Mellinger Minutes: Clark Hunt’s strengths and weaknesses, Mahomes’ magic, and more
Clark Hunt’s most obvious failing as Chiefs chairman is so materially insignificant that it shouldn’t matter, and so easy to fix that it should not be a problem. But it is also so persistent that it threatens to be self-limiting both in terms of his leadership with the Chiefs and greater ambitions around the NFL.
His subtle strengths and stubborn flaws have each been fully displayed over the last week and a half since his family business was rocked by an embarrassing and violent video that showed star running back Kareem Hunt kicking a woman and proved him to be a liar.
Clark has acted with strength in setting a league-wide precedent, and then passed on a chance to explain the process and push for positive change.
He nailed the most important part of the biggest crisis any NFL team has faced so far this season, and failed at the most basic chance to drive home the point.
Clark spoke publicly for the first time on Sunday, nine days after the video and subsequent release of Kareem. My wonderful colleague Vahe Gregorian wrote a typically thoughtful column about how the Chiefs’ inaction allowed the issue to unnecessarily linger.
That’s a public relations problem, and I’d add it’s a sign that there remains a disconnect between Clark Hunt and fans of the team.
This is nuanced. We need to be clear. Clark and the Chiefs took the right actions. They reported each of three incidents involving Kareem to the league, allowing it to take over investigations. Even as the NFL has proven itself incapable of conducting a competent investigation, that’s the league protocol and there are consequences for violating it.
Then, once the first video surfaced, from the incident at the Cleveland hotel, the Chiefs realized at least three new truths. First, Kareem Hunt was unnecessarily violent. Second, he was violent against a woman. And third, he lied to them about staying in his room and not touching the woman.
He had to be released, and maybe it says something about the NFL’s culture that some of the league’s other organizations might not have cut a star from a 9-2 team even in that context.
One more time: Clark Hunt got the most important stuff right, and if the rebuttal to these words is that I’m nitpicking, well, maybe I am.
But the expectations and requirements are higher for the caretaker of Kansas City’s most beloved institution.
The Chiefs released Kareem Hunt with an unattributed team statement that did not mention the victim or violence against women.
Clark Hunt did not speak publicly that day, or the next, or the day after that, despite being in Oakland for the game. If not for the Chiefs’ self-manufactured and mechanical routines, he would not have spoken on Sunday — he only spoke because they won and clinched a playoff spot.
When he did speak, his comments were brief and cut short by the team’s communications department after about 7 minutes (about half of which was spent talking about Kareem).
Clark never mentioned the victim or what the league’s responsibility should be in dealing with violence against women. Asked separately and specifically about what improvements could be made to the team’s vetting process or the league’s investigation process, he was vague.
“We’re certainly trying to get better, but I don’t think you can ever be perfect,” he said about the vetting.
“There’s limitations on the type of information the league security people are able to get and I’m not sure we’re able to change that,” he said of the league investigation process.
Look, Clark may very well be offering specifics and more pointed leadership on this issue privately. If he is, great. But either way, he was put in position to be a voice of progress on one of the NFL’s greatest immediate threats. This is important to many fans who feel the league is either not doing enough or not doing the right things.
Clark could have articulated his vision of how that should change.
In that vacuum, he allowed a small but vocal portion of the fan base to remain upset at the loss of a star, and others who simply wanted to know more about the process be lost in various reports and the confusing protocols of the league. Sometimes the moment finds you.
Clark literally grew up with this franchise, and has lived its successes and failures in a uniquely personal way. He is more than a decade into his chairmanship. And he still often has trouble connecting with fans, and has not earned their trust.
He prefers silence, and when the team is 11-2 with a rocket-ship quarterback he can fall back on some level of goodwill. But he knows as well as anyone how fickle wins and losses can be, and that relying on blind faith is a bad long-term action plan.
Clark has grand ambitions. Through his father’s good name and his own thoughtfulness, he has worked his way into some level of league-wide leadership. Like his father before him, he often operates with the league’s interests ahead of his own with the belief that everyone will benefit.
That’s fine, as far as that goes, but Clark is positioned to be more than another League Man on the inside.
He has shown himself to be adept with business dealings, and helped pushed the league’s interests in foreign countries, among other issues. He is a steady hand for the Chiefs, and he is getting closer to finding the most productive balance between being involved and letting his football people handle football.
The two most common criticisms of him are that he’s cheap and absent. Both miss the point. The Chiefs are consistently among the league’s highest cash spenders, with what is believed to be one of the league’s highest-paid coaches. Hunt also spends much more time in Kansas City than many fans believe.
