Blob Gretz = IT'S A TOUGH, LONG FIGHT
 

IT'S A TOUGH, LONG FIGHT
SEP 17, 2008, 5:04:21 AM BY BOB GRETZ - FAQ

http://www.kcchiefs.com/news/2008/09...gh_long_fight/

Let me start by writing about the Battle of the Bulge.

No, not the pivotal moment in World War II when the Germans made a last ditch effort to turn the tide of the war with an offensive against the Allies in France and Belgium. This epistle is about the battle tens of millions of Americans fight on a daily basis. I’m writing about the fight to lose weight.

How many times have you said “Starting (fill in the date) I’m going on a diet and I’m going to exercise and I’m going to lose (fill in the amount) pounds.” That start-day comes, you are motivated and prepared and for a few days, you eat less and work out more. But then your will wanes and you sneak a little something sweet here, and a little something salty there. It’s just a little; it can’t hurt.

Before you know it, you are back where you started.

I use this tale in relation to where the Chiefs and their fans are after two games of the 2008 season.

Before all this got started, Herm Edwards spoke for months – make that years – that the Chiefs needed to get younger. When the bottom dropped out of last season and the team finished 4-12, it provided the perfect storm. The roster was trimmed, draft choices were accumulated and the rebuilding through youth began.

Based on the e-mail and conversations I had with hundreds of Chiefs fans, the strategy was considered a winner. Most liked the idea that the direction of the team was changed and a group of young players would drive the future.

When a team goes in this direction, there is no going halfway. That would be a giant waste of time. You don’t dip your foot in the rebuilding through youth pool. It’s got to be a head first dive into the deep end.

But it’s one thing to say you are going young and rebuilding. It’s quite another thing to live through the efforts. They are not pretty. They do not always go well. There are ups and downs that wreck the stomach and create anger, second guessing, panic and delusions.

I write this only because I’ve read the e-mails I’ve received here at kcchiefs.com and at my own website, bobgretz.com. I’ve heard a few callers on sports talk radio. I’ve seen the writings and heard the rumblings of various pundits. There is outrage, there is anger, there is second guessing, there is panic and there are delusions.

Going young suddenly doesn’t seem to be the way to go. Fans want the Chiefs to go out and sign somebody, anybody. Others want somebody fired. It doesn’t matter who. They just want someone called on the carpet, head placed in the guillotine to answer for being 0-2 and losing as badly as the Chiefs did last Sunday to the Raiders.

Listen, the team’s performance against Oakland was without a doubt woeful. It was not up to the standards the team established the week before in losing to New England.

But it was but one picture in a series of 16 pictures that will make up the gallery of the 2008 Chiefs season. Those pictures very well may be a series of ups and downs as young players get their feet under them and learn the business of playing pro football. What few older bodies remain will play their way out of the picture or suffer injury that steals their availability.

This is what rebuilding looks like. It’s a dirty, stinkin’, gut-wrenching business, as difficult as anything there is to do in the game of football.

Some would say the Chiefs aren’t rebuilding, they are building. But that’s semantics. What the Chiefs had here for the better part of the last 18 years was winning football. It wasn’t the ultimate success, it wasn’t championship football, but there were more victories than defeat. There was always hope of something better. Eventually, there was a desire for something more concrete than hope.

Right now the Chiefs are trying to re-build a winning football team, one that will be good for years and will challenge for a championship. They easily could have gone out and signed various veteran free agents and put together a more experienced team that would go 9-7, maybe 10-6 and slip into the playoffs every once in awhile.

Would that be satisfying?

From personal experience, I can tell you the only way to lose weight is to eat less and use more energy and that must become a lifestyle, not a momentary thing.

The Chiefs have made a lifestyle change. There are going to moments of hunger, but the goal is better health and a winning football team.

It’s not time to start cheating.

Damn Gretz. You don't pay attention to the fans at all do you.

Option WR/QBs and "RR SP P" are what is frustrating us, Blob, you ****ing horses ass.

aww shit, it's only football y'all.

Gretz, you stupid bastard...we're not 0-2. We're 13-22. That's Herm's record since he's been here. 11 straight losses. 0-2 sucks, but I think everyone is rational enough to handle it if it were an "isolated" occurence. But it's not an isolated occurence, it's a trend. Just like Herm's tenure with the Jets trended down. It's also a fact that when you look at the team's play there is absolutely no sense of a team moving in a positive direction together. Again, I think we'd all deal with the losses if we could at least fall back on the idea that "well, they did some good things out there and it looks like they're starting to get it". Nope...that's not the what's happening.

So **** off.

WOW



Just.......WOW

"Fans want the Chiefs to go out and sign somebody, anybody. Others want somebody fired. It doesn’t matter who."

No, no, no. Gretz, this is patently untrue.

