A few weeks ago, the Chiefs’ two-game winning streak was partially attributed to a beanbag game. After a big road win in Oakland, the Kansas City Star has come up with another two reasons:
1. Todd Haley stopped shaving and generally looks like he’s wearing Bill Belichick’s hand-me-downs on gameday.
2. Haley showed the Chiefs a highlight video of the 1989 Steelers.
Let’s tackle these one-by-one. Haley has a four-week old gnarly beard that is being held up as an example of letting his freak flag fly after being too buttoned up early in the season.
“Maybe I was trying too hard,” Haley said. “I might’ve been . . . might’ve been trying too hard. Maybe I was worrying about the wrong things.”
Dwayne Bowe agrees: “There’s a method to his madness. If you see him rough and nasty like that, that’s how the game is going to be.”
Moving on. In Wednesday’s paper, part of the comeback is being attributed to Haley showing the NFL Films highlight video of the 1989 Steelers. That team opened with a 51-0 loss and a 41-10 loss before rallying to win a playoff game that year. The video was supposed to inspire the Chiefs after their rough start.
We’ve come up with another crazy: Perhaps the Chiefs took advantage of a couple bad teams, started playing better football, and got some confidence. Maybe they got over the shock of losing players like Eric Berry and Jamaal Charles to injury.
Football is an almost impossible game to understand, so we often come up with bogus stories after the fact to try to explain what we’ve seen. Can’t teams just improve?
I would have bought that the beanbag game, Haley’s beard, or the video made one shred of difference if they were written about before the Chiefs won three straight.