City for the offseason. The reason? He just wanted to train with his team.

“It worked last year, and when something works, you don’t mess with it,” he says. “Everything I wanted was in Kansas City.”

•••

It’s the running backs’ turn for autographs, and they line up against the gate, a star and a cast of unknowns.

Quentin Griffin is probably the closest thing to noticeable. He started a handful of games in Denver. Dee Brown had a good season in 2002 at Carolina. When the seekers are finished with Johnson, they find Brown.

When Johnson was younger — OK, last season — he didn’t hide his distrust for the media or a community that failed to embrace him when Peterson drafted him in 2003. Chiefs fans didn’t want another running back with Priest in town. Johnson didn’t like feeling unwanted.



© 2006 Kansas City Star and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.http://www.kansascity.com

But they coexisted, and Johnson clammed up once the yards started accumulating. His teammates say they couldn’t blame him.

“I think he’s handled it great considering all the abuse he received before,” Brown says. “He’s shown the real man he is and not what was portrayed early in his career. He’s a tremendous leader. You can never ask a question about that. Just watch him practice.”

Practice ended almost an hour ago, and Johnson stays back to sign every last autograph. He did the same thing this spring, after a minicamp practice was opened to the public at Arrowhead. As the players headed for their cars, Johnson stood in his No. 27 jersey, hanging over a railing, mugging for photos.

“Do you see that?” a man in the press box asked.

Johnson didn’t care if you saw it, or if his jersey is plastered all over downtown River Falls. After three years of waiting, he’s The Man now. And that’s all that matters.

“When you’re the new hot item … you appreciate it and you take it in stride,” Johnson says. “You keep your focus and don’t let it get the best of you because you realize where you were three years before. I still remember it. You never erase those type of feelings.”

To reach Elizabeth Merrill, Chiefs reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4744 or send e-mail to [email protected].



You can find this article at: http://www.sportingnews.com/yourturn/viewtopic.php?t=117670

Johnson is so old school, he's new school August 15, 2006

Dennis Dillon

You're all thumbs. Your opposable digits move at rapid-fire speed as they punch the controller's buttons. Video game face firmly affixed, you're not about to lose this match. Playing as the Chiefs, of course, you call your own number. A lot. By early in the second quarter, you have rushed 14 times for 191 yards and four touchdowns and have built a 41-7 lead. Gushing with superiority, you take a football and spike it on the floor inside the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

Hold on. Something is wrong with this picture. It doesn't jibe with the image of a throwback who has an appreciation for pro football's history and the players who have come before -- all of which is exhibited on the level above.

Didn't your father, a longtime high school coach in the Washington, D.C., area who now coaches the defensive line at Penn State, stick a football into your crib on the day you were born? Didn't he wean you on old NFL Films tapes? Together, you watched them over and over. You played the NFL's greatest running backs tape so often, it corroded and got tangled in the VCR.

On the night before you received the Doak Walker Award as college football's best running back in 2002, didn't you listen attentively, respectfully, as Earl Campbell told you how he used to annoy Texas coach Darrell Royal by sneaking on to the Longhorns' special teams -- once even blocking a punt? You never mentioned how you blocked two punts and scored three touchdowns when you played special teams at Penn State.

Didn't you pay tribute to your NFL forebears by spending thousands of dollars to have miniature jerseys embroidered into the leather upholstery of your 2002 custom blue Mercedes-Benz G500 SUV? Among the 30 players represented are Dick "Night Train" Lane, Sam Huff, Marion Motley, Jim Parker, Lance Alworth and 15 Hall of Fame running backs.

Now, on this Friday morning in late June, you're in Canton, Ohio, inside football's hallowed Hall, and what has your juices flowing? Artifacts such as the brace that protected the fragile knee of Jets quarterback Joe Namath and the square-toed shoe of Saints kicker Tom Dempsey and the specially padded helmet worn by Chiefs linebacker Willie Lanier? How about the enshrinement gallery featuring the Hall's 229 busts? The team-by-team displays? The memorial to NFL players who served in the military?

No, you're geeked up about beating Kyle Motts, the 15-year-old son of the Hall's vice president of marketing, in Madden football, a game you can play in any other place on any other day. Explain yourself, Larry Johnson.

"Very rarely do I beat anyone younger than me in Madden."

Try again.

"Being here so many times, I might as well get a bed down here."

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OK, so this is your fifth trip to the Hall. You probably could lead a tour if asked. Your dad brought you and your brother, Tony, here when you were in high school. And you made three pilgrimages while you were at Penn State, driving four hours each way from State College, Pa.

Still . . . there's trace evidence of old-school.

Like the way you run. Other backs spin, twist or dance to avoid tacklers. If there's a defender in your path, you'll muscle up your 6-1, 230-pound frame and try to run over him. Collisions are you. "He's a beast," Vikings fullback Tony Richardson, a former Chiefs teammate, says. "He loves running in between the tackles. He likes mixing it up in there and getting hit and knocked around. With Larry, the more you hit him, the more times he comes back."

Like the way you dress. Other backs wear extra protective equipment, such as elbow pads, shin guards and knee braces. You accessorize only with tape on your wrists -- you have jammed them using stiff-arms -- and gloves when it's cold. You've watched teammate Priest Holmes before a game. As he put foam pads on his knees, calves and ankles, you wondered if he might as well put on a bulletproof vest, too.

Like the era you would like to have played in. "In the '50s, before they had all that unnecessary roughness stuff," you say. "Where anything could go. Guys were clotheslining, tripping, leg-whipping, scratching, biting."

This may not be your decade, but it is your year. After standing in Holmes' shadow for 2 1/2 seasons, you are now the Chiefs' No. 1 running back -- a designation Herm Edwards made as soon as he was named the team's coach last January -- and every fantasy player's No. 1 draft pick. And why not? After sharing the running load for the first seven games last season, you stepped up big when Holmes suffered a season-ending neck and spinal injury. You rushed for 1,351 yards and 16 touchdowns in the final nine games, finishing the season with 1,750 yards, 20 TDs and a trip to the Pro Bowl.

Your football career has been marked by a quadrennial pattern. In high school and college, you didn't become the starter until your senior year -- and then, when you got your chance, you produced prodigiously. This will be your fourth NFL season. The rest of the league has been warned.

It's easy to prescribe patience, but it can be a vexatious virtue when you're the one trying to swallow it. You've had so many doses, it has stuck in your gullet and left a bitter aftertaste.

God, there were times you hated being a coach's son. It wasn't fair the way some of your youth league coaches treated you. They went out of their way to curtail your playing time in football and basketball rather than risk showing preferential treatment. Before your junior season in high school, Larry Sr. joined Joe Paterno's staff at Penn State and you transferred to State College Area High School, where you sat behind two other running backs. Then, as a senior, you rushed for 2,159 yards and 29 touchdowns. At Penn State, you were part of a committee of running backs that spent three seasons behind Eric McCoo until you were a senior and Paterno finally let the leash out. All you did was score 23 touchdowns and lead the nation in rushing with 2,087 yards.

Even your arrival in the NFL came amid controversy. You were the highest-rated player on the Chiefs' board when general manager Carl Peterson took a risk and made a trade with the Steelers, dropping from the 16th to the 27th spot in the first round of the 2003 draft. Dick Vermeil, then the Chiefs' coach, wanted to take Colorado defensive end Tyler Brayton at No. 27. But Peterson wasn't about to pass on you again -- especially given his concern about a hip injury Holmes had suffered late in 2002 -- and overruled Vermeil.

Talk about a prickly beginning. You couldn't understand why a team that already had Holmes -- he had rushed for 1,555 yards in 2001 and 1,615 yards in '02 -- would draft you. And the coach was miffed about not getting the defensive player he wanted. It was a tossup whether you or Vermeil was more discouraged.

As a rookie, you were inactive for 10 games and rushed only 20 times for 85 yards. You felt frustrated and isolated. There were many late-night phone calls to your father. After Penn State's season ended, he even flew to Kansas City for a face-to-face, heart-to-heart weekend.



It didn't get much better in 2004. Vermeil uttered his infamous quote about it being time for you "to take off the diapers" -- it became known as Diapergate throughout the organization -- which only deepened the chill between you and him. You were the No. 3 running back, behind Holmes and Derrick Blaylock. Finally, you went to Peterson and asked to be traded.

"I'm not going to trade you. You're too valuable to the Chiefs," Peterson told you. "Whether you like it or not, you and I are attached at the hip. You will always be my choice, and I will always be the guy who chose you. . . . You've just got to hang in there."

After consecutive rushing performances of 118, 104 and 151 yards late that season, you came into training camp last summer and energized the line with your fierce competitiveness. That attitude carried over into games. "There were times when he was as physical as we were running the ball and getting after the defensive players," left guard Brian Waters says. "You'd see him get in a lot of verbal confrontations, which sparked us because he's our guy."

You aren't just a steamroller. You have a distinctive characteristic that separates you from other punishing, downhill runners. "Typically, when you have a bruising back like that, they don't have the speed to run away from you," says Texans general manager Rick Smith. "Once he breaks a tackle, he has the speed to finish a run off and take it the distance. That's what makes him special."

Last season was exceptional, but with only 476 carries and 12 starts in three seasons, your career barely has lifted off. There are things you must do to reach cruising altitude and become a premier back. Improving in pass protection is foremost. Your missed blitz pickup of Cowboys linebacker Scott Fujita last December was costly; it resulted in a sack and fumble by quarterback Trent Green and wiped out a scoring opportunity in a game the Chiefs lost, 31-28. Becoming adept at picking up blitzes will increase your chances of staying on the field in third-down situations and give you more opportunities as a receiver. Although you're righthanded, you've been working on carrying the ball in your left hand, to protect it from being stripped on runs to the left.

The running landscape has changed in Kansas City. Holmes' career is on hold -- he's on the physically unable to perform list -- Michael Bennett was recently acquired from the Saints, and now you're the man.

About damn time.

You often wear a scowl on your face and a chip on your shoulder. You're moody --definitely not a morning person -- and aloof. You don't trust many adults. That's the persona you portray. But if the public could chip away that facade, it might be surprised by what it would find underneath.

You're happiest when you're around kids. You volunteer as a coach in the Junior Player Development program, which teaches football fundamentals to pre-high school players. You were the host for an Easter egg hunt at the Chiefs' practice facility. You have adopted and donated equipment to a Kansas City T-Ball team, "L.J.'s Young Lions," whose games you attend and whose players you invite to your practices and games. You undergo a change of character around children, for whom you are a ray of light in worlds filled with too much darkness. Once, during your rookie season, a young boy knocked on your door, soliciting contributions for a school fundraiser; you wrote him a check for $2,000.