Fans want the Chiefs to go out and sign NEW COACHES and a NEW GM. It most certainly DOES "matter who."

It's NOT the young players that Chiefs fans are fed up with.

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Every time I see one of these kcchiefs.com articles I'm amazed. How many businesses can get away with blatant lies and openly calling their customers idiots on their website?! If you dont believe monopolies are inherently evil, this should be all you need to see to change your mind.

so... we're committed to running the option with a Slash wannabe and I'm wrong to doubt that it will be successful in the NFL?

Ladies and gentlemen...Bob Gretz. Making reeruns look smart since 1981.

We are delusioned if we think Herm is going to take this team to the playoffs.

Amazing, isn't it?

At the end of last season we gutted the roster, so as far as I'm concerned the 9 losses to end the season last year, and the two to start this season are unrelated as it relates to the talent.

However, the thing that's alarming is the fact that, even with a new, experienced OC, we are doing the same things offensively that we did before.

We are progressing talent wise, but we aren't progressing philosophically.

The Chiefs are just plain scared to go down the field with any regularity. Nearly the entire game last week, the Raiders had 10 up in the box, with a safety deep, yet they never challenged down the field to get those guys off the line and open up some running lanes. Hell, we were more creative with our playcalling in the preseason.

I think that first series against Chicago scared the hell of of Herman ****ing Edwards.
I can almost hear the conversation.

Herman ****ing Edwards calling up to the coach's box, "Chan, what were you thinking on that series?"

Chan, "well coach, I was thinking that using a couple of play action passes, a couple of fake tosses and boot legs that we could get the defense off balance, get the ball downfield and move the chains, and perhaps score a TD."

Herman ****ing Edwards, "Well Chan, that's arena ball, and we can't win unless we use Dustin Colquitt, so don't do it again."

Meanwhile Bob Gretz is still a chunky butt, and the Chiefs are still losers.

It's a hard life
To be true lovers together
To love and live forever in each others heaaaaaaaaaaarts

It's a long hard fight
To learn to care for each other
To trust in one another right from the staaaaaaaaaaart
When you're in looooooooooooove --

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/5763/26912102hl3.jpg

Amen. This is my biggest concern. Not once, in the last 11 games, have I seen any signs of this team making progress. The offensive line hasn't gotten any better at all in 11 games. The QB can't stay healthy in 11 games. The WR's have regressed in 11 games. LJ has gotten worse in 11 games. The defense hasn't gotten any better (and to be fair, any worse) in 11 games.

This is not good. I haven't seen anything in 11 games that gives me any indication that we're moving in the right direction.

If we're losing and you can see the proverbial "light bulb" go on every 3rd game or so, then I can accept it. That hasn't happened.

Again, you are missing the bog picture here.

The roster was blown up after last season, and we've gone from one of the oldest rosters to one of the youngest to start this season, so that whole "light bulb every three games" things wouldn't have it's first flash until this game against Atlanta.

The problem we have is that there isn't a single bulb to found among the coaches.

It's like they're trying to light a camp lantern while submerged in the lake.

it's more like watching a group of preschoolers try to convince us they can build a rocket ship out of cardboard and trash cans.

Bob Gretz really doesn't like fans, does he?

Gretz and Herm think that the average Chief fans are dumb.

I could bitch slap the both of them for that kind of thinking.

What a load of shit.

The problem isn't the rebuilding.

It's the people leading the rebuild, and the fact we don't have a QB to build around.

It's like saying you are going to rebuild your house, but you plan on hiring a blind contractor and getting laborers who have heart problems and can't finish the job.

Without proper training and guidance, the talent will cease to progress as well.

it hasn't really started. we have a bunch of young guys who are just raw and seem to be coaching themselves

I was figuring that they had good coaching in college, so the talent progressed there, but now there's no one to take them over the hump into the NFL level of talent.

See Bob, a Bronco fan clearly understands.

The scary part, that just might have happened. Maybe not just like that, but I am convinced Herm has a leash and collar on Chan.

If you use this place as a sampling, then they are absolutely right.

I understand, but here's the problem with that.

People "supposedly" jumped on board with this rebuild in the offseason KNOWING that Herm Edwards would be the coach and that Carl Peterson would be the GM in 2008.

Now, those same people are pitching a bitch because, big surprise, Herm Edwards is the coach and Carl Peterson is the GM.

People expecting heads to roll 2 weeks into the season are exactly the people Gretz is writing about in this piece - it's flat out panic.

I don't like Edwards either, at least as a coach. But it would solve NOTHING to start firing people 2 weeks into the season with 35 new players on a 52 man roster. We'd still witness the same bullshit week in, week out, the difference being who gives the press conferences on Mondays.

REAL change is 15 weeks away. Like it or not.

Hey Warpath, now do you see what I was talking about with Thigpen?

