Herm Buries 4-12

Jul 25, 2008, 6:11:48 AM by Bob Gretz - FAQ

RIVER FALLS, WI – He did everything but dig a hole.

In the first team meeting of the 2008 season, Herm Edwards took his team back to last year’s miserable debacle. His intent was not to make his returning players feel bad, or to throw a grenade into the hopes and dreams of his many new faces.

As Camp Herm began, the headmaster wanted the players, coaches, scouts and other personnel sitting in the University Center theater to know why last year’s 4-12 record happened. More importantly, he told them he would not allow there to be a replay in the coming months.

“What happened to this football team was we showed up and that’s all we did,” Edwards said. “We played hard. We didn’t quit. But all we did was show up. That’s not enough. I allowed that to happen. That’s my fault. I can assure you it won’t happen again. I promise you that.

“You may not like me some times during the coming days and that’s OK. But I’m not going to allow what happened to us last year to happen again. No way. We have to do more than show up. We can’t just try hard. There has to be more.

“This was not a bad team last year. There was talent. What we didn’t have was the mental toughness. That’s what wins games in pro football. Mental toughness, the ability to finish the job you start when it’s late in the game. We didn’t do that.”

Edwards then spent the next 15 minutes showing his players how the ‘07 Chiefs were not mentally tough. There were too many penalties, too many turnovers, too many times when the defense allowed the opponent a big play.

But the most telling numbers came when the head coach put last year’s game results on an overhead projector, broken down by score at half-time and then final score. He then methodically marched through each game. The numbers were damning.

In 16 games last year, the Chiefs either led, were tied, or trailed by 10 points or less 14 times. In the other two games they trailed by 13 points and 17 points. They split those games. If they had split the other 14 games with stronger second half efforts, they would have been 8-8.

But it wasn’t something the 2007 Chiefs were capable of doing. They went 3-11 in those 14 games.

“Were we a bad football team last year?” Edwards asked the room. “No. Were we bad players? No. Were we bad coaches? No. We just couldn’t finish. We weren’t tough enough to finish. Don’t think all that makes you a bad football team. It means we couldn’t finish.

“We start changing that now, right here, in training camp. It’s not something you suddenly pull out in the fourth quarter of a game in November. It means taking personal responsibility right now, with every practice and every meeting. It’s not about physical talent in this league, it’s about what’s up here (he pointed to his head.) It’s about knowing the situation, knowing that it’s time to make a play to win the game and knowing how to make that play happen.

“You can’t just show up. You have to do more. We will do more, because I can tell you this, I’m not putting up with a season like last year again. I’m all out of ‘tried hard’ speeches. I don’t want to do any more of those.”

Read more about the Chiefs first meeting of training camp on Bob’s new website bobgretz.com.

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

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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. He is a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame's Board of Selectors. He has been the senior columnist for the Chiefs web site since its inception.