You love to dance -- on the football field. Whether you're playing at home or away, standing on the sideline or in the huddle, when music plays through the stadium sound system, you start wiggling.

"We called him 'Mr. Boogie,' " Richardson says.

You take a hands-on approach when it comes to interior decoration. Each picture, wallpaper pattern and piece of furniture inside your suburban Kansas City house was personally selected by you. Among the contents that might catch a visitor's eye are several paintings by neo-mannerist artist Ernie Barnes, a former AFL player; a collection of jazz music featuring Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Etta James; a bookcase lined with organized crime novels; and a freezer door filled with boxes of Popsicles.



Copyright © 2006 All rights reserved.

Your brother now lives with you on a quiet cul-de-sac 20 minutes south of Arrowhead Stadium. Tony, who played wide receiver at Penn State and is two years younger, had just joined a Pittsburgh law firm as a paralegal when, at the behest of your father, he put his life on hold last September to come to Kansas City and help manage yours.

His role is part business manager, part travel agent, part adviser -- but mostly he is a friend and confidant.

You'll turn 27 in November, but your body has absorbed moderate punishment and you haven't had any major injuries. You figure you can play another nine or 10 years. Compared with the running backs enshrined here in Canton, you barely have started on your journey, but you aspire to a grandiose ending.

"When I leave the game," you say, "I want to be known as the greatest ever at my position."

If that happens, you'll make many more trips to the Hall of Fame. They'll never give you a bed there, but you might get a bronze bust.



Posted on Sun, Oct. 01, 2006

No. 88 is cementing legacy as KC great By ELIZABETH MERRILL The Kansas City Star

The old man told him to keep away from bread, red meat and bad elements. Stay consistent, that’s what Warren Moon used to say to Tony Gonzalez. In some ways, Gonzalez is still that 23-year-old kid, the California beach boy who’d lie in the grass and listen, destined for Hollywood but stuck in the middle of America.

JOHN SLEEZER | THE KANSAS CITY STAR

The next time Tony Gonzalez does this, he will own the Chiefs record for TD receptions. He also has more receptions, receiving yards and TDs than any other active NFL tight end.

Page 1 of 4No. 88 is cementing legacy as KC great


Other times, he’s much older.

“I enjoy him because he’s different,” Moon says. “A lot of young guys want to do it on their own. They think they have allthe answers. He was smarter than that.”

Chiefs institutions never really fade away. They stand tall for years, then end up as a bronze bust near an elevator at Arrowhead Stadium. Ten years in one town, 12 pages worth of records, and Gonzalez has established he’ll be part of franchise lore. Today, he’s on the verge of breaking Otis Taylor’s all-time touchdown reception record, a coveted club mark that has stood for three decades. Tomorrow, Kansas Citians will chatter over coffee about what Tony G did on another fall Sunday.

And Gonzalez doesn’t want to think about it.

There are other things weighing on his mind these days. A contract that hasn’t been worked out, a team that hasn’t lived up to its potential, a career that has spanned seven Pro Bowls but never come close to touching the Lamar Hunt Trophy.

For Gonzalez, it’s never been enough. He wants the respect of a veteran, the hype of a rookie sensation and the hardware of a champion.

“Tony has a lot of pride,” Moon says. “He’s conscious of all the tight ends in the league. Believe me, Tony keeps up with every catch, everything they’re doing. He likes the fact that he’s labeled one of the best to ever play the game, and he wants to keep that title.”

•••

Fred Arbanas will give you a lesson in longevity. His shoulders have been replaced with titanium, his left hip is new, his right hip and knee are next under the knife. Arbanas uses the phrase “boogered up” for old guys like himself who need patience and a good insurance plan.

After nine seasons with the old Texans and Chiefs, Arbanas was considered the gold standard for tight ends, even thoughit’s been tinted with titanium rust. The position was much different then, Arbanas says. The rules have changed.

A tight end’s main job used to be as a blocker, and if he could catch a few passes it was a bonus. Blow up the guy and bury him, that was the plan. And try not to get clotheslined. Arbanas was a teammate of Taylor’s, and he says Gonzalez could’ve made it back then.

“You could’ve taken Tony and put him with anybody at any stage of the game over the last 60 or 70 years,” Arbanas says, “and he’d still probably be the most outstanding athlete on the field. He’s just amazed me with some of the things he’s been able to do.

“Tony is probably the greatest athlete I’ve ever seen on a football field.”

Gonzalez has more receptions (660), receiving yards (7,898) and touchdown catches (57) than any other active tight end in the NFL. If he stays healthy, he could eventually pass Shannon Sharpe as the league’s all-time reception leader at his position.

Tight ends generally hit the wall in their late 20s, and when Gonzalez’s numbers were down at midseason last year, some wondered whether he was beginning that slide. He came back to finish with 78 catches for 905 yards on a team that relied heavily on his blocking skills.

“I don’t think it applies to me,” Gonzalez says. “Jeremy Shockey, Todd Heap, Kellen Winslow … I love how those guys make those little comments in the papers, or the reporters who deem that maybe I’ve fallen off and those guys have taken the torch. I really don’t care if they take the torch. I just use that as fuel for me to go out there and keep working.

“I try to hang with those guys. I’m not that old myself. I’ve got a lot of really good football left. I feel like my best football is now. And it’s not just the numbers. It’s about being a complete tight end for me.”

Gonzalez’s all-around game was tested last year, when Pro Bowl left tackle Willie Roaf went down with a hamstring injury. The Chiefs turned to Gonzalez to be more of a blocker, and he says it’s helped him in the long run.

But with those new responsibilities came a little unrest. After an early-season loss to Philadelphia last year, when



Gonzalez had few touches, he suggested in the locker room that the Chiefs use him or move him.

When coach Herm Edwards arrived this winter, there were whispers that he gave Gonzalez a stat sheet outlining how his numbers went down in Al Saunders’ offense. But Edwards and tight end Jason Dunn say every player received a sheet of his statistics, just to remind them where they were and where they need to go.

“He’s still good,” Edwards says. “When you have a guy like that, you’ve got to use him.”

•••

All of the Chiefs’ first-round busts were temporarily forgotten in the spring of 1997, when Kansas City moved up five spots in the draft to select an All-American from Cal with movie-star looks who could dunk a basketball and leap over linebackers.

The thing most people don’t remember about Tony Gonzalez the future Hall of Famer, the reality TV star, is that rookie season, he dropped his share of passes. He got down on himself and questioned his place in Marty Schottenheimer’s offense.

He stayed after practice, worked on the Jugs machine and became one of the most sure-handed tight ends in the league.

He’s maddeningly particular about everything, from his disbelief in personal trainers — he doesn’t like them, won’t have them — to what he watches on TV and eats. Gonzalez says he’s never seen “Desperate Housewives” and only watches football, movies and educational shows.

He stays away from pork, bread, starch and heavy meat consumption. It’s a diet Moon kept in his playing days, and it helped him play in the CFL and NFL for 23 years.

“But he does eat a lot,” Moon says. “He has a huge appetite. We never go anywhere without him ordering an appetizer first, then salad, dessert. … He doesn’t mind the sweets. But he keeps all that other stuff out of there.”

Whenever Gonzalez had a problem in his early years, he turned to Moon to get the quarterback’s perspective. If Gonzalez didn’t feel as if he was being totally utilized, Moon would explain why Elvis Grbac couldn’t get him the ball.

He never cared about his touches, Moon says, unless the team was losing.

“I think he’s probably one of the most loyal people I’ve ever met,” he says. “He’s loyal to his family and close friends, and there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for them. I don’t think most people know that. He has a network around him that he really values. Once you have his loyalty, you have it forever.”

•••

From his spot on “Cooking with Celebrities” to his appearance on MTV’s “Cribs,” Gonzalez exudes Hollywood. He makes middle-aged housewives swoon in their No. 88 jerseys with a flash of his $6.5 million smile. It’s kind of strange — the man who’s destined for a TV career when football is over may spend his entire career in smaller-market Kansas City.

At least that’s the way Gonzalez hopes it ends. His contract will void at the end of the season, and Chiefs president/general manager Carl Peterson has made it clear for months that getting Gonzalez an extension is a top priority.

But Kansas City has other concerns right now, including left tackle Kyle Turley’s sore back, and Gonzalez is still waiting for a new deal. It’s obviously on his mind. He brought it up recently as he was wrapping up an interview. He’d hoped to get it wrapped up before camp ended. Now he’s wondering whether it’ll get done this season.

“I don’t even want to be put in that situation,” Gonzalez says, “where other teams are courting me. Because I love Kansas City, and I want to be here. I became a man in Kansas City.

“I talked to some close people that I trust, and they said: ‘You know what? Don’t worry about anything. You worry about winning football games, that’s it.’ And that’s what I’ve done.”

•••




Every year during Super Bowl week, Gonzalez and Shannon Sharpe hop on a stage and do a skit. The schtick is the same— trash talk, banter and a little chest-thumping between tight ends. Sharpe picks his spot, then unloads his favorite zinger.

You can have all the records you want, Tony. But I don’t see any jewelry …

Gonzalez usually laughs. Of course it doesn’t bother him.

“Nah,” he says. “I make fun of his clothes or how he has a big tongue.”

It takes a few minutes to sift through Gonzalez’s records and numbers in the Chiefs’ media guide. It takes less than a second for him to tally up one important statistic: playoff wins. The Chiefs haven’t gotten one of those since 1993, when Gonzalez was still in high school.

If a man is ultimately judged by the numbers that come in the back of the book, the ones he shares with 52 of his buddies, then Gonzalez knows there will be a void if he never can get there. Every camp, it seems, he’s standing in front of a microphone, being asked whether this is the year the window closes on the Chiefs’ offense. Every year he flashes that smile and says no.

Always the optimist, Gonzalez believes he has at least five years left in him. He’d defy logic and limbs, but some believe that what Gonzalez does with his 6-foot-5, 251-pound basketball-star body already does that.

“I think Kansas City should release him, and I think he should go to Denver,” Broncos coach Mike Shanahan joked recently. “He’s still one of the best in the game. He’ll be playing for a number of more years.”