HE SUCKS.

In no way does he deserve to start another game.

You don't think that, if we got a different coach, we'd started seeing at least some chnages within 4-5 weeks?

I saw a 7th round pick, who got a limited amount of snaps last week in practice, make some bad decisions and mistakes, which is to be expected of a young guy in that position.

I also saw a QB that has lead this team to more points than any other QB on the roster...

It's really a moot point anyway, because Croyle will be running the show once he's healthy enough to do so.

No.

Here's why:

It's damn near unprecedented for an organization to bring in a new coach from OUTSIDE the organization in the middle of a season.

- Good candidates typically aren't available, they are working for other teams in some capacity.

- Even IF a good candidate was available, why would he want a job in which he's basically auditioning for a new GM? No one is going to take a job under those circumstances

If they fire Herm, either Gunther (most likely) or Gailey will be running the show. Nothing will change except the man sending the message.

You know, I have been pissed with the Chiefs since '93, when they traded for a QB that was coming off a major injury, who had three years left at best.

We had been taking the right path in building this team until that point, and even then I had no confidence in the coach to ever take the team to the SB.

Here we are, 15 years later, and we finally have commited to building through the draft again, but we are in the same damn boat as far as coaching is concerned.
We have a coach that I don't believe can ever take this team to the SB.

I don't expect Herman ****ing Edwards and Carl to be fired before season's end, if even then, but I'm going to complain some about the dumb****s until they're gone.

Hell, maybe even after they're gone.

Young quarterbacks usually do suck. What better option do they have?

Neither Gretz comments, no mine related to you in any way, shape or form. And you know this.

You're not making asinine demands that Clark nuke the entire front office in Week 2 of a season - there's a BIG difference in being upset about the state of the team, and being an intellectually bankrupt ****tard about it.

Huard. It's asinine to run out Thigpen. They ARE trying to win.

Fortunately he won't be out there unless Huard gets hurt again. Seriously, Croyle was better last year than Thigpen has ever been.

If it's Chan, and what people are saying about Herm harnessing him is true, he won't have anyone leashing him anymore.

Your assuming that Carl would make Gailey, who's a relative outside to the organization the HC, versus Gunther, who has a long history with the team.

If Carl's proven anything over the last 19 years, it's that the good 'ole boy network is not to be deviated from.

I was backing the rebuild and I still am but not with Herm. I'm not upset because of "Herm" I'm upset because Herm didn't have his team close to prepared for the Raiders. Doesn't matter who the HC is if his team is that ill prepared for a division apponent then I doubt he can develope a young group of players. As soon as the game started anyone could see that we didn't have a chance and that these guys weren't prepared. I bet alot of people who are in favor of the rebuild feel the same way I do at this point. Herm is proving he's not the guy for the job. I say let Chan be the HC for the interim and then make a play for someone like Jason Garrett when the season's over.

PhilFree:arrow:

Gunther was the coach for what, a year? You think that Carl would put him in that position again?

Two years, and yes, I have no doubt that is exactly what Carl would do.

Gunther would quit. He would walk if they dumped Herm.

I know that gives some of you a woody.

:doh!:

No offense, Phil, but that was a typical fan response.

Since when do games against the Raiders count for more in the standings?

Would we have gotten credit for 2 wins had we beat them?

Rivalrys are for fans.

The team didn't seem to be prepared, I'll give you that - but you're insinuating that it wouldn't be as big of a deal had it not been against the Raiders.

A loss is a loss, period.

And for crying out loud, Jason Garrett is being paid Head Coach money by Jerry Jones to keep him from taking another job - the job in Dallas is his, as early as next season.

Jason Garrett, Marty Schottenheimer, Bill Cowher.

Cross them off your list. Not coming here.

Anyone who doesn't apparently hasn't paid attention for the past 19 years.

No offense, Luv. It was a great question.

Yes, because he's shown over the years how much character and backbone he has by bending over and taking a demotion when he was with the Raiders, and then coming back to KC to be Carl's ball boy after getting fired over the internet.

Just to clarify....

I agree that a loss is a loss, but doesn't a loss to a division rival carry a little more weight? I mean, you could lose to everyone you play outside your division, but, as long as you have the best division record, you've got a wild card spot, right? Or am I confusing myself?

Yes, BUT, just sweeping your division doesn't mean you win it. You have to have the best overall record in the division.

I would rather see them give Thigpen time, than trot Huard back out there. WTF is the point of putting Huard out there? We know what he is, and that is not what the team needs to be a contender.

I am convinced, Thigpen can get it, and has much more potential than trotting a never has been out there.

In most years, yeah, that's somewhat right. If we were a playoff caliber team, then the loss would be devastating. Division losses are generally bad.

But in 2008, with this team, it means absolutely nothing.

No.

