KANSAS CITY, Mo. — And so we end this 2-14 season the only way the Kansas City Chiefs could end a 2-14 season: With a Monty Python reference.
But before we drop the lighter and burn the tapes of 2012 for all time, a quick word on general manager Scott Pioli. Or rather, the lunacy of retaining the man in his current position.
There's a great line — one of several — in the movie "Monty Python's Life of Brian," that actor John Cleese, as usual, just crushes. In this particular scene, Cleese plays Reg, a member of a secret organization opposed to the Roman occupation of Judea. At one point, Cleese is in full froth, ranting madly about the occupiers, when he delivers this classic soliloquy:
"All right — but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health," Reg asks, breathlessly, "what have the Romans ever done for us?"
And thus, we ask, with tongue planted firmly in cheek:
Apart from Matt Cassel, Brady Quinn, Romeo Crennel, Todd Haley, Jon Baldwin, Tyson Jackson, Javier Arenas, Ricky Stanzi and a 23-42 record, what has Scott Pioli ever done to lose your trust?
Now picture Cleese as Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt, delivering that argument with a straight face to the locals.
It's enough to make you laugh. Or weep. Take your pick.
As of early Sunday evening, a few hours removed from a 38-3 shellacking in Denver by the division-champion Broncos, the word in Kansas City was coach was that Romeo Crennel was probably out — but that the man who hired him, Pioli, was still a maybe.
If this is true, it's a tricky sell job for Hunt, who's watched a lot of political goodwill with his fan base vanish into the ether over the past six months. And by "tricky," we mean "darn near impossible."
No business should have its hand forced by a lynch-mob mentality. Yet what if that mob happens to be in the right?
In four seasons with Pioli pulling the strings, the Chiefs are 4-12, 10-6, 7-9 and 2-14. In 2008, Kansas City was without a quarterback and an identity. In 2012, Kansas City is without a quarterback and an identity. Instead of steering the Chiefs to the promised land, Pioli's driven the bandwagon straight back into the same ditch in which he found it.
He's overseen a team that went nine games without holding a lead in regulation, a team that racked up 352 rushing yards in a game — and lost.
Over the past four years, the Chiefs are 12-20 at home. Arrowhead Stadium went from a sea of red that could make your ears bleed to Oakland East. Fans used to wear red on Sundays, proudly, and scream themselves hoarse. Now they wear black, sit silently, and shake their heads at the folly below.
From 2003-2008, the Chiefs' drafts included at least six future Pro Bowlers, or at least one per haul; since 2009, when Pioli took charge, there's been one, period, in safety Eric Berry.
The Chiefs came away from this mess with the No. 1 pick in next April's draft, a first for the club since the AFL-NFL merger of 1970, the silver lining of a season darkened by cloud after cloud. This is a roster at a crossroads, a franchise at a crossroads, staring straight into the teeth of a critical selection. If you're Hunt, could you seriously trust Pioli to make it?
More to the point, how could you sell him again to this city, to ask the faithful to fork over their wallets again in the name of an executive whose very name has become a local obscenity? It's not just a potential marketing disaster; it's a slap in the face of the legions who've cared the most.
The Chiefs are Hunt's family business, but they're also a community heirloom, a point of civic pride. Kansas City is made up of Jayhawks and Tigers and Wildcats and Roos. But on Sundays, they are all Chiefs. And they've had enough.
Midway through the fourth quarter of Sunday's disaster in Denver, television cameras flashed a shot of Pioli in his box, deep in some kind of thought. Meanwhile, at the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant back in Liberty, Mo., just north of Kansas City, patrons stopped what they were doing and looked up.
For a moment, there was silence. Then they booed, en masse, for four seconds.
Again, it's enough to make you laugh. Only Chiefs fans are tired of being on the wrong end of the joke.
You can follow Sean Keeler on Twitter @seankeeler or email him at seanmkeeler@gmail.com