People close to Gonzalez say that at 30, he’s just reaching his prime. When starting quarterback Trent Green went out with a concussion in the season opener, the Chiefs went to Gonzalez because he’s the closest to a sure thing, a safe-money bet. Gonzalez already has 12 catches in two games. He tied Taylor’s touchdown record in the first game of the season. It’s the only time Kansas City has found the end zone in 2006.

“He’s mentally a much more mature player at 30,” Edwards says. “I know I was. Because all of the things you thought about when you were a rookie, are you going to make the league … All those things have passed you by. You can see theend pretty soon. You appreciate the game more, I think, when you’re at that age.”

Whenever Gonzalez mentions “that age,” it’s followed with … “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not old or anything.” He isn’t chasing time anymore. And after one more touchdown, he won’t be chasing Otis Taylor. He’s after something more elusive: everything.

To reach Elizabeth Merrill, Chiefs reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4744 or send e-mail to [email protected]



Posted on Fri, Aug. 04, 2006

Receivers will catch some heatChiefs have faith that Kennison, Parker and Hall will produce plenty of big plays this season.

By ADAM TEICHERThe Kansas City Star

RIVER FALLS, Wis. - The offseason began with the Chiefs harboring serious intentions about improving at wide receiver.

The Chiefs made some noise about going after several established players: Terrell Owens, Keyshawn Johnson, Javon Walker, Ashley Lelie. The first three passed them by, and it’s unlikely the Broncos will let the disgruntled Lelie go to a division rival.

So here they are, in the August heat of training camp, seemingly behind where they were last season. Marc Boerigter and Chris Horn are gone as free agents while the Chiefs added only a sixth-round draft pick, Jeff Webb, and a handful of rookie free agents.

That puts heavy pressure on 33-year-old Eddie Kennison to have his third straight 1,000-yard season, on Samie Parker to establish himself as a consistent threat and on Dante Hall to produce more big plays.

The Chiefs don’t appear concerned about any of the three letting them down.

“I’m not worried about it, Eddie’s not worried about it, and Dante’s not worried about it,” Parker said. “We know what we have here, and we know we’ll get the job done.”

The Chiefs are showing an extraordinary amount of faith in all three players. Kennison has quietly put together back-to-back career seasons, but he’s attracted more attention and publicity for his precamp demand for a new contract than anything he’s recently done on the field.

He’s also at an age where receivers tend to have their skills erode. If his demanding offseason workout schedule was any kind of evidence, Kennison appears determined to win the battle with time.

“Age is mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “There’s no person walking the face of this earth who’s going to tell me that just because I’m 33 years old, I’m too old to play this game. That’s what they say. I’ve heard it a lot. Eddie Kennison will prove them wrong.

“I’m in great shape. I’ve worked hard. I’m ready to have another big season.”

Charlie Joiner, the Chiefs’ wide-receivers coach, played until he was the almost unheard-of age of 39. He was rewarded a few seasons after his career concluded by his selection to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

“It’s a lot easier to be a receiver in your 30s when you haven’t had any major injuries,” Joiner said. “He’s never had a major injury in his career. If he stays that way, he can play and play well for a long time, as long as the salary cap allows.

“Eddie has always had a positive attitude. He’s working as hard as ever, studying as hard as ever. I haven’t seen his play drop off at all. I expect he’ll have another good season for us.”

Parker, a fourth-round draft pick two years ago, has since tantalized the Chiefs with his speed. He delivered at times, but also frustrated the Chiefs with his penchant for untimely injuries and inconsistencies.

“That’s all part of the process,” Joiner said. “How often do you see a receiver go to the Pro Bowl in his rookie season? Not too often. That’s because it’s a hard position to learn.

“There’s a different look to Samie this year. You can see it when he goes to line up for a play. You can just see the confidence. He’s not making the mental errors. He’s running good routes, making good adjustments.”

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Parker missed four games because of a knee injury at midseason last year just as he appeared on the verge of establishing himself. Although he wound with up with respectable numbers (36 catches for 533 yards and three touchdowns), Parker wondered how much better they might have been if he had stayed healthy.

“I missed four games last year, and the year before that I missed maybe eight, but I put up good numbers when I played, and there’s no telling what I could have done in those games that I didn’t play,” he said. “I’m just looking forward to staying healthy and having a big season.”

Quarterback Trent Green said: “What makes him special is that he’s not afraid to go over the middle, he’s not afraid to go into traffic and make catches, and sometimes that can hurt you from an injury standpoint and that’s what’s really affected him. If he can stay healthy for a full 16 games, I see no reason why he can’t be a 1,000-yard receiver.”

The Chiefs have been unable to spring Hall for many of the big plays he delivered as a kickoff and punt returner but won’t quit trying. Hall may not play more than he has in recent seasons, but the Chiefs would like to get him the ball more often than the 41 times he got it last season.

The Chiefs will need at least one of their younger receivers to make the opening-day roster. They have eight candidates, but only three are draft picks: Webb, Craphonso Thorpe (fourth round last year) and Jeris McIntyre (sixth round in 2004).

The most impressive through the first week of camp is Nate Curry, who joined the Chiefs as a rookie free agent last season. Curry was injured early in camp last year and never made it back to play in a preseason game.

The Chiefs let him go but re-signed him this year and sent him to NFL Europe. Curry has shown more of a knack for shaking coverage and making difficult catches than any of his younger competitors.

“I need to see that,” Joiner said, “over a longer period of time.”

To reach Adam Teicher, Chiefs reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4875 or send e-mail to [email protected]

Page 2 of 2Receivers will catch some heat


RAND: BENNETT'S SPEED FILLS BIG NEEDAUG 03, 2006, 2:02:46 AM BY JONATHAN RAND - FAQ

Carl Peterson on RB Michael Bennett - Windows Media | Real VideoTrading for a backup running back may not seem like such a big deal. But when the head coach announces he’s committed to the running game and you’d rather not see Larry Johnson carry the ball until he drops, the deal for Michael Bennett becomes big, indeed.

A team dedicated to pounding the ball can’t have enough backs talented enough to see spot duty every week and start when the main man can’t go. Back in 2004, the Chiefs’ running attack didn’t miss a beat despite a mid-season injury to Priest Holmes. Derrick Blaylock, then Larry Johnson stepped in and got the job done.

A year is a long time in a running back’s life. Holmes last year suffered his third major injury in four seasons and appears a long shot to play again. Blaylock in 2005 saw a broken foot ruin his chance to become Curtis Martin’s backup with the Jets. Johnson, meanwhile, emerged as an elite back and is now the biggest key to the Chiefs’ season.

Bennett, too, could tell you how quickly a running back’s life can change. A track and football star at Wisconsin, he dispelled doubts about his Holmes-sized frame when he ran for 1,296 yards and made the Pro Bowl in 2002, his second NFL season. Then injuries shortened Bennett’s next two seasons before he rushed for 473 yards on 126 carries last year and scored five running and receiving touchdowns.

Spectacular, that wasn’t. But it was Bennett’s best performance since 2002 and earned him a free-agent contract in March with the Saints. They needed insurance because their star runner, Deuce McAllister, is coming back from a season-ending knee injury. The Saints had no clue then that the Texans on draft day would pass on Reggie Bush, the nation’s standout back, and drop him right into the Saints’ laps.

That left no room in the Saints’ laps for Bennett, however, and their phones began ringing from teams that needed a proven backup. The Saints waited until Bush was signed, then sent him to the Chiefs – presumably the highest bidder —for a 2007 pick. Bennett represents an upgrade over the Chiefs’ other backups in camp and should be good for at least six or eight carries a game.

If Bennett, 27, can stay healthy, his blazing speed will present an effective changeup for opposing defenses. Though Johnson is no slowpoke, his hole card is power. Both backs can catch the ball.

The Chiefs should not get fixated on getting Johnson 2,000 yards rushing. They should focus on giving him the best chance to help win games while resting him as much as is feasible. They can’t afford to have him worn out or injured down the stretch.

It’s tempting to think that just about any back could get the job done behind the Chiefs’ successful line. But if the Chiefs took that for granted, they’d be asking for trouble, especially with Pro Bowl left tackle Willie Roaf announcing he’s retired.

Acquiring Bennett is another move that shows there’s plenty of action behind coach Herman Edwards’ words. He said he wanted to toughen the defense and stress the running game, but such talk doesn’t mean much without supporting personnel moves. The Chiefs drafted for defense and signed veteran cornerback Ty Law. The trade for Bennett strengthens the running game.

The Chiefs, undoubtedly, will still have holes when they start the season. But they have one less hole after acquiring Bennett. And this is one of those holes that might’ve seemed small now, but could’ve turned into a crater if Johnson gets knocked out of a start or two.

This is a smart move for the Chiefs. We’ll all be old and gray before they find another Larry Johnson sitting on their bench.


A former sportswriter and columnist in Kansas City and Miami, Rand has covered the NFL for three decades and seen 23

Page 1 of 2Kansas City Chiefs - RAND: Bennett's Speed Fills Big Need

8/3/2006http://www.kcchiefs.com/news/2006/08/03/rand_bennetts_speed_fills_big_need/


Natural born protector now defending Trent Green’s backside By J. BRADY MCCOLLOUGH The Kansas City Star

2001 PHOTO

As a Saint, Kyle Turley didn’t like how the Jets’ Damien Robinson twisted his quarterback’s helmet. So Turley ripped off Robinson’s and tossed it.

Page 1 of 6Natural born protector now defending Trent Green’s backside


RIVER FALLS, Wis. | Kyle Turley is trying to enjoy his lunch. At the same time, a bee is trying to get a sniff of Turley’s Subway sandwich. It buzzes and whizzes around the picnic table on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Turley flicks it away with his big right hand and doesn’t give it a second thought. But the bee is persistent. It lands on Turley’s sandwich. Those anger management classes Turley once took are long forgotten.

This bee might as well be wearing a New York Jets helmet.

“You’re going to die,” he sings softly to the bee, mimicking a demented voice. “You’re going to die …”

He grabs his napkin and sizes up the correct angle. He swoops in, misses once, and then quickly squishes the bee into the sandwich.

“I wouldn’t have killed him if he wasn’t bothering us so much,” Turley says, taking a bite.

Say this for Kyle Turley: The man doesn’t walk away from a fight. This is the guy who once ripped a helmet off another player and famously threw it downfield. The same guy who, in defense of a teammate, started what would later be dubbed “The Brawl at the Falls” when the Saints and Chiefs scrimmaged here a few years back.

The big man wants you to know something else: He doesn’t regret any of it.

“Every fight I’ve been in,” he says, “has been in defense of someone or something.”

