Commentary: More Hurdles For L.J.

What happened on Friday with the announcement of a one-game NFL suspension for Larry Johnson did not bring an end to his situation or clarity to his immediate future.

It’s just the first of a 100 yards worth of hurdles in front of the Chiefs running back.

I’m sure L.J. himself wishes he could put all this behind him, but the penance and possible punishment he faces for his actions are all parts of the penalty for putting himself in those situations.

He has court dates in December for the two charges filed against him in Kansas City, Missouri. The league has left open the door for further sanctions against him depending on the outcome of those legal proceedings.

That’s a hurdle he’ll have to deal with next month. In the more immediate future is November 10. That’s the day he will return to the team. That’s the day he has to start changing the way the Chiefs feel about him.

From the Hunts, to Carl Peterson, to Herm Edwards, Johnson has fences to mend. He’s got a lot of fence line to ride to get them all buttoned up again, if that’s even possible.

When he signed the biggest contract in Chiefs history in August of 2007, with over $19 million in guaranteed money, he made promises to the owners, the general manager and the head coach. Those promises were not only the unspoken ones that come from signing a deal that big. He told all those parties and stated publicly that he understood the responsibilities that went with the contract and his position with the team.

He said he was up to handling those. He wasn’t. He should get one more chance to prove he can be the type of person the Chiefs want on their roster.

A Message for Larry

Let me establish this right from the start: I like Larry Johnson.

I like Larry Johnson the player. I like Larry Johnson the man.

I know that leaves me in a very small room with all his other admirers. Actually, probably a phone booth is all that’s needed these days. But that’s OK; it’s not the first time I’ve been on the so called wrong side, and won’t be the last either.

Some of the things that Larry Johnson the player and man have done I do not like. He’s dished out a lot of hurt lately, and I’m not just talking about hurting himself. I’m talking about a locker room full of teammates, a coaching staff and an organization that he’s let down. His actions off the field have not been very good either. I know he’s a target out there. He knows he’s a target out there. So I don’t feel sorry for the guy when he puts himself in situations where bad things can happen. Wear a target and walk into a shooting gallery? That’s his fault.

I carry no grudge against L.J. Many in the media do. They are loving this time, because he’s suffering and they are remembering all the times when he wouldn’t play their game, by their rules. Now they can bash away in print and on the airwaves and sound all righteous and pompous about how they saw this coming.

Larry Johnson needs help. On Wednesday before the glaring eye of the media that hates him, he admitted that yes, there’s a problem, and the problem is him. He says he’s going to find help in taking care of his problems. He apologized to the Hunts, the team, the coaches, the GM and the fans.

Where Larry goes from here is unknown. He won’t play Sunday against the New York Jets. The NFL is investigating his two most recent off-field incidents. There’s a suspension coming, that you can count on.

What happens after that is up to Larry. He has professionals who can help him with their advice. He also has friends who can hurt him with their advice.

I count myself as neither friend nor foe. I’m certainly not a professional. But I’ve got some advice for Larry. Coming from a guy who at various times has screwed up his own life pretty good that might seem pretty funny, but that’s not stopping me. L.J. likely will never see this, but I’ll feel better getting it off my chest.

Larry, it’s time to go Rocky.

Now The Ball Is In Tony’s Hands

For the second time in a month, Tony Gonzalez did not get what he wanted.

The first occasion was the failure of the Chiefs coaching staff to make allowances and get him the career receiving yardage record at Arrowhead Stadium in the final moments of a victory over Denver.   Tony G. had all his family members and friends in the stadium that day.  A big party was planned afterwards to celebrate the moment.

Gonzalez pouted after not getting the record, a pout that continued 24 hours later when he spoke publicly about it in the Chiefs locker room to the media.  He said then that he didn’t feel he was being selfish.

Now comes strike two against Tony G.  His desire to be traded away from the Chiefs so he would not have to suffer anymore the pains of rebuilding ended up in nothing.  The league’s trading deadline passed at 3 p.m. CDT and he remained on the Chiefs roster.

On Wednesday, he reports back to the Chiefs facility at the Truman Sports Complex, pulls on the No. 88 jersey and gets back to work.