But for all of his smarts and training, he lacks the people skills and ability to read a room required for the next level of leadership. This doesn’t mean the Chiefs can’t continue to be a financial success, or even that they can’t win a Super Bowl.
It simply means that he will be unable to fulfill his grandest leadership ambitions without a significant change.
This week’s eating recommendation is the taco at Los Corrals, and the reading recommendation is Hannah Natanson’s essay about The Way Things Linger.
Please give me a follow on Facebook and Twitter, and as always, thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
One quick programming note before we start. The questions came in before the news that K-State hired North Dakota State coach Chris Klieman to replace Bill Snyder as football coach.
The reaction from K-State fans has been generally negative. I see it a little differently, and wrote a column about that.
OK, on with the show:
Patrick Mahomes is either the solution to all of your fears, or the football gods’ cruelest joke yet.
He is the unicorn that Chiefs fans have been told exists for decades, which always came across as a taunting lie, because the quarterbacks they had on their team were always more like hand-crank windows.
The Chiefs have lost that game on Sunday a hundred times, and they would have lost it once more with a normal or even merely very good quarterback.
Watching him can feel like an out of body experience. I’m sure that’s true for casual fans, or anyone who’s followed the Chiefs for just a few years. But it is especially and personally true to anyone who’s followed this team long enough to remember Todd Blackledge or Steve DeBerg, let alone Matt Cassel.
This feels so strange to say out loud, but I feel fairly sure that Mahomes will win a Super Bowl at some point in his career.
He’s just too good to believe otherwise, his talents able to cover too many other failures. But you can never be certain about something like this, and you sure as hell can’t be sure an eventual Super Bowl win would not have to be earned through at least a few more playoff heartbreaks.
John Elway didn’t win one until he became a supporting player. Aaron Rodgers won one, at 27 years old and in his third year as a starter, and has not played in one since. These things should be treated as precious commodities and not earned rights.
I keep coming back to this, though. Let’s embrace the negativity for a moment. Let’s assume the Chiefs lose, because Mahomes throws six wild interceptions, or Travis Kelce drops the game-winner in the end zone, or the defense gives up 400 yards rushing.
Even if that happens, the Chiefs will still have Mahomes at quarterback, on a rookie contract, a decade or more to build around him.
I hear you. The comparison is hard to avoid. I’ve made a point to stay away from it, because it feels too easy, and I’ve always thought that sports writers making comparisons across different sports are a little lazy and sloppy.
I gave in a little toward the end of the game column from Sunday, but mostly to point out a key difference:
The Royals’ way of overcoming three decades of bupkis was collective. They built from the ground up, with a group of friends who rode busses and won championships and made memories together in the minor leagues. Salvador Perez pulled that pitch down the third base line, Mike Moustakas had the dugout catch, Lorenzo Cain scored from first on a single, Alex Gordon homered off Familia, Eric Hosmer had the mad dash home.
On and on we could go, seemingly everyone having their own moment that fed into the biggest party in Kansas City history. Keep the line moving, they said a million times.
This is different with the Chiefs. They were a sustained winner when Mahomes got here, and even with a roster dotted with stars and a head coach widely recognized as one of the great offensive minds of his generation, the ultimate success or failure of another Super Bowl push was always going to be placed disproportionately on the quarterback.
That’s how it works in sports, and eventually we’ll get to the point where Mahomes is going to be recognized as either the most transformational athlete in Kansas City history or the greatest tease yet in the Chiefs’ nearly half-century commitment to being just good enough to lose.
You ask a good question, and I felt the same way after the AL Wild Card game. That was and still is the most amazing sporting event I’ve ever attended. Winning that was enough, or at least that’s how it felt in the moment. But I’d make two points about this.
First, if that’s all that happened, and the Royals lost to the Angels in the division series that year and the Blue Jays in the ALCS the next year, we’d remember that wild-card game and the men who made it much differently. Much worse.
Second, the NFL is just different. The economics of the sport are different. An NFL team in Kansas City is not disadvantaged the same way an MLB team is here.
So I don’t think there’s a point of OK That’s Enough that doesn’t involve at least one Super Bowl parade*. The stakes are different. We’ve never had something like this before.
* Drink.
There’s a lot to this.
I wouldn’t say that was the Chiefs’ worst on Sunday, and don’t think that’s what you’re saying either. But they did have a lot going against them:
Injuries to Sammy Watkins and Tyreek Hill. Kareem Hunt. One more game without Eric Berry. Two missed field goals. The nastiest and best defense in the league emptying its playbook. An awful matchup against one of the league’s best running teams.