That’s good news for quarterback Trent Green. Turley is his bodyguard now, shoved into the starting lineup at left tackle to replace the suddenly retired Willie Roaf. After two years away from football, the Official NFL Bad-Ass has something to defend again. And the instincts are still sharp.

Turley looks up from the picnic table. A second bee is zooming in.

“We’ve got another one,” he says.

•••

So how does an art major who loves to surf become the bad boy in a league filled with bad boys?

The story starts in 1982, Kyle’s second-grade year, in the principal’s office. Kyle had gotten into a fight, and the school had called his father, John Turley. When John arrived, he asked Kyle what happened. Kyle was mum, looking as if the world had just ended.

The principal explained to John that Kyle had beaten up a classmate because that child had stolen another kid’s lunch money.

John thought for a second, and said, “Well, good. Good for him.” John patted Kyle on the back, and they went home.

“It wasn’t because he was going around picking fights,” John says. “Bullies were picking on little kids that couldn’t defendthemselves. Kyle would step in and defend them.”

That’s what the Turley men did. John Turley, now chief deputy of the Grant County (Wash.) Sheriff’s Department, was a policeman for many years, the first guy through the door on drug raids. Kyle’s great-great-great grandfather, Theodore Turley, was tarred-and-feathered twice for practicing Mormonism in Missouri. He would later escape persecution and helpstart a Mormon community at the urging of one Brigham Young.

“You look at the pictures of them,” John Turley says, “and they’re almost spitting images of Kyle. He comes from a hardy stock of defenders and people that try to take care of other people.”

Kyle took on his family’s legacy. In high school, after moving to Southern California, he and his buddies would go to the beach and start bonfires at night. Inevitably, the fire marshal or park ranger would arrive and try to kick the gang out. It was Kyle who would stand up for them.

“Kyle would be the one to talk him out of it, change his mind,” says Adam Conley, Kyle’s high school friend. “He was



always passionate. He’s never been a violent fighter.”

•••

The creation of Kyle Turley, the football player, began the summer before his senior year of high school. He had never played football before, only wrestled, played baseball and surfed.

He had the right temperament for the sport. He was also 6-feet-5 and 225 pounds. Turley excelled immediately at defensive end, and he earned a scholarship to San Diego State. There, he moved to offensive line, a position more befitting his makeup. He spent his first year eating and lifting constantly to gain weight, and he started at tackle as a redshirt freshman.

“He wasn’t content to just make a block,” says Ed White, his line coach at San Diego State. “To him, making a block was physically annihilating somebody. His helmet would pop off, and he’d block guys with his face if he had to.”

White played 17 years in the NFL as an offensive lineman. He had played in the same era as Conrad Dobler and the renegades of old. White could tell that Kyle Turley was a throwback, willing to do anything to clear a path for his teammates.

So he taught Turley the art of the cut block, considered by defensive players to be one of the dirtiest moves in the book. White used to cut Dick Butkus. Turley perfected it, and by the end of his senior year, he was an All-American and coveted by NFL scouts. In 1998, Turley was drafted No. 7 overall by the New Orleans Saints.

“Kyle plays offensive line like a defensive lineman,” White says. “Most offensive linemen grow up as offensive linemen. They don’t have quite the edge that Kyle has.”

•••

Off the field, Kyle Turley had always been a referee, doling out his judgments of right and wrong. Everything was black and white. And if you were “wrong,” Turley would let you know it.

“I don’t go around picking fights with people,” he says. “Inside of me, there’s definitely a line that can be crossed. For me, there is right and there is wrong. I try to be a good citizen. There’s a saying I like to go by: ‘Respect everyone, but be disrespected by no one.’

“In a fight-or-flight situation, I’m a fighter. I don’t run.”

On the field, there were plenty of chances for Turley to fight. He’d often get in scraps with his own teammates at practiceand became one of the most feared — and despised — players in the league.

So, on a Sunday afternoon in early November 2001, the stage was set for a moment Turley will never live down. The Saints were trailing 16-9 late in the fourth quarter of a game against the Jets. Saints quarterback Aaron Brooks was taken to the Superdome turf by Jets safety Damien Robinson, who proceeded to twist Brooks’ helmet. Brooks let out a shriek, which made the hairs on Turley’s neck stand up.

It was as if a siren had gone off in Turley’s head. He attacked Robinson like he might have that bully from second grade. Turley yanked Robinson’s helmet off, tossed it into the air and saluted millions of people with a middle finger.

Thousands of miles away, on his couch, John Turley was cheering for his son. He would have done the same thing. “That was a lousy throw,” John would later joke with Kyle.

“The only thing I ever regretted,” Turley says, “was throwing that helmet. If I had done it all over again, I’d still beat that kid down as much as I could have. It was a definite moment of blindness, where you’re like, ‘What just happened?’ ”

•••

Anger management classes didn’t go as the Saints had hoped. For one, Turley didn’t believe he had anger issues. Then, Turley says, the people who ran the classes were Saints fans. They loved the way Turley played. Unfortunately, the Saints didn’t.

The team cut its losses with Turley after the 2002 season, sending him to the Rams. The fans of New Orleans mourned.



After the helmet throw, “Turley for Mayor” signs had been posted all over the city.

The Rams did not provide the fresh start Turley was hoping for. He started to feel pain up and down his right leg during the 2003 season. The Rams sent him to a specialist at season’s end, after the playoff hunt was over. The specialist diagnosed a herniated disk in Turley’s back.

“The Rams knew exactly what I had all season long,” Turley says. “They wanted me to push through it until the season was over. They used me completely. It just blew my mind.”

Rams officials did not return phone calls for this story.

Turley had back surgery in March 2004 and rehabbed with the idea of trying to play that season. But when training camp arrived, he knew he wasn’t ready. He says the Rams told him to play through the soreness, and he re-injured the disk three days into camp. Turley was furious.

He went to Los Angeles to see spinal specialist Robert Watkins. Turley says Watkins couldn’t believe the Rams had let him into full-contact drills only four months after major back surgery.

Turley met with Rams coach Mike Martz that fall. Turley says Martz accused him of “taking the money and running,” questioning his desire to play football. Turley blew a gasket, issuing a few strings of expletives to Martz. Later, a report surfaced that Turley, already seen as the league’s Neanderthal, had threatened to kill Martz.

“He thought he could take advantage of my reputation,” Turley says. “I’ve never missed a practice, a down, until this injury happened. After that, I took off.”

•••

Turley and his wife, Stacy, landed in Mexico, at their seaside home. Turley wanted to stay there permanently. It would be just him, Stacy, his board and the ocean, no one he couldn’t trust.

“Kyle is completely honest to everyone,” Stacy Turley says. “He doesn’t beat around the bush, and I think that he believes everyone is the same way with him. He’s been burned several times by friends and employers.”

Stacy understood why Turley needed a break, but she also wasn’t going to start a family south of the border.

“If it weren’t for Stacy,” Turley says, “I’d be a Mexican right now. I could have easily been content walking away. I had a great career the first six years. At the same time, I’m not built to quit. As much as I wanted to stay in Mexico, I said, ‘Screw that. Let’s go back. Let’s do it again.’ ”

The re-creation of Kyle Turley began in January 2005 at Athletes’ Performance in Tempe, Ariz. He weighed 230 pounds and looked just like he did when he first learned to play football.

“He felt better the lighter he got,” says Luke Richesson, Turley’s trainer in Arizona. “He wanted to start from scratch, a blank canvas.”

Turley’s back was in pain when he first arrived, and his right leg had lost most of its muscle tissue. But after a few weeks of 3 1/2 -hour training sessions, the pain had alleviated, and Turley could focus on building back the muscle in his leg. Soon, Turley began thinking about coming back as a tight end or defensive end.

But Turley didn’t pass his physical in early June, and the Rams released him, a formality at that point. Turley decided to take the year off from football and continue training, this time in Los Angeles.

Turley had big plans for himself in Hollywood. Always a heavy-metal fan, he started hanging out with heavy-metal producer Mikey Doling, whom Turley had seen as the lead guitarist of bands with names like Snot and Soulfly. It wasn’t long before Turley and Doling started their own record label, Gridiron Records.

Turley even earned a starring role as the killer in a slasher film called “75.” In the movie, he gets to wear a ski suit and chop college-aged kids’ heads off. He was a natural.

But despite all the fun he was having, Turley’s time in LA was about getting ready for a return to the NFL. It was about getting away from all the noise he’d created for himself in New Orleans and St. Louis. Turley and Conley, his childhood




friend, spent hour upon hour out on the Pacific, where there was a different kind of noise.

“Kyle’s an artist,” Conley says. “There’s an incredible connection between that type of personality and the ocean. You’re sitting out there, in the middle of the water, it’s so calm and peaceful, it’s easy to meditate. I think he did a whole lot of that while he was out there the last couple of years.”

Turley says getting away from the game for two years helped him mature. He says he won’t take things so personally anymore. Carl Peterson and Herm Edwards saw the same thing when they met with Turley earlier this summer. The Chiefs signed him to a two-year contract, hoping Turley could at least serve as a backup tackle this year and be ready to start next year.

“First and foremost,” Turley says, “I wanted to walk out of that tunnel one more time and have the announcer say my name.”

Turns out, Turley will get much more than that.

•••

Trent Green’s new bodyguard is still mean. Just ask Chiefs defensive end Jared Allen.

“He’ll do anything to block you,” Allen says. “One time, he boxed me out like it was basketball.”

Or ask Edwards.

“Ohhh, I don’t think that left,” he says. “When you’re mean, you’re mean.”

Or ask Turley.

“As soon as I go out of that locker room, there is a switch that flips on,” Turley says. “It’s a focus and determination that supersedes anything outside of that field. It’s a gladiator sport. It’s a fight, it’s a battle in itself, a war, if you will, a very primitive one. There are no weapons, outside of fists and the helmet you have on. Nothing has changed as far as that’s concerned.”

Or ask the bee population of River Falls. That second bee has just met the same fate as the first.

“Two down,” Turley says.

In a few minutes, Turley gets another. That’s three.

“Don’t mess with a lineman and his food,” Turley says.

A fourth bee takes its place in line. This is getting ridiculous.

He doesn’t want to kill any more, so Turley tries putting his food away. The bee lingers.

It’s fight-or-flight time again. Annoyed, Turley slowly gets up from the bench and walks away. The bee will live today. Turley will finish eating inside.

