Mellinger Minutes: Chiefs freakouts and why Snoop Dogg is America’s last honest man
By the time you read this, the spectacle of James Naismith Court hosting strippers in their natural habitat of poles and Nasty Dogg smoking a fake blunt (and others who did the real thing) and a wildly talented rapper who has made a fortune over the last 30 years with explosively explicit lyrics doing his thing is four days old.
Honestly, I should’ve written three columns on this by now.
Part of me still can’t believe it’s all true. You could not make this up.
Jeff Long, who really might be overmatched as Kansas’ athletic director, put out a statement that claimed confusion over what Snoop Dogg may’ve meant by “acrobatic dancers” performing at Late Night in the Phog, the basketball team’s annual tipoff and recruiting event. Long later updated the statement to remove the phrase, which just made the whole thing more ridiculous.
And, good grief, we’re in the fifth paragraph and just now mentioning that Snoop, who was paid by Adidas, the shoe company that’s been shown to have broken the NCAA’s dumb rules about paying players, shot fake money at KU basketball players.
Oh-Oh-Oh! And here we are in the sixth paragraph and we’re just now mentioning that all of this happened a few days after KU announced the Snoop Dogg show with a video of basketball coach Bill Self wearing a gold $ chain over an Adidas T-shirt — no KU logo, just Adidas — and a few hours after Self told the crowd “bad publicity is better than no publicity.”
Because this is America, in the last few days anyone with an opinion on this has predictably retreated along party lines to their respective corners.
Many Kansas fans are making fun of the whole thing and accusing anyone who criticizes of pearl clutching and worse.
Many others are crushing KU for any number of offenses — the stupidity of thinking Snoop was playing a G-rated show, the complete lack of self-awareness to be seen as openly mocking the NCAA as its own future hangs in the balance, or the weakness of doing all of that and then apologizing with a claim of ignorance.
My friends, I’m here to tell you that this is one place we can have our cake of laughing at KU double-birding the NCAA and eat it, too, washing it down with a tall glass of KU Just Jumped The Line From Admirably Aggressive To Shamefully Stupid.
If you’re going to book a legendary gangster rapper paid by the company you’re claiming victimized you, at least lean into it and accept your heel turn. Hulk Hogan showed it can be a good career move.
But don’t do any of this and then expect any human over the age of 6 months to believe your excuses.
You would need a healthy imagination fueled by all the substances Snoop and his crew consumed on Friday to come up with a more farcical construct:
▪ a literal federal case made of protecting the antiquated, dishonest and hypocritical rules in place to keep self-serving and redundant administrators able to buy a boat.
▪ a basketball program re-upping with the company it somehow-with-a-straight-face claimed to be victimized by.
▪ twisted logic and exploitative NCAA rules that essentially forced Kansas to label a shoe rep as a booster in order to preserve the eligibility of an innocent athlete, and then an administrative process that is now using that label to hang a program whose primary offense has been doing the same stuff everyone else is doing except on FBI wiretaps and way sloppier and with a shoe rep who appears to be a dunce.
This is a shambles and top-to-bottom farce. How did we get here? People are in jail for helping the talent in a multi-billion dollar business get a small fraction of their worth. A coach with a $50 million contract is mocking the NCAA one day, saying bad publicity beats no publicity the next, and then claiming shock when the hired entertainment turned out to be one of the most famous gangster rappers of all time.
Long somehow was given a contract in which he would benefit financially from his program taking major NCAA penalties, and his most significant move to date was hiring a football coach who won a national championship when this year’s high school seniors were in kindergarten and who is now six games into his career at Kansas and on his third offensive coordinator.
The whole thing is a sham, and nobody involved can be defended with passion.
Except for Snoop.
He’s the only honest man in this whole story.
This week’s eating recommendation is this smashed burger recipe except on a grill, and the reading recommendation is Pedro Moura on the evolution of Mark Prior.
Please give me a follow on Twitter and Facebook and as always thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
Look, I can see how the layperson might consider the Chiefs losing as 10 1/2-point home favorites a bad look for a column posted two days earlier calling the regular season a fun way to kill time before the inevitable Chiefs-Patriots AFC Championship game.
But if you think an atrocious showing on both sides of the ball is going to keep me from doubling down then you, my friend, must be new here.
The next three months will show whether I’m convicted or stupid but I feel the same today as I did last week.
The Chiefs are an immensely talented but inherently flawed team playing in a league where the margins, while growing, remain small enough for routine upsets.
We’re going to drill down on much of went wrong against the Colts, but before we get into the weeds let’s all agree on a basic set of facts.