All of that happened, and the Chiefs still put up more yards against the Ravens than any opponent of the year and more points than all but two.
The baseline performance of Mahomes and the Chiefs is absurdly high. They were sixth in the league last year with 25.9 points per game; their lowest point total in 2018 is 26 points.
It’s a good point you bring up about what the Rams did against the Bears Sunday night, and the Saints against the Cowboys on a recent Thursday night. Those are wild variations, and maybe they’re outliers, but that’s more of what I would’ve expected from the Chiefs.
Mahomes was supposed to be the uncontrollable gunslinger, the guy who might make a highlight or two per game but will also throw an unconscionable interception or two.
But here we are, 13 games in, and his interception rate is actually in line with the league average and his touchdown rate is near a historical high. He’s really only thrown two interceptions you’d label as awful — the second one against the Rams, and the one against the Ravens on Sunday — and you could make a list of his top 20 throws of the season and still leave out moments better than any quarterback we’ve seen.
I consider myself an early adopter on Mahomes. I was more certain than most that he would be a superstar. But I had no idea it would be like this, and that it would happen so damn fast.
I also didn’t have an appreciation for how his spectacular moments could act as a governor against bad games, because even if you do everything right on every play he will still find a way to break the rules of physics a few times.
lol no.
This is one of the fascinating subplots of this season. The league is open to a comet like Mahomes in a way that it never has been before.
The league’s rules and marketing interests have conspired in a way that encourages fearlessness and risk, and amplifies the ability to create, particularly if the quarterback is equipped with pocket efficiency.
We reference this often, but the Eagles won the most recent Super Bowl while giving up 505 yards passing, 613 yards total, and forcing a grand total of zero punts. Their corners were a mess, but they got by with pass rush, turnovers, a terrific offensive line and innovative coaching.
There’s a real path here for the Chiefs, in other words, and not just because they are closing in on homefield advantage throughout the AFC playoffs.
The strength of the defense is the pass rush. They’re second in the league in sacks, and third by Pro Football Focus’ pass rush metrics. Only seven teams have forced more turnovers.
And the offense has scored 24 more points than anyone in the league, and 104 more than anyone in the AFC.
I’m not going to say they’ll make the Super Bowl.
But anyone who doesn’t think this kind of formula can work isn’t paying attention.
We’re all getting ahead of ourselves, and I’m here for it.
You all have to decide how to live your best life, but if it were me, I’d wait out the AFC Championship Game.
The negative: more expensive ticket, game might not even happen, and a presumably higher chance of a loss.
The positive: you might see something that literally most of the world has never seen before.
As a slight bonus, you know with 100 percent certainty what day the game would be on, so you can book hotels and flights if you need it.
WE’RE ALL GETTING AHEAD OF OURSELVES AND I’M HERE FOR IT.
The Super Bowl is jaw-droppingly expensive. I mean, you can’t believe the price gauging that goes on. I remember looking at hotels one year, and a Courtyard Marriott like 20 miles from downtown Houston was going to be $800 per night with a three- or four-night minimum.
Truly, it’s incredible.
Now, that being said, like most things in life you can make it cheaper or more expensive depending on your means and desires.
I just checked two secondary market websites, and the cheapest ticket is currently (no I’m not joking) $3,227.
I am now shaking my head and sort of giggling at the absurdity there.
I can’t tell you whether that’s a sort of #yolo price that will come down when there are fewer fan bases, or whether the price will only go up. Maybe someone here will see your question and give you some advice on that part.
Hotel prices will be through the roof, but Atlanta is a big enough city with enough pockets of NFL apathy that you should be able to find a place on Airbnb or somewhere similar for less than a thousand dollars, depending on location and length of stay and other factors.
You still need to eat, and you’re probably going to buy an overpriced drink or seven, so if we add everything together for a Friday-to-Monday stay including airfare for two you’re probably looking at $3,000 or so before tickets.
That’s a grand for two flights, a grand for a place to stay, and another for meals and transportation and entertainment.
And that’s on the very low end.
He was really good against the Ravens. Pro Football Focus gave him a 90.3 rating, his second highest of the season and highest since the 49ers game. They credited him with four pressures, three hurries and four stops.
He also made the biggest defensive play of the game. Here’s a quick mashup of that and two other moments he dominated:
We should all forget about him being the same force of nature that earned the big contract. That’s not coming back.
But this is still tracking as a positive year for him — he’s disruptive, and obviously still capable of the big moment.
I didn’t expect this, but the most significant decline in his play might be against the run. He’s still reliable at setting the edge, but the moments of overwhelming strength and wiping out a run to his side are less frequent.