To reach J. Brady McCollough, call (816) 234-4363 or send e-mail to [email protected]




Chiefs' Huard into the breach

Quarterback called to duty after years in the shadows of bigger names

By ELIZABETH MERRILL The Kansas City Star

The Seahawks game plays on TV most Sundays in Puyallup, Wash., because the weekends are quieter now in the Huard house. Last Sunday morning, a phone call jolted the monotony.

Did you hear? Trent Green is down. Damon’s about to go in …

“We rushed down to the sports bar,” Mike Huard says. “God, here we go again. I thought I was through all that.”

If an NFL quarterback’s job is to stand tall in the pocket, warding off 300-pound beasts with an audible, then the dad’s job is to at least hide the fact that he’s scrambling, too. Mike Huard was just getting used to the solitude, the kind that comes when the games are over, the knots are gone and your quarterback sons are safe. That’s all over now. Damon Huard is the starting quarterback of the Kansas City Chiefs.

It’s Friday afternoon, Mike is wrapping up a day of teaching classes at Puyallup High, and the old football coach is doing more laughing than pacing. Damon called yesterday. He’s doing fine, except for the fact that he slept a total of one hour the night before. Somewhere in the conversation, there’s a reminder of that game in college. How he went down to Miami and led his Washington Huskies to victory, ending the Hurricanes’ 58-game home winning streak. Somewhere is the “you’ve been doing this all your life” talk.

But few quarterbacks have gone where Huard will today, when the Chiefs play at Denver. It will be 2,121 days since Huard’s last start, at a place where the Chiefs haven’t won since 2000. And nearly everybody outside of Arrowhead Stadium, pockets throughout the Pacific Northwest and south Florida will watch with one hand over their eyes.

Is Damon Huard ready? Before last weekend, he’d attempted one pass in five years. Before Robert Geathers hit Green while he was sliding, Huard was destined to be the other guy in three cities, the man who backed up Green, Tom Brady and Dan Marino. The guy who never really knew what could’ve happened.

“I’ve been surprised that you haven’t heard more from Damon, that he hasn’t been on the field,” says Rob Konrad, a former Dolphins fullback who was a teammate of Huard in 1999 and 2000. “He’s been in a situation where he’s been stuck behind some pretty good quarterbacks.

“I would feel better with him at quarterback than a lot of guys starting around the league. I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes out, puts up big numbers and surprises people.”

•••

Huard is standing alone on the bottom floor of the stadium, minutes after his first news conference in eons. “Don’t be writing about my minivan,” he jokes. He has an Escalade, too, but parked it when the price of gas soared.

Mike gave him a hard time when Damon bought the Escalade. For years in Miami, even when he was a household name among Dolphins fans, Huard drove around in old Toyotas. He was used to not having much. He was the son of a teacher/high school football coach, and Huard’s mom, Peggy, stayed home and took care of the boys.

The football team took care of Damon by the time he was a 2-year-old ball boy. His little brothers followed the tradition — Brock, the middle one, to Washington, then the NFL. Mike and Peggy tried to have a girl with the third child. They had another quarterback named Luke.

Just like Peyton with Eli, Damon never let his little brothers win much. And while Mike was the tough guy with a soft touch, the coach who believed you show them how much you care before they care how much you know, the Huard boys

Page 1 of 4Chiefs' Huard into the breach


raised hell in the house.

“We broke noses, windows, lamps and door frames,” Brock says. “Mom and dad would rarely leave and get a babysitter. They did leave one time, and Damon broke a window and shattered glass all over me. We were very aggressive, a very competitive family.”

Damon was always the cutup, and he usually was the brother who took control. But he also operates under a little more anxiety. He did a guest speaking gig once and took his father, who made it a golf vacation. The night before his speech, Damon couldn’t sleep.

“I don’t want to say he’s the type of kid who worries a lot,” Mike says. “He always wants to do well. That’s why he has so much anxiety.”

Damon was Washington’s high school player of the year, then made a short drive up Highway 167 to play for the home-state Huskies. He left as the school’s all-time leading passer with 5,692 yards, went to Cincinnati, and then Miami, an undrafted rookie.

The Huards were the Mannings before the Mannings, and Brock joined his brother in the NFL four years later. Damon earned two game balls in his NFL career — one from Patriots coach Bill Belichick for doing a drop-dead Peyton Manning simulation on the scout team before the AFC championship game in January 2004.

“Let’s talk about Damon Huard,” Tedy Bruschi said to reporters after the game. “I don’t know if he took acting classes or anything like that, but it was like Peyton on the other side.”

The other one was more than four years earlier. In 1999, Huard was called in to replace an injured Marino. It was a lesson in persistence — Huard was sacked nine times, completed 24 of 42 passes for 240 yards, and led the Dolphins to a 31-30 win over the Patriots.

After the game, coach Jimmy Johnson gave him a nickname.

“Crazy Legs Huard.”

•••

Trust yourself. It’s a line Mike Huard has told his sons for years, but it had a hard time resonating through Damon’s head in the late summer of 2000. Marino had retired, and the future Hall of Famer was lobbying for his good friend and pupil to become the successor.

Huard appeared to have the credentials. He was 4-1 as a starter in ’99, completed 125 of 216 passes for 1,288 yards. He’d obviously won Johnson’s heart.

But Dave Wannstedt was the coach now, and he wanted to throw the job open. Huard had to beat out Jay Fiedler, who was even more of an obscure name in the NFL.

Fiedler played one exhibition game, threw three interceptions, and got the starting job. Wannstedt liked Fiedler’s untapped potential. Huard, by all accounts, was just tapped when he heard the shocking news.

He saw a teammate as he was leaving the facility that day.

“You’re not going to believe it,” Huard said. “I’m not starting.”

Huard played the good soldier for a year, but Miami wanted a clean break and cut him in March 2001.

“That was a difficult pill to swallow,” says Brock, whose career ended because of back problems. “The unfortunate thing in this league when you play quarterback is that they come and go. You’ve got to make the most of it when your chance comes. That’s the one thing I didn’t do. When I had an opportunity to play, I didn’t get it done.

“When Marino went down, he made the most of that. It’s taken a while, but he’s played for some great teams, great coaches, and now he gets a chance. Whether it’s one game or two games, he’s got to maximize those opportunities.”



•••

Is Damon Huard ready? It sounds like a loaded question as he’s standing in this hallway at Arrowhead Stadium, his life completely different. There’s no hiding it — the starting quarterback is treated considerably different. On most game weeks, Huard stands at his locker, jokes with a lineman, and is relatively unnoticed.

Then that hit Sunday … and, well, it was more dramatic than Huard lets you know. Mike will say it, that Green is a good friend of Huard’s and for about 10 minutes, when Green lay motionless on the grass and Damon had to go about business and warm up in the rain, he didn’t know if Green was unconscious or up, paralyzed or breathing. The place just turned so quiet.

Huard ran into the game, made some mistakes, completed some passes, shook off six years of rust. His 97.9 passer rating was actually fourth-best in the AFC last week.

“I don’t know if weird’s the word,” Huard says. “It’s a great opportunity. The circumstances aren’t great. It’d be a lot easier if Trent had rolled his ankle or something. Now they’re asking me to step in there and try to keep it rolling. Is it weird? No, but it happens.

“That’s football, and that happens around the league.”

All the Huard men’s voices sound the same — Calm, reassuring, kind of like football’s version of Muzak. All of them hate this and love it.

Chiefs quarterback coach Terry Shea says Huard was brought to Kansas City for just this kind of thing — the unthinkable.

They thought Huard could duplicate what Green gave them. They signed him to be the third quarterback, because Todd Collins was the No. 2 guy who carried the clipboard for five years while Green made 80 straight starts.

Collins, also a good buddy of Huard’s, signed with Washington in the offseason.

“We thought if Damon ever needed to be used, our offense wouldn’t necessarily miss a beat,” Shea says.

“I really like his quarterback fundamentals. He’s got a very classic delivery. He doesn’t have any wasted motion. He’s a very bright young man, so consequently, nothing’s too big for him.”

•••

Today’s game is huge, but they won’t be there. Damon’s wife and three kids are back home in Washington. The oldest, Holly, just started school. Brock has his obligations as a broadcaster with the Seahawks, and Mike and Peggy couldn’t find a quick flight to Denver that didn’t cost an arm and leg.

It took six years for Damon to get here, and then it happened too fast.

Is he ready? Maybe the guy to ask is the one who will be standing in Huard’s spot today, Brodie Croyle.

“Everybody’s always saying it’s the best job,” Croyle says. “You get the big bucks, and you just stand there with a clipboard. But you’re not in this league to be a backup quarterback. You want to play.

“He already knows the game plan backwards and forwards, and he’s ready to go out there and prove that maybe he should’ve been starting the past six years.”

Croyle hasn’t bothered asking Huard if he’s nervous. He hated when freshmen went up to him in college and asked what he was thinking before a big game.

“I don’t want to be that guy,” Croyle says. “So I’ll just talk to him about the same stuff I always talk to him about. How’s the wife, how’s the minivan …”

Of course there are jitters. Huard feels them even when he’s not playing, a pang that tells him this is something big.




Is Damon Huard ready? The responses from his teammates ranged everywhere from a definitive yes to Larry Johnson’s answer while he was reading a magazine at his locker Friday.

“He should be. He’s old enough. He should be ready.”

He’s had 2,121 days.

Chiefs at Broncos

When/where: 3:15 p.m. today at Invesco Field

TV/radio: Channels 5 and 13; KCFX (101.1 FM)

Line: Broncos by 10 1/2 (over/under 38 1/2 )

Chiefs lead series 51-41

To reach Elizabeth Merrill, Chiefs reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4744 or send e-mail to [email protected].




Change at QB can turn team upside down By ADAM TEICHER The Kansas City Star

“All they’ve known for five years around here is Trent Green.”

Brodie Croyle

Larry Johnson only knows the Chiefs huddle with Trent Green as the quarterback.

The same holds for Eddie Kennison, Casey Wiegmann, Brian Waters and the rest of the offensive starters other than longtime franchise icons Tony Gonzalez and Will Shields.

One quarterback, one voice, one leader and one way of doing things for five-plus seasons and 81 regular-season games.

That tranquillity was shattered in the third quarter of last week’s season-opening loss to Cincinnati when Green sustaineda severe concussion that will prevent him from playing today’s game against the Broncos at Invesco Field.

Into today’s huddle steps Damon Huard, who has experience at such things. Years ago, he filled in for an injured Dan Marino for a five-game stretch while playing for Miami.