Now, the most important question is how Tony will handle this matter with the teammates that he wanted to abandon?  Will he pout like he did after the Denver game? Or will he stand up and say in some similar refrain  ‘Hey, I took a shot. It didn’t work out.  I’m ready to go out and get a victory against Tennessee’?

Rest In Peace Reg Dunlop

The week got away from me and I didn’t get the chance to say good bye to Reg Dunlop.

One of America’s great actors Paul Newman passed away last weekend. He was 83 years old.

Throughout his career Newman played some of the great characters in movie history. He was Brick in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. He was Eddie Felson in The Hustler. He was Luke in Cool Hand Luke and who could forget him as Butch in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

But in my narrow view, his best performance came as Coach Reg Dunlop of the Charlestown Chiefs in the classic Slapshot.

OK, so maybe it wasn’t a classic in the most classic of movies sense. It did not win an Oscar. It won no pictures of the year awards to my knowledge unless it was the Saskatoon Film Festival.

The movie did win a Hochi. Hochi? It’s the Hochi Film Awards in Japan and Slapshot won the Best Foreign Language Film in 1977. Seriously … you can look it up. I knew those Japanese had great taste!

If you do not know Slapshot and have never seen it, then you must go rent it, buy it, steal it; get your hands on it in any way possible. If it ever pops up on free television, do not watch. It will be edited to death and it will take the guts right out of the movie.

Slapshot is about a minor league hockey team trying to survive in an old steel mill town that’s seen better days. It’s based on the Johnstown Jets who won the North American Hockey League championship in the 1974-75 season. That was a real team, and a real league and Johnstown is a very real town.

COMMENTARY: THE STREAK IS DEAD

From Arrowhead Stadium

There’s nothing nastier, or stinkier, or more painful than a losing streak. And nowhere is that harder to live with than in football.

In baseball, a 12-game losing streak means a team has gone without a victory for two weeks, and there’s another game to play tomorrow where the dive might end with a victory. In basketball and hockey, a 12-game losing streak would generally stretch over three weeks and again, there’s always another game to get ready for.

In the world of pro football, a 12-game losing streak means months, in some cases many months of sucking on the most sour lemon you can ever imagine. It’s dealing with a weekly dose of the foulest tasting medicine you could ever remember from your days as a child. There’s only one chance each week to wash it away, and when that passes with another disappointment, the curdling in the stomach causes heaven knows how many internal problems.

In the case of the Kansas City Chiefs, it was 11 months and one week of pure football agony. It had been 343 days since the red and gold drank from the victory cup. There were nine defeats in a row to end the 2007 season and then an entire off-season for those that remained to think about the consequences and outcomes. Then, came three more weeks of agony to kickoff the 2008 season. There were a lot of new faces in new places but the same tired results were going up on the scoreboard.

It was a 12-game team record string of futility that called into question the competency of every employee of the franchise. The general manager was hung in effigy on the editorial pages of the local fish wrap. The head coach was declared an idiot on the sports talk shows. His coordinators and staff were sliced and diced on Internet message boards.

On a sun-splashed Sunday at Arrowhead, the Chiefs got the greatest mouthwash possible. They drove a stake through the heart of that ugly losing streak and beat the previously unbeaten Denver Broncos.

For this day, it was like the old Arrowhead again. The crowd was loud and for the most part supportive. The Chiefs came out and got a lead, something that they had not had in the previous 21 quarters, going back to game No. 14 of last season.

And the defense, the same group that had gotten bashed and battered on the field for the last two weeks, showed they had not given up the ship.

Even the special teams contributed some big plays, something that had not been coming from the kicking game in that losing streak.

Mostly, the Chiefs just went out and played football. The losing streak was forgotten. So was the last play. Everybody used to make fun of Marty Schottenheimer and his old cliché “one play at a time” but it’s so true. A player, a team can’t play the game thinking about yesterday, or the most recent moment. He and they must move on.

That’s a hard concept for humans to accept. We are not wired that way, at least anybody above the level of a psychotic doesn’t think in that manner. The Chiefs defense had been giving up big plays and during the week Derrick Johnson had admitted that once the first one came, more were likely because there was that feeling of “Oh crap, it’s happening again” except he didn’t use the word crap.