▪ the Chiefs are 4-1 and remain in good position in the AFC West with a lead on the Raiders and a victory on their home field.
▪ the Chiefs played all or much of the Colts game with their unicorn quarterback on one ankle and without their starting left tackle, starting left guard, best two receivers, best defensive player, starting middle linebacker and rotational defensive tackle.
▪ they dropped a touchdown pass, fumbled in scoring position, committed a dizzying series of bad and unforced penalties, got trucked on both lines of scrimmage, and the quarterback missed too many open receivers.
▪ they still had a chance at the end against a playoff-caliber opponent playing what Blair justifiably judged as roughly the Chiefs’ D+ game.
It’s not all bad, is what I’m saying.
What matters — what’s real, in Reid-speak — is whether the Chiefs can patch some holes.
I believe they can. I believe this is a playoff team, and probably one with a first-round bye, whose ultimate success will be judged by whether they can advance to the Super Bowl.
Well, sure. But a couple facts are worth pointing out here.
First, no team is going to be as effective with this many injuries. You can cover yourself in all the Next Man Up lies you want but if talent didn’t matter nobody would ever get a contract extension.
NFL teams are more star-centric than any point I can remember, and that is especially true for the Chiefs with Mahomes, Hill, Kelce, Jones, Clark and Mathieu.
On Sunday, from that group, only Mathieu performed like a star. That’s a problem.
Second, Andy Reid won the Chiefs’ first playoff game in more than two decades after starting 1-5 with the franchise running back ripping his ACL. Reid is 3-1 when starting a backup quarterback in Kansas City, and the one loss was the time he sat as many starters as possible with playoff seeding secure on the road against a Chargers team playing for its season. The Chiefs lost in overtime.
One of the frustrations of 2019 — please, let me be 104 years old and yell at this cloud real quick — is that nobody has time for nuance.
We all make points, then listen to the counters, and sometimes it’s easy to feel backed into a corner and arguing absolutes that you just don’t believe in.
So I’m not here to say the Chiefs are without problems. They have a lot of problems, not all of which can be fixed by better health.
I’m just here to point out that there is no such thing as a perfect NFL team, and that for a team that we all agree is headed toward the playoffs the important stuff isn’t what they look like in early October.
It’s what that evolves into by January.
This is the real question of the day, and the answer will come over the next three months, but for now you can see some of each.
Injury fueled clunker: Cam Erving is much better inside than at tackle, and Eric Fisher will provide a massive upgrade there when healthy. Chris Jones is among the best defensive linemen in the world. Injuries to Tyreek Hill and Sammy Watkins neutered much of what the Chiefs do. Mahomes would be solid if forced to play while holding both of his pit bulls in one arm, but the ankle injury clearly slowed him physically and limited his effectiveness.
Again, the Next Man Up thing is fine protocol but at some point reality is hard to ignore.
Long-term issues: the Chiefs haven’t stopped the run in four years* and without better protection it’s hard to imagine Mahomes getting healthier. Also, they still need another corner.
*That’s not hyperbole. The 2015 group is the last one to finish better than 25th against the run. Daniel Sorensen is the only guy left from that defense, by the way.
The Chiefs will stay low-key about injuries — per yooj in the NFL — so we’re only guessing about when some of these guys could be healthy.
But the problems are more than just injuries. They’re about fixing tangible problems.
Teams that are able to fix tangible problems typically have two characteristics: a cohesive locker room with accountable professionals, and coaches with brains and creativity and the trust of their players.
Everything I see says the Chiefs have both.
Nobody can know whether that’s enough to get to the Super Bowl. But I’ll be surprised if it isn’t close.
Perhaps the best part of employing Patrick Mahomes as quarterback is that he can cover up a lot of flaws.
The offensive line matters a little less, because he’s blessed with the athleticism, cool and IQ to turn pressure into big plays.
The defense matters less, because when paired with a system that finished fourth in points with the solid-but-unspectacular Alex Smith at quarterback you can outscore most opponents.
But those abilities are often something like cosmetic fixes, because he cannot fundamentally fix all problems.
The roster construction is going to have to change significantly once Mahomes signs his contract extension after this season. The Chiefs will be able to afford two big cap hits among the skill position groups, but not three, for instance.
The temptation is to say the Chiefs need to invest more in the offensive line, to protect the investment, and that’s true to a point but so is this: they currently rank 16th in spending on offensive line. The metrics at Pro Football Focus and Football Outsiders tell similar stories: the Chiefs are above average in pass protection, and league average or worse in run blocking.
