MVN: Most Valuable Network

When things go wrong, the blame for those problems usually starts from up-top. That's especially true in Kansas City. Carl Peterson decimated this team through poor decisions from 1999-2005 that led to a roster of aging veterans and poor free agent transplants with few notable draft picks to replace them. That spelled a recipe for disaster well before Herm Edwards ever entered the picture in Kansas City. Peterson made the situation even worse by refusing to rebuild, so instead he essentially placed a wet band-aid on a leaky faucet.
It was only a matter of time before the roster imploded. The aging players retired, the cap space disappeared, and the young players with promise were nowhere to be found.

As I referenced in an earlier column, what led to Peterson's recent demise was that he became too comfortable in Kansas City. Lamar Hunt gave him free reign to do whatever he wanted, so Peterson did what a lot of us would have done: he revolved the entire organization around people he trusted and relied exclusively on people within his internal network. As Peterson became more powerful, he began to close his networks off. His last three head coach hires were all from his personal network. That's fine, but what makes the story more compelling is that he didn't even bother to look outside of that network. When Herm Edwards was hired, he didn't bother going through the interview process. He didn't bother interviewing Eric Mangini or Sean Payton. Not to say he would have hired either of them, but it is intriguing that he didn't at least look. Arguably, a similar but less powerful argument applies to his re-hiring of Gunther Cunningham and Mike Solari as Herm Edwards' assistants. Yes, Gun and Solari were two coordinators Herm Edwards targeted in New York, but once again, these guys were hired without even looking outside the organization. Remember when Greg Robinson "resigned" as defensive coordinator? Think back to who Carl Peterson looked at to be Robinson's replacement: Joe Vitt, Peter Guinta, and Gunther Cunningham. That's right--two of those candidates were part of Robinson's staff. Outrageous, right? But it was this extreme loyalty to his croneys that largely led to the demise of the Chiefs. Let's go a step further.

Mistake #1: The Lynn Stiles Gift That Kept on Giving
I earmarked Lynn Stiles as culprit #2 for the Chiefs' current problems and I'll discuss him in more depth in a few days. The reason he isn't #1 is that Stiles was a Peterson hire and it was probably largely Peterson who allowed his incompetence to slide. Stiles was a complete failure in Kansas City and it was his lousy personnel decisions that decimated the Chiefs' roster. Yet, he was allowed to conduct failed drafts from 2001-2005 before Peterson ever did anything about it. Peterson's reaction to Stiles' incompetence was like watching a videotape of trainwreck in super-slow motion.

That builds the case against Carl Peterson and you can see how he has had such a resoundingly negative impact on the Chiefs in recent years. It was his loyalty to his friends like Vermeil, Herm, and Stiles that probably kept the Chiefs from making it over the top:
Just think of how much better this team would have been if just TWO more defensive free agents or draft picks ended up being solid starters between 1999-2005. It was his loyalty to his network of friends that led to a limited search for new coach hires.

Tomorrow, I'll go into even greater depth about Peterson's recent mistakes that led to the Chiefs' recent downslide.