You would be 6-10 in that scenario, and wild cards are the non division winners with the best record.

It's a business of winning.

When 80,000 fans want Herm's blood, you don't trot out the pride of coastal carolina.

Division opponent, Mr. OnTheWarpath58. Division opponent.

FAX

This would be the correct answer if she asked if you'd win the division.

Would Gunther be stupid enough to get the shaft 2wice from Carl just being a fill in on top of how Gunther found out? I agree about the good'ole boy network:eek:

Which would matter if we're a playoff caliber team.

We're obviously not.

So a loss to Oakland isn't any different than a loss to Atlanta. Or New England. Or anyone else.

Uh, yeah.

See above posts.

Well, I can't say I blame him.

If it wasn't for us, he wouldn't have to lie for a living.

Division winners are guaranteed a wild card home playoff game. That's kind of what she was asking.

I agree. I think it's reflecting on the players.

I really didn't say Raiders I said division oponent. And division games are a little more important then non-division games. Well.... if you're trying to win your division. Being totally unprepared last week is inexcusable. Being that unprepared to play any week is inexcusable. We seemed prepared againt the Patriots so I was fine with Herm till then but I'm not now because of his performance.

And you're some superior type of fan? LOL

PhilFree:arrow:

Last I checked, the FANS pay the bills, and this game is entertainment.

IT IS important to most fans, to beat the Raiders. One more reason why Herm Edwards does not deserve to be the HC of the Chiefs. To not even look respectable against them, should be grounds for firing.

In Chicago, it is the Packers, and Lovie Smith acknowledged that when he was hired. He KNOWS the Packer game means more, and has accepted it.

But no, Herm, refuses to accept any status quo, because of his ULTRA LARGE ****ing EGO. **** Herm ****ing Edwards, I hope a buzzard flies up his ass and out his nose.

:rolleyes:

You got it all twisted. When you suck, you set your goals lower. Beating a hated rival, may be the only success the team has this year.

How can anyone expect us to beat ANY TEAM with Tyler ****ing Thigpen at QB?

Chill. He was in because Huard was a wuss and the practice squad didn't work out.

This "Huard was a wuss" thing is reeruned. The guy got hurt. There's no conspiracy.

His "stop, drop, and roll" maneuver let him down. :p

Jesus Vermeil went 5-7 against the division in his first 2 years, for comaparison's sake...

Obviously, you and I look at the issue differently.

IMO, Herm is the worst coach this franchise has ever had.

This isn't one of Herm's first two years.

People are forgetting how HORRIBLE the first half of 2001 was.

Our "bright spot" early that year was running up the score on the Redskins. The rest of the time mostly all we had to look forward to was garbage-time drives that padded the offensive stats. We had TONS of garbage time touchdowns that year. Hell, the coaching staff didn't even know how to use Priest properly until he forced their hand.

It's the same situation. You're blind if you can't see that.

Jesus Christ, Ed.

Two years and 2 weeks.

BFD.

And yeah, I guess I'm different.

A win is just as sweet to me if it's against the Topeka School for the Blind or the New England Patriots.

A loss is just as disappointing if it's against either of those two teams as well.

But Vermeil is our HERO!!11!11one!

Jesus Christ yourself, you are the one that confined DVs division record to the first two years. It wouldn't make a good case to include any part of the third, would it?

So you aren't into the rivalry thing, go it. I detest the Raiders, not as bad as I used to after the Ben Davidsion thing, but I still hate them. So losing to them, sucks more than losing to the Patriots. If that thinking doesn't work for you, sorry.

Why would it? Vermeil's third year is totally irrelevant if we're going to compare the teams right now. Herm has not had a chance to build a team up as Vermeil did. He's JUST NOW STARTING to build a team. Can't you see that?

Let's think about why I might "confine" DV's division record to his first 2 years....

Could it be that HERM has only been here TWO YEARS?

Vermeil inherited a team that was 7-9 the year before. In his third year, they were 13-3.

Herm inherited a team that was 10-6 the year before. In his third year, what will they be?

3-13? 2-14?

I don't have the time to look it up, but I'd be willing to bet that DV's division record over his entire time here is no more than 3-4 games over .500


Which isn't exactly great considering he had a 13-3 season.

YOU CANNOT COMPARE THE SITUATIONS.

Vermeil left the cupboard BARE for Herm. BARE.

Vermeil left Herm with an expansion team, essentially.

That is laughable. DV inherited a team full of dead cap space, convicts and lazy ****ers. Elvis Grbac was the leader! The running back was Mike Cloud.

Herm inherited a playoff team, with aging veterans and very few young talented players. But his team leader was Trent Green and the running back was your very own man crush, LJ.

Bottom line, Herm's ego wanted his team and he gutted it. He hated it when he became HC and people told him to leave part of the team alone. His ego would not tolerate it.