So, I wouldn’t say he’s back to All-Pro form, though that can change if he stacks a few more games like Sunday.
I think I’ve felt this way longer than most, but it’s past time to let go of the idea of 2014 Justin Houston. That guys is not walking through the door again.
But he’s still a valuable piece, a leader not just on the defense but around the locker room. He’s a really good player when he’s right — maybe the difference is Pro Bowler, rather than All-Pro — and at the moment he’s right.
Are we still doing this? Blaming everything on Bob Sutton?
The Chiefs gave up 24 points in a full game plus a possession. They held the Ravens to their lowest point total. The clearly could not stop the run, but even that number was lower than the previous three starts by Lamar Jackson.
This is a weird place for me to be. I do not think Bob Sutton should have his job. And I don’t think he’s having a good year.
But he’s also coaching a defense with atrocious safeties, and inside linebackers who just aren’t good enough.
Some element of that is on Sutton. For sure. Adjust. Try something new. No defense with Chris Jones, Dee Ford, Allen Bailey, Justin Houston and a solid group of corners* should be 30th in defense.
* Yeah, I said it.
But at some point the players have to play. Hitchens has not been as good here as he was in Dallas. And again, some of that is on Sutton. But the front office signed him to the contract, and Hitchens is still free to make plays.
The biggest problems on defense have generally come when they’ve missed tackles. Sutton is not coaching them to miss tackles. That’s on the players.
One more time: This is not a defense of Sutton, and I believe the Chiefs should’ve hired a new coordinator.
But blaming all the problems on him is reductive, oversimplified and misses the point.
This is an interesting question.
Objectively, no. The Chiefs do not have a kicker problem here. Even with those misses, Butker has hit on 87.5 percent of his field goals, which is 12th in the league. Two of his three misses have come from 50 yards or more.
But, naturally, sure. It’s a worry. They nearly lost the game on Sunday because of two misses, and his miss in the playoffs last year was an important part of the collapse.
But like all things, there is nuance here that makes hard takes in either direction a waste of time.
First, and probably most importantly, kicks are not entirely on kickers. On Butker’s first miss against the Ravens, the snap was a little too into holder Dustin Colquitt’s body. That’s not an excuse, and NFL kickers are paid to be good enough to block out things like that. But if even that relatively small imperfection flubbed the timing or process of the kick, it’s worth keeping in mind.
The process on the second miss was more flawed. Another snap a little too into Colquitt’s body, and he didn’t make a clean catch. From my untrained eye, the hold was still down in time, but maybe the ball was leaning a little toward the right, which is the direction Butker missed.
Let’s go to the video:
All of that matters, so here’s where I land:
Butker has earned the benefit of the doubt, but nobody should pretend he’s Adam Vinatieri or Stephen Gostkowski. Let’s at least wait for him to get through a playoff game without a key miss to dismiss the idea of a horrific ending.
We talked a little about this on the Border Patrol, and side note, it was my favorite hour we’ve done in the five years or so I’ve been staining their program.
My mind has been warped by Mahomes to the point that when it was fourth and 4, I was a little concerned the Chiefs would lose, but for some reason when it went to fourth and 9 I actually felt more confident that Mahomes would convert.
We’re at a point in his career that we will never get back, and this is worth remembering. He hasn’t screwed up yet. Hasn’t lost in the playoffs. We haven’t seen a game where he just wasn’t good enough.
That will happen. He is not going to dominate every game over a 20-year career. Aaron Rodgers threw for fewer than 200 yards in a loss to the Vikings. Tom Brady got to just 10 points in losses to the Lions and Titans. And they’re the best in the game, arguably the two best to ever do it.
I make a conscious effort to keep that in mind. It’s healthy. At some point, a wild interception like that falling down, sidearm concoction against the Ravens will cost a game.
He’s not perfect, and at some point they’re going to lose because he won’t be productive enough and won’t be able to find the magic at the end.
But, son of a gun, until that happens I’m going to keep on expecting this absurdity because it’s all we’ve seen so far.
I had the same thought last week, when all of this was going on.
I want to be clear here: I do not think the Chiefs orchestrated this to move away from talking about Kareem Hunt. I believe this happened organically, with two close friends each comfortable enough in both themselves and their friendship to make fun of each other publicly.
But, yeah, I do think it was conveniently timed.
These things are hard to define, and often overstated by people like me. But I do believe it’s a good locker room, with friends who genuinely root for each other and push for the collective best. That’s easier to do at 11-2 than 2-11, but I do think it matters on some level.