For the Chiefs, it wouldn’t matter whether it was Huard, Joe Montana or Lenny Dawson taking over for Green. This is going to take some getting used to.

“All they’ve known for five years around here is Trent Green,” rookie quarterback Brodie Croyle said. “He’s been the leader of this team. He’s just been the man. It’s a big change for everybody else. There’s a different type of voice in the huddle, a different way of calling the plays. The snap count is going to be a little different.

“It’s a cliché to say the quarterback is involved every play with every other player, but it’s true. Everything that happens out there runs through the quarterback.”

That’s why a change at quarterback is not like a change at any other position. Offensive linemen and receivers might enter a huddle while others leave. Most times, teammates don’t even notice the coming and going.

When it involves a quarterback, they notice. The world is suddenly turned upside down.

The physical differences are only the beginning. Huard hasn’t worked with the receivers and backs as much as Green, so timing in both the passing and running games is an issue. The Chiefs last week worked to tweak their playbook to adjust for Huard’s strengths and weaknesses, which are different from those of Green.

The bigger change is to the dynamics of the team. The Chiefs built their world around Green.

He’s the one the rest of the Chiefs have come to look to as their calming influence during turbulent times. Now, he’s just a fan.

To backup running back Michael Bennett, the situation is familiar. He played last season for Minnesota, which early in the season lost quarterback Daunte Culpepper for the remainder of the year because of a knee injury.

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“It’s a different way of doing things for everybody now,” Bennett said. “Everybody has to make adjustments. You have toget used to the way Damon calls the plays versus the way Trent calls the plays. That’s what we have practice for.”

NFL teams like the Chiefs are used to plugging in a substitute in place of an injured starter. They try to make a change atquarterback a routine part of business.

Chiefs coach Herm Edwards didn’t make an issue of the quarterback change in team meetings last week.

“I haven’t said one thing (other than) ‘We’re going to practice today, and this is how we’re going to practice.’ ” Edwards said. “To make a big thing out of it, you don’t need to. He’s a pro quarterback. He’s been in this role most of his career and knows how to handle his role.

“This is what these guys do. When it’s their turn to play, they’ve got to go in and manage the game. You’ve got to help them manage the game. You don’t put the guys in a situation where you put all the weight on them. That’s not fair to the player, and everyone around him has to pick it up around him and play well.”

The situation might be more traumatic to the Chiefs than most teams other than Green Bay and Indianapolis, where Brett Favre and Peyton Manning have longer consecutive-start streaks than Green.

The Chiefs simply haven’t gone through it recently. Elvis Grbac was the last quarterback other than Green to start for the Chiefs. Only Shields and Gonzalez have been around long enough to remember the occasion of Dec. 24, 2000, when Grbac and the Chiefs lost to Atlanta 29-13.

Not counting one game in 2000, when Warren Moon started for an ailing Grbac in San Diego, the Chiefs haven’t had to make a change at quarterback because of injury since 1998.

While Green is gone, the Chiefs will lean on others. That means the defense, special teams, a mostly veteran offensive line and, particularly, Johnson.

If you thought Johnson was the man before, just wait until today. He had 17 carries against the Bengals last week and might have that many in the first quarter in Denver.

“What’s good is that everybody else is healthy,” said Edwards, who last season with the Jets had to start four quarterbacks because of injuries. “Compared to what we had last year where I was, we’ve got more healthy bodies. Last year up there, we didn’t have a lot of healthy bodies.

“We’ve still got our runner. We still have good inside players on the offensive line. We’ve got two tackles that have been in the flow now. We still have Tony (Gonzalez) and our receivers. We’ve got to lean on those guys.”

To a man, the other 10 starters believe they need to compensate for Green’s absence.

“Ultimately, our job up front is to realize that we don’t have our best guy out there — that’s the reason he’s the starter — and we may have to play a little bit better,” said Waters, the left guard. “That’s something we didn’t do a good enoughjob of (against Cincinnati).

“You all of a sudden feel like you want to take a little more on.”

That kind of thinking brought a caution last week from Edwards.

“Just do your job and don’t worry about what (Huard) is going to do,” Edwards said. “He’s going to give you the call in the huddle, and you need to go execute the call. He’s going to throw the ball, and you’ve got to catch it. You can’t do anything for him. All you can do is your job.”

To reach Adam Teicher, Chiefs reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4875 or send e-mail to [email protected].

Page 2 of 3Change at QB can turn team upside down


GRETZ: FOCUS ON - THE DEFENSE SEP 08, 2006, 8:56:50 AM BY BOB GRETZ - FAQ

There’s one thing that can’t be said about the Chiefs and their attempts to improve the defense: they’ve sat back and done nothing.

Take a look at the chart below of the defensive starters over the last seven seasons. Check out the defensive starters from the 2003 season, when the Chiefs last went to the playoffs. That 13-3 season blew up in the playoffs with a pitiful defensive performance against Indianapolis.

That was just two full seasons ago (2004-05) and today, there’s only one defensive starter still with the team: safety Greg Wesley. Since the end of the 2004 season, there have been eight new starters, with only Wesley, Kawika Mitchell and Jared Allen still in their places (and Allen was a rookie that season.)

Here’s a look at the turnover on defense:

Yes, there has been great change in defensive personnel and that’s been coupled this year with a change in most of the defensive coaching staff. Maybe the quality of individual changes can be questioned, but the Chiefs have not sat back and done nothing. Will this overhaul produce results on the field? That remains to be seen. Position group by position group, here’s how it looks.

LINE: This season has seen more turnover along the defensive line than any season in the last decade. There are three new starters in rookie Tamba Hali, and defensive tackles James Reed and Ron Edwards. Only Jared Allen has kept his starting spot.

The lynchpins of this defensive season will be Reed and Edwards and what they can produce. Results so far has been mixed. Reed is active and seems to be able to play a lot of the time on the other side of the line of scrimmage. Edwards eats up a lot of space, but so far hasn’t been a consistent presence in moving forward. If Edwards production improves, it will have ramifications up and down the line of scrimmage and with the linebackers.

Right now, the problem the Chiefs have is that their third best defensive end is also their third best defensive tackle: Jimmy Wilkerson. He’s going to get on the field at both positions.

LINEBACKERS: the Chiefs have four good players at linebacker in Mitchell, Derrick Johnson, Kendrell Bell and Keyaron Fox. If each member of this quartet continues to raise the level of his performance, that will makeup for other deficiencies on this defense.

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Johnson and Bell need to produce more big plays. Last year as a rookie, Johnson got his feet wet, learned a lot and seems primed to step forward to be the playmaker he was in college. Bell came to the Chiefs injured and was never really 100 percent last season. He’s better now and needs to show up more with plays behind the line of scrimmage. When he was signed as a free agent, the Chiefs talked about him being a north-south player and more of that needs to be seen from No. 99.

SECONDARY: Does Ty Law have another good season in him? That’s the major question mark in the secondary. If Law can play close to the level he’s displayed over his career, the Chiefs defense will improve significantly. The combo of Law and Pat Surtain gives them a chance to do different things with schemes, things that could not have been attempted with last year’s duo of Surtain and Eric Warfield.

Wesley has shown signs of being the player he was early in his career and that can do nothing but help this unit. Rookie Bernard Pollard and Jarrad Page will push for playing time and while they may make a mistake or two, by mid-season that will do nothing but help this group.




Page 2 of 2Kansas City Chiefs - GRETZ: Focus On - The Defense

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Posted on Wed, Aug. 02, 2006

Chiefs in a rush to boost defenseImprovement has already been seen as the team tries to create more pressure on the passing game.

By ADAM TEICHERThe Kansas City Star

RIVER FALLS, Wis. - | The grand plans the Chiefs have for improving their defense don’t necessarily hinge on the arrival of Herm Edwards, the play of Ty Law or the development of rookies Tamba Hali and Bernard Pollard.

Those guys may have no impact at all if the Chiefs can’t find a way to generate more of a pass rush than they did last season, when only four teams had fewer than their 29 sacks.

The Chiefs like to point to last season’s improvement in their rushing defense. They climbed to seventh in the league by allowing fewer than 100 yards per game.

They can make no such claim about their pass defense, which was 30th. The additions of a new head coach and some key playing components might help them make similar improvement, but not like a consistent pass rush.

Defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham, after a few days of training camp practice, was cautiously optimistic.

“All through the (offseason practices), I’ve seen the pass rush improve,” he said. “It’s showing up in camp now that we have the pads on.”

Everything starts with end Jared Allen, who led the Chiefs in sacks in each of the last two seasons. He had 11 last season and will probably need at least as many this year if the Chiefs are to make that improvement.

“He’s really improved fundamentally,” Cunningham said. “It took him two years, but he’s a better technical pass rusher. Prior to this, he did it all with heart and attitude. He would just fight you until he got there. That’s a heck of a thing for a guy who’s had 20 sacks in two years.”

Allen is as relentless a pass rusher as anyone the Chiefs have.

“Sacks are still going to come off effort,” Allen said. “Offensive linemen get paid as well. Very rarely are you just going to break someone down and get a clean sack. But I understand better how to position myself to give me a better shot at a sack. I’m learning how to set offensive linemen up better.”

The Chiefs made Hali their starting left end at the start of training camp, but he will also play in their pass defense and might line up in a variety of different places. He had 11 sacks at Penn State last season.

“His first couple of years at college he actually played (defensive tackle),” Edwards said. “So there’s a way when we go to the 3-4 that we can let him rush inside. There are some things we can do. I’m not going to sit here and give my game plan away to 31 teams but we can use him a lot of different ways.

“He’s going to play a lot of football.”

The Chiefs thought they were getting a boost to their pass rush last year when they traded with Tennessee for end Carlos Hall. Hall had eight sacks playing for Cunningham as a rookie with the Titans in 2002 but hasn’t come close to that total since.

He certainly didn’t last season when he had only one. Hall was injured early in camp, didn’t return until shortly before the season and, after playing through an assortment of regular-season injuries, never was able to make much of an impact.

But Hall has made it to this point in camp without a setback and could become a pass rush factor.

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“Camp is where it all went bad for me last year,” Hall said. “I never felt right the whole season. This year has been different. I feel good. I’m hungry. I just have to go and get it.”

The pass rush suffered last year mainly because the tackles failed to get adequate push up the middle. The four players who started at tackle last season — Lional Dalton, Ryan Sims, John Browning and Jimmy Wilkerson — combined for just three sacks.

