Obsession: It's not just some perfume by Calvin Klein

Hello Chiefs fans.  How ya been?  Have you, like me, been enjoying the fact that football has once again graced us with it's presence?  I am very excited for the upcoming season.  Football is my favorite sport and I enjoy this time of year more than any other.  It would be even more enjoyable if the Chiefs could mend their losing ways and field a winner.  Unfortunately in two preseason tries so far this season the Chiefs have only managed two more L's to go with a long line of them.

Is Andy Reid the solution?  While that question remains unanswered, what we saw last night looked familiar to me on more than one front.  The Chiefs losing games is very familiar.  Philadelphia QBs getting bum rushed and rolled over is also a familiar sight from the last couple of seasons, and last night I felt a tinge of that kind of deja vu.

Will Andy Reid's Chiefs put Flounderville In Their Rearview Mirror? Anatomy Of A Breakthrough.

Where for art thou Bewsaf?  Bewsaf was a fairly regular poster over at Arrowhead Pride a couple years ago.  He made some very interesting posts about our offense and it's performance on a weekly basis.  Then Bews started his own website and eventually he sort of disappeared.  I suppose he lost interest, and given the sorry state of this team's win/loss record, can you blame him?

Alas, Bewsaf has abandoned us to our own exploits.  Would that he could give us benefit of his opinion, but it is apparent that Bews, for enigmatic reasons of his own is no more on AP.  I very much enjoyed reading Bews thoughts.  I hope he is ok, somewhere sunny with his favorite beer.  For the rest of us, we can only continue on with the slog of our Chiefs fandom.

Andy Reid, Alex Smith, the WCO and how to make 14 bucks the hard way.

The WCO.  No, that doesn't stand for the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra or the World Customs Organization (both of which, however, show up as possibles if you do a wiki search).  We are, of course, talking about the West Coast Offense.  The very same offense that Andy Reid was supposedly running during his tenure in Philadelphia.  "Supposedly" Aiken?  What in the name of Jerry Rice is that supposed to mean?

Well, let me tell ya.  You all know that Joe Montana is my hero.  Having him play for my Chiefs may just have been the highlight of my fandom to date (this could possibly be eclipsed by the Chiefs winning another Super Bowl but let's not get ahead of ourselves).  I mean, I love the fact that 65 Toss Power Trap won us a Super Bowl but I was a bit too young to participate in those festivities at the time, and since then we really haven't had much to compare to that.  For me, having a Super Bowl winning QB at the helm of my favorite team was better than not having loved at all (Tennyson forgive me for that reference).

It just so happens that Joe was running Bill Walsh's version of the WCO when he won those Super Bowls for Walsh and Seifert.  I thought it was about time for a little discussion on this most wonderous and exciting offense along with a look at how Andy Reid and potentially Alex Smith fit under the same roof.  Everyone is so caught up in Alex Smith 'game film' (I mean seriously do fan's actually watch 800 hours of game film to find out that Alex Smith can actually throw a football?--isn't that a QB's job?) that they have given little to no attention to what is really important here--do Reid, Smith and the WCO actually combine to make a Super Bowl winning team a possibility?

Could it be possible that the fact that someone actually felt 800 hours of film study was necessary before giving their approval to our new QB is testament to the fact that statistically he just might not be all that good?  I mean, if a statistical analysis leads you down a road you don't like, what are you to do?  You can either accept those stats and report on same, or, if you have the power of the bully pulpit you do something that you know others simply won't do and then you throw your hands in the air and start speaking in tongues about how the stats LIE.  You see, statistics are merely an attempt to put a players abilities into context so that he can be compared to other players.  Stats can definitely be used to mislead, but over time, stats begin to give a relevant view of a players actual accomplishment on the field.  If you want to watch the film (particularly of that specific players best games of his career), ignore the stats and conclude that the stats simply don't tell the story, you are more than welcome to do that.  The question becomes however, just who are you misleading by doing so?  Homers mislead themselves all the time.  It's a requirement.

While it is my fervent wish that Alex Smith is the second coming of Joe Montana in Chiefs regalia, the truth is that even if that is the case, Reid's recent display of coaching mediocrity has given us plenty of reason to pause before we begin making Super Bowl banners out of butcher paper for the players to run through when their name is called at the big game.

The Achilles Heel

Ah, Greek Mythology.  So many lessons, so little time.  You've all heard of Achilles, yes?  He was a Greek Hero of the Trojan War.  His exploits in and around Troy are the primary concern of Homers llyad.  His feats (no pun intended...ok, so it was) were mighty but his downfall derived from an arrow stiking his heel.  How could one so mighty fall from so small a wound?

The story, which is great entertainment in itself, has become an adage.  We now refer to any such wound to a mighty combatant as such.  As in, 'The glass jaw was that boxers achilles heel.  He just couldn't take a punch".  Of course the Achilles heel, can be any seemingly small problem that given time, becomes a mortal wound.  This can be either literal or figurative.

So, why the history lesson Aiken?  What is this all about?  Glad you asked.  I believe that our new HC, namely Andy Reid, is setting himself up with not one, but several situations that could all prove to be (either singularly or combined) his own Achilles heel.  We've all been discussing them already, but let's take a look at what's happened to date under Mr. Reid's tenure.