By the way, this whole thing started because Dieter was wide open down the right sideline in Oakland and Mahomes overthrew him.
But that was nothing compared to this play from the Ravens game. They got 17 yards on it, and Dieter clearly was not the first or second read, so this is only for film room joke purposes but look at how wide open he is at the top of the screen:
Well, I know you said athlete, but the first two that come to mind are Bill Snyder and Gary Pinkel.
Snyder is rather self-explanatory, and Pinkel is a (much) less dramatic version of the same story: Mizzou had been to just two bowl games in 17 years when Pinkel took the job.
Each man took over a program that had offered fans little (Mizzou) or nothing (K-State), and turned it into a consistent winner. That’s an incredible feat, and bonus points to Pinkel for a former assistant (and alum, obviously) finding at least early success after him.
But you did say athlete, so fine, and the first that comes to mind is Salvador Perez. You could say this about a lot of positions — centerfield, shortstop — but the Royals had not had a star catcher since Darrell Porter, and most people remember Porter as a Cardinal.
It was a group lift, for sure, but Perez was on the inside of the circle of trust in pushing the Royals to a parade.
Nationally, the first that comes to mind is LeBron James. The Cavs hadn’t had a winning season in seven years and had never been to even the Finals before he was drafted.
The Patriots were perennial losers before Tom Brady (and his coach, but you said athlete). People in Boston might make a case for David Ortiz, but that’s a little complicated. Michael Jordan in Chicago. Drew Brees in New Orleans.
Those are the first that come immediately to mind. Obviously there are more. You might be yelling one at your screen right now, and I might be thinking of a few more by now.
But the point you’re making is clear and smart. Mahomes has a chance to do that here. It’s a unique opportunity, both because of the Chiefs’ history of quarterbacks and history in the postseason.
This is potentially the biggest story in Kansas City sports history. That’s not an exaggeration.
Alex Froster asked a similar question on Twitter, and I’m not sure I can do better than his answer of “carpentry.” If you can build a cabinet or put in drywall blindfolded, then you are a hero to me and millions of Americans.
Sometimes I make a water without looking at the cup, just going by the changing sound as the liquid gets closer to the top. I can change a diaper without really looking, though only if it’s #1. The remote. I’m good with the remote without looking. Brushing my teeth? Does that count?
The problem with all of these examples is they’re mostly a sign of routine, laziness, or half-hearted execution. Doing any of these acts without looking does not improve performance the way that throwing a football without looking does.
Like, literally, the way defensive backs and linebackers are taught to play the pass includes looking at the quarterback’s eyes. If you’ve played football at any level you know that, and even if you didn’t you’d know it by listening to basically any player after an interception.
“I followed his eyes,” the proud man will invariably say.
Only here, with this freak, following his eyes will only lead you to peril. There is no precedent for it, at least that I’m aware of.
THIS HAPPENS 100 PERCENT OF THE TIME AND TRYING TO PICK THEM UP ALWAYS MAKES ME FEEL LIKE A STALE MARSHMALLOW.
I mean, the tradeoff is probably still worth it, because I don’t want them to be staring at phone screens and the crayons are a great distraction until the pizza* comes but the struggle is real out there.
* Mine are the kind of kids who would eat pepperoni pizza three meals a day plus a snack every day for an entire year and I am not exaggerating even a tiny bit.
Needs to feel like it hasn’t been updated in a while. Needs to have friendly bartenders, but not the kind that are particularly interested in hearing what kind of vodka you want in that martini. The menu needs to include some random gem, like wings or a perfect burger or, say, a triple BLT.
It needs to be the kind of spot you’re a little uncomfortable going to in slacks or a dress, but totally good in a hoodie and hat. Bonus points if they play music with cuss words. More bonus points if there’s a jukebox. LOTS of bonus points if it’s the kind of jukebox people use a lot.
The first that come to mind: The Peanut, Caddyshack, Hi Dive, Twin City, the Brick, John’s Big Deck and Grinders.
Tanner’s is close but misses the cut because it can get a little sceney. I’m open to an argument for The Bar, but the interior is a little too clean, and the last time I was there I thought I saw a steak special that looked a little too nice. I run a tight ship over here when it comes to my dive bars.
This week, I’m particularly grateful to be out of the parent weeds. Man, it felt like our kids were 2 1/2 years and 6 months old for like a decade. You always love your kids, but there are also times you feel overwhelmed. Or, at least, there are those times with my wife and I. They’re fewer and fewer now. That’s a good thing. A very good thing.
This story was originally published December 11, 2018 at 10:44 AM.