The Chiefs added free agents Ron Edwards and James Reed, but much of the responsibility falls to the starters, Sims and Dalton.

“We’ve got to get better push from the inside,” Cunningham said. “Ryan Sims and Lional Dalton are big, strong guys, but they have to improve their pass rush.”

Hali could also help the Chiefs as a tackle, though the Chiefs have yet to unveil that at camp.

“We’ve talked about a lot of things with him,” Cunningham said. “On some of my mad scientist nights, I’ve come up with some schemes where we can bring him from places where maybe they don’t know where he’s coming from.

“He’s a rookie. If you put too much on him, he may not play effectively.”

Cunningham’s favorite tactic is, of course, the blitz. Ten of last season’s sacks came from linebackers or defensive backs. He said during the offseason that linebacker Kendrell Bell would be more involved as a pass rusher.

Cunningham would prefer not to have the Chiefs blitz as much as last season, when he had little choice. But he didn’t promise that and had a mischievous grin as he talked about it.

“I’ll never say that,” he said. “Our coverage element has been good. Herm always calls me the blitz coach. He told me the ways those guys have been covering, I’ll probably call a blitz every other play.

“You need to keep teams off-balance.”

@ Go to KansasCity.com for video and a photo gallery from camp.


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Posted on Tue, Aug. 08, 2006

Hali wants more to his storyJOE POSNANSKIThe Kansas City Star

RIVER FALLS, Wis. | Tamba Hali laughed, though it hurt. He had been kneed in the ribs during practice, and his stomach and chest were wrapped with bandages and ice. Still, he laughed. I think he laughed because he was happy to be talking football.

“I wouldn’t even call this an injury,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Tamba Hali has an amazing story. We all know that by now. His amazing story is why he has been on magazine covers. It is why people know his name. The story may even have something to do with why the Chiefs drafted him — how could they not be swayed by it? Tamba Hali grew up in war-torn Liberia and fled the country when he was 10 to join his father in America. He has not seen his mother since that day he left. He hopes she will see him play professional football someday soon. Everyone hopes.

He learned how to play football in Teaneck, N.J., where he found that he could overpower offensive linemen and run down quarterbacks. He ran down more quarterbacks at Penn State. He was drafted in the first round by the Chiefs.

He signed a contract that made him a millionaire. And the story goes on. Hali flew to New Jersey last week, and while his teammates practiced he raised his right arm and swore to support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies. He became a U.S. citizen, an incredible moment.

He flies to Happy Valley Saturday to graduate with his class at Penn State, another incredible moment. He intends to get back in time for the preseason game in Houston that evening. The Chiefs have already excused him, though.

“We told him that you’ll play in a lot of football games, but you will only walk in graduation once,” Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson says.

“I’ll be there,” Hali said with a serious look on his face. “I just want them to put me in the game.”

See, it seems that Tamba Hali is tired of just being an amazing story. He wants to be a football player. He’s not sure people understand. He is constantly asked about these other parts of his life, his childhood, his citizenship, his mother, his education, and he wonders if everyone understands that he’s trying to become an NFL starter and a dominant football player. He wonders if they understand how close that is to his heart.

“Every minute you are being evaluated,” he said. “It puts a lot of pressure on you. Some people can handle a lot of pressure and some people cannot. I feel like I can perform well under pressure. We will see. But I have belief in myself.”

People want to assess Hali’s game right now, this minute, by watching him battle in the brief scrimmages against the Chiefs offense or studying him in his one-on-one work against various offensive linemen. That can be interesting but, in the end, pretty pointless. I can recall watching Larry Johnson at his first training camp. It was clear he could not play. He dropped passes, missed blocks, ran upright and did not seem to have any instincts for hitting the hole. He was an indisputable bust before he ever carried the ball — everybody in camp was talking about it — and so it was really quite mystifying when two years later he had one of the greatest seasons in NFL history.

It’s like the old coach Jerry Glanville once said: Training camp is for athletes. Games are for football players.

So, it’s silly to judge Hali now … but heck, everyone does it anyway. The Chiefs talk about his quick first step and his energy. “He has that great motor we saw on film when he was in college,” Chiefs coach Herm Edwards says.

“He is having a terrific camp,” Peterson says. “He’s shown quickness and strength, everything you would want to see.”

Meanwhile, amateur scouts watch him and wonder. He was overpowered often in Monday’s morning practice. He would say that

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he could not get his footing for some reason. He ended the afternoon practice wrapped in ice.

None of these things matter much (assuming the injury is minor like Hali expects). What does matter is that Hali seems to have a real hunger — the most significant quality of all. He has his own motivation. His amazing story gets told and retold, and he has kindly answered the questions because he understands that it is an amazing story.

But he wants to be more than this story.

“I’ve had a lot thrown at me, but being pro means you keep going,” Hali says. “I am a pro. I can be counted on. … There are different techniques in the NFL. There are different formations, of course. And I have a long way to go to learn all about that. But it’s still about being a football player. That doesn’t change.”

After Monday’s practice, Hali was asked by a radio reporter where he hurt. He pointed at his ribs and didn’t say a word. She gave him a prodding look — “Hello, we’re on radio,” — and Hali laughed and laughed. It hurt to laugh, but he didn’t seem to mind. People looked at him and saw a football player. And that’s what he seems to want most.

To reach Joe Posnanski, call (816) 234-4361 or send e-mail to [email protected].

Page 2 of 2Hali wants more to his story


Posted on Mon, Jul. 31, 2006

Chiefs' Jared Allen ready to rise to highest levelDOUG TUCKERAssociated Press

RIVER FALLS, Wis. - Two years after Kansas City drafted him in the fourth round out of a lower-division school, Jared Allen is finally learning how to play defensive end.

"And that's a heck of a thing to say about a guy who already has 20 sacks," noted defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham.

Happy and high-spirited, Allen was full of joy just to be in the league during his first season. To the surprise of many observers who hardly expected big things from someone from Division I-AA Idaho State, he won a starting job before the season was halfway done.

He also wound up with nine sacks, a total exceeded among Chiefs rookies only by the late Pro-Bowler Derrick Thomas.

Then he was even better his second season. Able to bend his lanky 6-6 frame and get great leverage coming off the edge, he had 11 sacks for a defense that finally began showing overall signs of improvement. Again, only Thomas had more quarterback takedowns his first two years in a Chiefs uniform.

Now in his third year, Allen is leaner and stronger and more confident - and smarter in the way he goes about things - than ever before.

"I want to go to the playoffs," he said. "I want to go to the Pro Bowl. I want to go to the Super Bowl. I want all that stuff. So I've really focused this year on really honing down my skills. There are always individual games within the game. I worked a lot this spring. I'm in a lot better shape than I've been in a long time.

No, he does not figure this is the year to establish himself as one of the best defensive ends in the league.

"I think I already have established myself as one of those," he said. "I think it's a year for me to even establish myself as the best, as a player. There's so much more I want to grow as."

Whether he achieves that goal in the Chiefs' revitalized defense remains to be seen. But Allen has been doing everything anyone could ask. A rigorous training program in Arizona brought him to training camp in great shape. His weight is up to 270 but he retains that lean flexibility that characterized his first season.

Plus, he's been studying his craft as though he were cramming for final exams, sometimes surprising even himself with how much more there is to know about the fine art of NFL defense.

"Every year I watch myself and see what I can do to take it a step higher," he said. "There's always something you can learn."

Judging by the way he's charging off the ball in the Chiefs' first workouts in River Falls, all his hard work is paying dividends.

"Jared has great passion for the game and desire. But he's really improved," Cunningham said. "It's taken him two years to really become a better technical pass-rusher. Prior to this, he did it all heart and attitude. He would just fight you `til he got there."

His added maturity is also making him a leader, something no one might have imagined from the happy-go-lucky rookie of 2004.

"You wouldn't believe it," Cunningham said. "But he and I have a lot of conversations. A lot of in-depth conversations. That is the making of a good football team, when you have those kind of guys."

Added Allen, "I'm expecting big things out of myself this year."

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© 2006 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.http://www.kansascity.com

Missing from camp Monday was the first-round draft pick who could wind up starting at the other defensive end. But Tamba Hali had a good excuse. He was back home in New Jersey finishing his test and paperwork to become an American citizen.

Hali, who played at Penn State, is a native of Liberia who fled that country's civil war at the age of 10.

He was expected back in camp on Tuesday.

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CJOnline.com / Topeka Capital-Journal Published Monday, July 31, 2006

Time to get started

As Ty Law begins his Chiefs tenure, his coaches face a nice dilemma

By Tully CorcoranThe Capital-Journal

RIVER FALLS, Wis. - Blame Ty Law this time. Every time his name comes up, so does the Super Bowl talk. This time it was Law himself, speaking after his first practice as a Kansas City Chief.

"Am I ready to go out there and play in a Super Bowl right now?" he said. "No. I guess I've got to knock this rust off, but by the time Opening Day comes, I should be ready to roll."

He arrived, on a white horse and with trumpet blasts if you closed your eyes, Sunday as expected in River Falls, Wis., for training camp, but the five-time Pro Bowl selection, who missed all of mini-camp and organized team activities, said he wasn't in top form.

"I think that any time you come into training camp you are a little rusty and that's what training camp is for," he said. "When you haven't played football since last season, remember I didn't go to the playoffs last season so that was a little different for me. You can train, you can practice, you can do all those things to get in shape, but once you get out here really competing and doing football it's not the same. It's just being in the best condition that you can be."

Law's arrival brings with it a pair of minor shakeups. Law will wear his familiar No. 24, which previously belonged to safety William Bartee. Law declined to provide specifics of the deal, though number exchanges usually involve monetary transactions "You know what, he was a good guy," Law said. "I'm going to keep it at that. He was a good guy about it, letting me get the number and I really appreciate it."

The bigger issue, though everybody associated with the Chiefs says it isn't a big issue, is whether Law or Patrick Surtain will man the left cornerback spot. Both players have spent the majority of their careers on that side and both have indicated they are more comfortable there. Law worked at right corner on Sunday.

"It's not that big of a deal, trust me," Surtain said. "The footwork probably is different, but I'm pretty sure both of us can play either side. I played left cornerback for eight years. Most definitely I feel most comfortable at left. Ty has played left the majority of his career. Something's got to give."

Both players are likely to give. Rather than play one side exclusively, the Chiefs plan to match their corners with

opposing wideouts.

"We are going to be rotating every week and we're both getting used to playing both sides," he said. "He was

The Associated PressKansas City Chiefs cornerback Ty Law (24) defends against wide receiver Dante Hall during Law's first practice with the Chiefs on Sunday morning.Click here to check for reprint availability.

