MVN: Most Valuable Network

First, let me wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Now, on to Carl Peterson. I will again point out that Carl Peterson, I'm sure, had all the right intentions. I know that he had a desire to win. However, best intentions don't always lead to best results. As Peterson's tenure wore on, that became truer and truer.

HARDBALL
Peterson was a tough negotiator. Arguably, he was too tough and arguably that was keeping elite free agents out of Kansas City. A few years ago, Peterson made a play for Samari Rolle, one of the elite players on the market that offseason. Peterson's Chiefs pulled the sleaziest tactic of all time to lower Rolle's market value: they allegedly leaked out a story about a phantom spinal cord problem Rolle had. When the Chiefs made a play to re-sign Jared Allen, Peterson publicly announced that negotiations were being stalled because Allen was an "at risk" player. Peterson was a guy who clearly wasn't afraid to throw punches in the negotiation room.

Peterson had built a reputation as a GM who loved to play hardball. He was a guy so renown for his tough negotiation style that Ryan Sims' father claimed that he was warned on draft day that Peterson would do everything he could to lowball his rookie offer. That approach doesn't work in the salary cap era of free agency. If you want the best of the best, you can't lowball and wait for the agent to respond; you have to make a strong first offer, or else the agent will easily find another team that will. When you look at Peterson's history, you don't see a lot of elite free agent signings. The only elite free agents he had success in signing, really, were guys on his own roster or guys on other rosters that could only be acquired through trade.
Those were negotiations that could be stalled and could take months to complete.
In the open market, he generally overpaid for second-wave free agents like Shawn Barber and Dexter McCleon.

I also have to wonder if Peterson's reputation was starting to catch up with him. I'm sure agents took note of what went down in the Allen and Rolle negotiation. I'm sure it was no secret among the agency community that Peterson got into heated battles with John Tait's agent. I'm sure agents took note about Trent Green and Greg Wesley accusing Peterson of lying.

A while ago, I thought Peterson was a shrewd negotiator. As time dragged on, he seemed to become a cantankerous presence in Kansas City who players were increasingly starting to resent and agents were almost certainly starting to shun.

THE REBUILD
There's been a lot of talk about the "failed rebuild" in place in Kansas City. I disagree entirely with that argument. I don't think the rebuild failed because the Chiefs didn't do it well enough; I would argue it failed because it didn't happen SOON enough. And ever since the resignation of Carl Peterson, it appears more and more as if Herm Edwards was pushing hard for the rebuild and Carl Peterson resisted. Hell, Peterson resisted the rebuild years before Herm Edwards came into town. He had multiple chances to bring in some young players; instead, he continued to fill the Chiefs' pipeline with third contract players and stopgap players like Donnie Edwards and Ty Law to fill their roster. Those are clearly not guys you sign to secure your team's long-term future. Those are clearly the mark of a GM who wanted to win now.
The Chiefs' faucet was starting to leak, and Peterson tried to plug it by applying wet bandaids to it. That was always Peterson's way: when the team starts to collapse, don't rebuilt; reload.
It worked in years past, but this was a different era where team success was largely built through the draft and through shrewd cap management.

While it has become sexy to hold Herm the most accountable for the Chiefs' shortcomings, such accusations completely miss the part about how Carl Peterson wrecked this team with poor roster decisions well before Herm Edwards came into town. And it sounds more and more that he was also the guy who resisted the rebuild, which is probably largely a reason why it has taken so long.

There is no doubt in my mind that Carl Peterson is most responsible for the current problems in Kansas City. All personnel decisions had to go through Carl Peterson, so if you are in the majority of people unhappy about the kind of players we have in Kansas City, you know who to blame.

My next post will transition into the second guy on the blame ladder, Lynn Stiles, by detailing an area that Stiles and Peterson both screwed up big time: the draft.