Their head coach hammered them all week about living in the present, making that day’s practice the important thing. The next meeting was now a priority. What happened in Atlanta, or against the Raiders, or in New England or back into November and December of ‘07 was no longer germane to their duties.

One play at a time. For another Sunday, it worked. It helped slay the ugliest losing streak in the NFL.

It’s not a cure-all. It doesn’t mean anything more than the Chiefs are 1-3. But a team has to start somewhere.

For the Chiefs, that start was Sunday. The streak is dead. Bury it.

Across The Parking Lot

There won’t be many times on this site when I’ll venture into the world of baseball. I hold nothing against the game, the sport, or even the business. Like a lot of people of my generation I grew up with the game and drifted away. Somewhere in a box not 20 feet from where I sit at this moment is a notebook with the game-by-game stats of every member of the 1971 Pittsburgh Pirates. I haven’t spent that kind of time paying attention to baseball in many years.

I follow two teams: my Pirates and the Royals. Boy that’s a pair. Two teams stuck in the same never ending cycle of losing. Going into Tuesday night’s schedule, both teams were tied with the same record, 57-79. That’s the fourth worst record in major league baseball this season.

What caught my baseball attention was a story in Tuesday’s Kansas City Star with Royals GM Dayton Moore. The tenor of the piece was that it’s another lost September for the boys in blue and Moore is unhappy and promising changes with the team.

The Boss

Ordinarily our conversation here is about football and that’s where this epistle will reach a conclusion.

But before that, we are going to wander all over the road a bit, the Thunder Road in fact. Stick with me; I’ll close the circle.

I went to the Bruce Springsteen concert last night at the Sprint Center.

I went expecting to be disappointed. I should have had more faith in The Boss.

Let me establish at the outset that this was not my first Springsteen evening. Not even my second or third. My calculations, hampered by diminished memories of age, put this concert at either the 29^th or 30^th time I’ve seen him in person. My wife says that makes me a groupie. I say now way, because I’ve known people that have seen Bruce hundreds of times. I knew one guy out of college that quit a job to follow him on tour.

I saw Bruce in ‘78 at the Stanley Theater in Pittsburgh. I saw him in 1988 in Sheffield England at Bramall Lane, one of the oldest soccer stadiums still in use. There were about 40,000 Englishmen singing “Born in the USA.” He didn’t tour in 1998 or I would have had four 10-year mileposts of Bruce concerts. I first saw him in 1976 in Pittsburgh. I’ve seen him perform in Asbury Park, in Cleveland at the Agora and the Allen Theater, at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, Pa., at the old Spectrum in Philly and in the Meadowlands, his home turf of New Jersey. I’ve seen him perform in a bar, a small theater, a small arena, a major arena and a stadium. Those are my Bruce credentials.

An Example For Brodie

From Miami Gardens, Florida

Let’s make this plain right up front: the Chiefs did not lose their second pre-season game of the summer because of Brodie Croyle.

Neither did they win the game against the Miami on Saturday night at Dolphin Stadium because of Croyle.

It was not a good night for the Chiefs starting quarterback, but then he did not have a lot of help on his side of the ball.  Pass protection was a problem.  The running game did not produce.  Receivers could not get open, which is always a bit of a problem in making the passing game go.

I’m sure there are many things Croyle will learn by watching the tape of the Chiefs offense’s shutout performance against the Dolphins.  But he might learn more by watching the tape of the Miami offense and more specifically Chad Pennington.  Starting his first game for the Dolphins, Pennington did exactly what he’s done throughout his NFL career.  He played smart football, he threw passes that were available, he set up the running game, he made time for himself with his feet and mostly he did not make any mistakes.

Answer Bob

From Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

The Chiefs arrived here Friday afternoon after being delayed by bad weather.  The Chiefs charter flight had to circle the Ft. Myers area as the Ft. Lauderdale Airport was closed by a bad thunderstorm.  The Chiefs were about to land in Ft. Myers to refuel when the airport opened and they were able to land.  Heavy rains in south Florida have puddles everywhere.

The extra time on the flight south allowed me to answer some of your recent comments and questions on bobgretz.com posts.  Again, thanks for your readership and interest.

Offensive line questions from Blake and Patrick.

