Winning is everything – until halftime

Aug 19, 2008, 2:59:07 AM by Jonathan Rand - FAQ

When the New England Patriots lay an egg in August, it’s foolish to draw conclusions. But when the Chiefs have a bad summer’s night, it’s inevitable to wonder whether the team is still stuck behind the cloud of 2007.

Because the Patriots finished 16-0 last year, they’re winners until proven losers. Because the Chiefs finished 4-12, the opposite perception holds.

You also could point out that the Patriots, minus quarterback Tom Brady, were pretty much going through the motions in a 27-10 loss at Tampa on Sunday. Herm Edwards, however, is on record as stating his Chiefs are trying to win in August, which puts their 27-17 home loss to the Arizona Cardinals in the worst possible light.

Yet, a disclaimer is in order. There’s only so far a coach can push his best players in the summer without doing his entire team a disservice for the regular season.

As it was, Edwards went plenty long with his starters. On offense, they played until the Chiefs’ last first-half possession and the defensive starters finished the half. The score was 6-6, which means the Cardinals won the battle of the backups, 21-11.

That doesn’t excuse the Chiefs’ failure to reach the end zone until 15 seconds before the final gun. Yet you can’t dismiss the reality of the outcome being decided when both coaches were more interested in resting starters and evaluating reserves than in padding a pre-season record.

Were winning his sole priority, Edwards could’ve let Larry Johnson continue to pound the ball. But his 14 first-half carries for 61 yards were plenty of work for the team’s most indispensable player and whose strings already appear finely tuned.

Johnson prides himself on doing his best work in the fourth quarter, when NFL games typically are decided. But impact players have no business these days being on the field at crunch time.

And if you keep Johnson in the game, you also need to stay with the first-team line because who wants Johnson getting unduly beat up or injured if the backups can’t open enough holes?

And who knows if quarterback Brodie Croyle could have busted out of his slow start? He averaged barely three yards per pass attempt, but how often have you seen a passer come around once he starts to get a better feel for the defense?

Edwards, however, needs to pump game experience into two young quarterbacks. Going longer with Croyle would have meant shortchanging Tyler Thigpen, a second-year backup who, as Edwards indicated, has a resume as thin as a rookie’s. Though he put up better numbers than Croyle did, Thigpen was erratic.

If Edwards wanted to win badly enough, he could have sent in veteran Damon Huard instead of Thigpen. Old hands like Huard usually dominate second-team defenses in the preseason.

And how much confidence would Chiefs’ youngsters actually acquire if many of them were kept on the bench while the starters tried to grind out a meaningless victory?

If you’re actually trying to win pre-season games, you want to build such a safe halftime lead that the reserves merely need to avoid a second-half collapse. Or you can hope that your reserves can beat their reserves.

Saturday night’s game in Miami should prove as good a barometer as any of where the Chiefs, 1-1, stand now because they’re facing a team much like themselves. The Dolphins have torn up the roster that went 1-15 and are trying to change their culture.

A 19-14 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars, the much better team when they’re playing for keeps, suggests the Dolphins will be trying to win just as much as the Chiefs will.

And who knows when the 0-2 Patriots will start taking their games seriously? All the Chiefs need to know is that it will be no later than the first week of September.

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

---

A former sportswriter and columnist in Kansas City and Miami, Rand has covered the NFL for three decades and seen 23 Super Bowl games. His column appears twice weekly in-season.