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primarily a left (cornerback) and I was as well, but you know he was here first. I think during the season we are going to be matching up on receivers. So whichever receiver we have, that's what side we will go to."

The Chiefs figure to start Law and Surtain at the corners and Sammy Knight and Greg Wesley at safety.

Before Law entered camp, Lenny Walls, a five-year veteran the Chiefs acquired this year as a free agent from Denver, worked as the No. 2 corner opposite Surtain. With Law in the lineup, Walls will battle Benny Sapp for the nickel back spot.

Julian Battle, the Chiefs' third-round choice in 2003, has recovered from a ruptured Achilles tendon he sustained last June. And the Chiefs have lined the pine with young defensive backs.

This season, Kansas City drafted safeties Bernard "Bone Crusher" Pollard and Jarrad Page plus cornerback Marcus Maxey, adding to the Chiefs' 2005 fifth-round pick, cornerback Alphonso Hodge.

The Chiefs hope those guys are the future. Law is the now.

"I get better and better every day," he said. "I am glad that I'm here, but if you ask me a week from now I will tell you that I wish I would have come later in the week."

NOTES: The Chiefs held a special teams practice Sunday afternoon, which replaced the normal full-team practice.

Second-year punter Dustin Colquitt was impressive, booming several punts over the head of returner Dante Hall. Colquitt blasted one punt from his own end zone that traveled about 70 yards in the air, rolled and finally settled in the opposite end zone.

• Special teams coach Mike Priefer, in his first year with the Chiefs after spending last season as an assistant coach with the New York Giants, expressed relief to be coaching Hall, rather than coaching against him.

"As my son told me when I took this job, I don't have to worry about Dante anymore," Priefer said. "I was scared to death of that guy when we played him last year."

Asked which young players have impressed him, Priefer singled out rookie safeties Jarrad Page and Bernard Pollard and fourth-year wide receiver Darrell Hill.

• Coach Herm Edwards, as he has in numerous drills, took part in kickoff coverage during Sunday's practice. He did not make a tackle.

• Notables participating on special teams were starting safety Greg Wesley and linebacker Nick Reid, an undrafted rookie from Kansas. Reid worked on the punt and kickoff teams.

• The Chiefs have had to deal with uncommonly warm weather in River Falls. Sunday's temperature was 93 degrees with a heat index of 105 degrees. Monday's forecast calls for 101-degree heat with temperatures dipping into the low 80s the rest of the week.

Tully Corcoran can be reached at (785) 295-1290 or at [email protected].

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Posted on Mon, Aug. 28, 2006

CHIEFS PRESEASON | Rookies Hali and Pollard make their presence felt

SUDDEN IMPACT

Team’s No. 1 and No. 2 draft picks are a hit with their turnover-causing performances against the Rams,

pumping up a defense that needed it.

By ADAM TEICHER The Kansas City Star

Seldom does one draft produce such results so early, so forgive the Chiefs their sense of satisfaction today over the play of their two top picks in Saturday night’s preseason win over the Rams.

The first-round choice, defensive end Tamba Hali, was selected to help improve a feeble pass rush. In his first game aftermissing the first two because of sore ribs, Hali had a sack and strip of St. Louis quarterback Marc Bulger and the Chiefs recovered.

Second-round safety Bernard Pollard, drafted because of his taste for physical play, blasted wide receiver Brandon Middleton in the game’s final moments. The contact forced a fumble that was recovered by Benny Sapp and allowed the Chiefs to preserve their victory.

Pollard also had an interception on a deflected pass, meaning the rookies accounted for all three of the Chiefs’ takeaways, their first on defense in the preseason.

“We’re both Big Ten guys,” Pollard said. “One thing our coaches in college instilled in us was to go out there and play hard and just be a player and have fun with it.”

The Chiefs were obviously having fun with Hali. He lined up as the starting left end in regular down-and-distance situations but often as a stand-up rusher in the middle of their line on passing downs.

“That’s a package we put him in because he’s an athletic guy and we’re trying to get him in some one-on-one matchups and win,” coach Herm Edwards said. “He’s a relentless guy. He brought pressure.”

Hali brought an immediate presence to a defense that had struggled to rush the quarterback without blitzing.

“That was good to see because we have to rush with four guys and get to the quarterback,” Edwards said. “You want to be able to do that. You don’t want to have to blitz all the time to get to the quarterback. I thought we put pressure on the quarterback and covered them pretty well.”

The Chiefs liked Hali’s versatility in college at Penn State, where he often played as a tackle in obvious passing situations.

“I think that’s why they wanted me,” Hali said. “I can come around the edge and they want to utilize that on the field. There are going to come times when I’m going to have to get on the edge and rush the passer but I don’t mind playing different positions.”

The Chiefs thought their safeties were too timid, so they jumped on Pollard when they had the chance. For now, he’s backing up starters Greg Wesley and Sammy Knight, but it’s only a matter of time before he’s a regular.

Games like Saturday’s will speed the process.

“He’s a force and when he hits people, you can hear it on the sideline,” Edwards said. “He’s going to get better, and he’s a rookie. We had a pretty good draft, and we drafted some players that can help us on defense, and maybe even a few on offense as the season goes on.

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“We drafted him because we thought he was a tough guy, a good tackler and he makes some plays on the ball and that’swhat he did at the end. That’s what he did in college. It was a good pick for us.”

Pollard’s interception was the first turnover created by the Chiefs. It brought some life to a beleaguered defense that had showed little in the first two games.

“It was a promise I made when I was selected in the round I was,” Pollard said. “I just wanted to come in and compete and contribute to the team and help everybody out.

“You could see the whole sky light up. All of the veterans are high-fiving you, tell you it’s a good job.”

With Pollard, the Chiefs had to take the bad with the good. He also allowed a St. Louis tight end, Jerome Collins, to turn a short pass into a 54-yard touchdown when he ran around Collins.

He also took a 15-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness that led to a Rams field goal.

The Chiefs might have even more to look forward to when their other rookie safety, seventh-round pick Jarrad Page, returns. Page didn’t play against the Rams because of what he said was dehydration concerns.

“I’ll be there Thursday,” Page said, referring to the final preseason game against New Orleans at Arrowhead Stadium.


Page 2 of 2SUDDEN IMPACT


Posted on Mon, Aug. 07, 2006

Hall has returns addressedChiefs returner realizes he can’t run them all back, but he still thinks big.

By ELIZABETH MERRILLThe Kansas City Star

RIVER FALLS, Wis. | - It is a lunar eclipse, a bolt of lightning, and Dante Hall has finally figured this out. He sits on a metal bench after practice, eyes a splint that wraps around his thumb, and gets comfortable.

Touchdown returns, Hall says, are so complicated and rare. Eclipses. If one came out every day, who would take a picture of it? Hall had four touchdown returns in 2003, and he thought he could get four more. He knows better now, and doesn’t expect the moon.

“I put too much pressure on myself to break the record and return it every time I touched it,” Hall said. “Somebody in (PR) gave me a list of all the returners who have returned before me, Gale Sayers and Deion Sanders, some Hall of Fame guys. That’s when I realized even these guys never took more than four back a season.

“It was like, ‘Yo, who do you think you are? You can’t return every kick.’ ”

Not every one. Hall is hurting, he’s lost his favorite coach, and he’s rarely felt better. Mention the Chiefs’ new coaches and schemes, and Dante’s eyes get bigger and he talks faster. Ask him how many returns he’ll take back this year.

He says five.

“I’m shooting for something I’ve never done,” he said. “I’m pretty sure Larry (Johnson) ain’t trying to shoot for 1,700 (yards) this year. I’m sure we’re not just trying to go to the playoffs. We’re shooting for the ultimate thing.”

Hall has always thought bigger. At 5 feet 8, he was considered too small to play in the NFL, then he met coach Dick Vermeil. By Hall’s second season, he was a Pro Bowl return specialist. Everything seemed easy. He had three kick returns for touchdowns in 2002. He was 24.

Then everyone wanted Hall — his friends, the people doing his radio show, the gawkers, the would-be tacklers. He touched the ball 142 times for a club-record 2,446 combined net yards and tied a single-season record for most kick-return touchdowns.

He came home tired every night, sometime after 8 o’clock, and barely had time to talk to his son. Two buddies were living in his house, keeping him up late hours watching movies and playing video games. By 2004, when the Chiefs loaded up his duties at wide receiver, something had to give.

He cut the radio gig and the late nights. Eventually, the coaches eased up on his workload. Hall’s been asked it so many times he gets sick of the question — How many touches can you handle?

“I will say this — two years ago when Johnnie Morton went down and Eddie (Kennison) went down, I had to start and it about wore me out,” Hall said. “To return a kick 35 yards and have to go right in the huddle and do three or four plays at a hot tempo …

“I’m really comfortable with my role now. Not too many return guys play 30 to 40 percent on the offense and go right in and rotate with the starters. So I love it.”

From the start, new coach Herm Edwards loved Hall. In a late-spring workout, Edwards said he’d fully utilize Hall as a receiver. He wants to design plays to get Hall in space because he’s so hard to tackle.

“He’s too explosive,” Edwards said. “We need to get the ball in his hands.”

Hall has seen plenty of work during the first week of training camp, but he’s not as tired because of Edwards’ fast-tempo

Page 1 of 2Hall has returns addressed



practices. The extra time gives Hall a chance to do more core work to help with his speed and lift more weights.

And as much as he “loved coach Vermeil to death,” Hall is excited by the arrival of new special teams coach Mike Priefer. Under the old regime, the Chiefs ran the same scheme, Hall said, for six years. Some friends in the NFL said they’d long figured it out.

The numbers showed it. Hall has 10 touchdown returns, three shy of the all-time NFL record, but nine of them came in three seasons in 2002-04.

“We’ve got new personnel too, and that’s big,” Hall said. “When I was hot, I used to tell people all the time, it’s not just me. …The guys blocking for me were creating those holes and they were excited about it. The personnel we had last year, those guys just weren’t geeked up like the guys we had before. “It’s going to be a chess game. I get to go anywhere I choose.”

Even the moon.

SCHEDULE

The Chiefs will practice twice today, with the morning workout in pads and the afternoon in shells. Sunday was their first full day off of camp.

To reach Elizabeth Merrill, call (816) 234-4744 or send e-mail to [email protected]

Page 2 of 2Hall has returns addressed


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