• Blake I can’t say that Anthony Alabi has shown much.  When it’s been time to fill  in with the first group he’s run behind Herb Taylor, Barry Richadson and sometimes Will Svitek.  I did fail to mention that Alabi can also play inside at guard,  something he did in Miami.
• Patrick, I think it best for the health of Brodie Croyle that Herb Taylor stay at left tackle.  Believe me, if he can handle the duties there, moving to the right side  will not be hard.  Herb is a pretty smart guy as well, so while in theory I agree with your premise, he’s the best left tackle the Chiefs have right now and that means he needs to protect Croyle’s flank.

Several very nice comments on Gene Upshaw from long-time Chiefs fans who didn’t hold his silver and black  heritage against him.

RIP Gene Upshaw

Gene Upshaw

The scene was a hotel ballroom on the east side of Manhattan, right on Lexington Avenue.  It was a September Monday in 1982 and the room was packed with reporters and television cameras.  Just as I walked into the room, a hand reached out from behind a door and grabbed my arm.  It was Tom Condon, then Chiefs starting guard and one of the leaders of the NFL Players Association.

Before I knew it, I was on a day-long odyssey with Condon and a host of NFL players, including their leader Gene Upshaw.  First, they announced in the hotel ballroom that the league’s players were going on strike at the end of the Monday night game that was coincidentally being played in the Meadowlands in New Jersey that evening.

As you could imagine, there were plenty of questions for the union leadership in that room, and the guy at the center of things was Upshaw.  At the time, Ed Garvey was the union’s executive director.  The mere mention of Garvey’s name could send an NFL owner into spasms of angry shouting.  Garvey was considered him a socialist and the owners made fun of his stated negotiating goal: getting the players 54 percent of the NFL’s gross revenue.

Cincinnati Bungles Do It Again

The late Pittsburgh Steelers announcer Myron Cope was big on handing out nicknames.  Chuck Noll was the Emperor Chaz, the Minnesota Vikings were the Minny Vikes and so on.

Myron used to call the Cincinnati Bengals the Cincinnati Bungles.  It was all done in fun and the chatter that goes back and forth between fans of one team to another.

But the folks who run the Bengals franchise seem to go out of their way to make sure they remain the Bungles.  How else to understand the team’s re-signing of WR Chris Henry this week.

This is the same Chris Henry who has been arrested multiple times in  multiple states over the last three years.  This is the same Chris Henry who has already served a pair of NFL suspensions and faces another one to start the  ‘08 season.  This is the same Chris Henry who has brought shame upon the Bengals franchise on numerous occasions.

His return to the team on Tuesday makes a mockery of the franchise and the attempts by NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to clean up the league.  At least the Tennessee Titans were smart enough to deal away another serial miscreant in Pacman Jones, a guy who is an even more talented player than Henry.

Will The Chiefs Return To the Northwoods?

From River Falls, Wisconsin

For the last three weeks this website has been based in this Norman Rockwell little town here in western Wisconsin where people park their cars on the street in front of their homes at night, leave the driver’s window down and the keys in the ignition.

And when they come out in the morning, the car is still there.

As small towns go, it doesn’t get much better than River Falls.  It’s nice: nice people, nice weather, nice scenery.

But is it the best place for the Kansas City Chiefs to hold training camp?

A Better Way For The NFL Pre-Season

From River Falls, Wisconsin

Within the last 10 years, the NFL league office took over the scheduling of pre-season games.  Before that, the teams set up the games among themselves.  The league took over to try and smooth out some perceived inequities in how the schedules came together each year.  Teams like Cincinnati complained that they couldn’t get good match ups because nobody wanted to come to the River City to play the Bengals.  They complained that there was less incoming revenue.

So now the pre-season gate revenue is thrown into a pot and split evenly between the 32 teams.  And, the NFL does all the scheduling.

The First Page of A New History

The Chiefs are headed for River Falls and the start of another training camp.

It’s year No. 18 in the land of beer and cheese and camp No. 49 in the history of the franchise.  That first training camp was held in Roswell, New Mexico.  Players on that first Dallas Texans team say it’s just a coincidence that their summer in Roswell came about the time the town became famous as the reported crash site for a UFO.