It's going to be a long season

One area that I have been meaning to write about for sometime now is sports. Why? Well, I'm a sports fan and I have my favorites- unfortunately, most of them aren't very good, with only one bright spot this season (the Penguins who got to the Stanley Cup finals a year ahead of schedule). But the main reason for me writing this post is the absurdity that took place earlier this week at Chiefs training camp. For reasons only known to me, I am a Chiefs fan.

On Monday, the Chiefs signed veteran place kicker Jay Feely to a one year contract. Feeley has an 81% career accuracy mark, and went 21 for 23 in field goal attempts last year for the Dolphins. That same day, Head Coach Herm Edwards decided that the best way to figure out who the best kickers are is to have a "kickoff" where each kicker would have 30 kicks over two days and the best two move on.

So, Jay Feely, fresh off the plane and in a uniform is asked to start kicking with a new holder and snapper. The other two kickers involved in the kickoff were Nick Novak, a University of Maryland graduate who spent the 2007 season in the European football league and sports a 65% career accuracy rate in the NFL, and undrafted rookie Connor Barth from North Carolina. After 30 kicks, Barth missed 2, Novak missed 3 and Feely missed 7. What was the whole point of this exercise? Why sign a veteran kicker to a 1 year deal, then on the day he reports, put him through this fiasco and release him the next day? As Feely's agent said, "If they’re going to base it off two days of kicking, they probably shouldn’t have signed him. It makes no sense to make a decision about Jay without letting him kick in the preseason game. Had we known he wasn’t even going to get that chance, we never would have signed with the Chiefs.”

Now, it very well may be true that either Novak or Barth will turn up to be perfectly fine and acceptable kickers; I'm not making that point. I'm making the point that the Chiefs made a terrible decision on signing Feely and putting him and Novak and Barth through this mess. Feely has a name and a history, and surely deserves a bit more deference than 30 kicks over 2 days. Instead, this shows a serious lack of decision-making and leadership. Plus, this is the final week of the preseason and now they bring in a new placekicker to challenge Novak and Barth? And sign him to a 1 year contract? This is just a terrible decision by an increasingly inept front office and head coach. Bringing a veteran like Feely to the team to challenge for the position must mean the team hasn't decided on which kicker they like- they might not like either of them and this was a way to getting rid of them. Instead, Feely does a terrible job in practice, and gets cut. Practice, not a game, but practice. I will say this, at least the Chiefs apparently kept their word that the two best after the end of the kickoff would stay.

In closing, I'm just gonna quote what my friend Phil told me in response to this story:

For the sake of your psychological health, you should probably just tell yourself that the 2008-2009 football season was canceled because of a workers strike, natural disaster, etc. This year is simply not going to be pretty for you.

Yeah, I already knew that.