Another way of saying that is the Chiefs are, relatively speaking, getting more than they’re paying for up front.
Disclaimers are worthy here. Mahomes and Reid are each adept at covering for some deficiencies up front, and FO’s rankings are rather harsh on the Chiefs’ run blocking.
But, the grander point remains: once Mahomes makes more money, the Chiefs will have to change their spending patterns in other places and there are no obvious answers (other than Sammy Watkins being cut for a $14 million cap savings).
One other point deserves to be reinforced. There are no grand declarations to take from one game.
The loss to Indianapolis exposed some existing weaknesses, but it does not negate the existing strengths.
That game looks a lot different if Damien Williams catches the touchdown on the opening drive, for instance. Or if LeSean McCoy doesn’t fumble. Or if Travis Kelce plays better, both in receiving and blocking.
Andy Reid is among the best play callers of the last 20 years. I don’t know whether this is how you intended it, but I know some have used Reid handing the play sheet to Matt Nagy two years ago as a sign of Reid’s fallibility. I’ve always viewed it as the opposite.
It’s a sign of strength, and among the clearest examples I can think of about why he’s been successful. NFL decisions are dictated by ego far too often, and here is a spot where a proud and accomplished coach completely subverted his own pride for the greater good.
We all hit slumps every now and then. Not all of us have the self-awareness and self-confidence to find the best solution possible, even if hit comes at the expense of our own direct contributions.
One more time: I don’t know that you meant it as a knock on Reid; I just wanted to say that.
It looked to me like a disproportionate amount of the problems up front came through Cam Erving. I don’t mean to pick on him. He’s a good backup, but left tackle is not his best position and the Colts appeared to target him consistently.
I’ll wait more than one game with fewer than 26 points before thinking that someone else needs to call plays, and I say that with strong opinions about the lack of screens, and runs on second-and-30 and fourth-and-1 on the second-to-last drive in the fourth quarter.
That, to me, was an opportunity that wasn’t maximized. Reid has been so good knowing exactly which screen to call against what pressure. I understand the argument that the Colts were only rushing four on many snaps, but we’ve seen the Chiefs use screens effectively in those situations before.
As for the run defense, I’m just not sure we can expect major improvement, especially at the moment with Xavier Williams, Chris Jones and Anthony Hitchens all injured. This team has stunk against the run through different systems against different opponents and with different coordinators and personnel.
Derrick Nnadi has to be part of the solution. That’s part of it. But linebackers have to be able to beat blockers, linemen have to be able to shed, and everyone needs to mind their gaps and trust their teammates.
All of those things are much easier for some dope sports writer to type than they are to actually execute.
Right, but can we agree that’s been a widely accepted truth for some time?
I don’t think it’s right to say Reid hates to run the ball, either. He likes to move the ball, and likes to do it as efficiently as possible. In today’s NFL, with a unicorn quarterback and a load of skill position talent and an offensive line that’s much better in pass protection than run blocking, the best way to move the ball is to throw it.
That doesn’t look like most offenses, but then, that’s the point, right?
The annotated blueprint to beat the Chiefs goes something like this:
▪ Run the ball early and often. This will mean “winning” time of possession, but that’s not the point. The point is the Chiefs can’t stop the run and an added bonus is you can limit Patrick Mahomes’ opportunities. Remember what John Harbaugh said: it’s not a field position game; it’s a possession game.
▪ Take some shots downfield. Tyrann Mathieu is the secondary’s only proven playmaker, and he makes most of his money closer to the line of scrimmage. The corners are often in good enough position, but struggle to make the play. Take advantage of that.
▪ Can create pressure against the Chiefs up front with stunts and don’t always need to rush five or six. That’s good, because you’ll need those defenders in coverage and Mahomes chews up blitzes anyway.
▪ Depending on your own personnel and health, double Tyreek Hill or Travis Kelce or (this is a break glass in case of emergency thing) both. Go with man coverage, and keep it physical to disrupt timing and dress it up with enough looks to create unpredictability.
▪ Hope Mahomes misses some throws, because particularly when the Chiefs are healthy, he’s good enough to make all of this irrelevant.
A list?
A list! Let’s do this 1-10, with 5 representing normal concern for any NFL team.
Offensive line: 7, which is higher than usual mostly because of Mahomes’ ankle.
Run defense: 8, because we’ve seen way too many teams use the most obvious plan in the league.
Pass rush: 5, because I’m still willing to be patient with new players and a new scheme.
Secondary: 5, because they could still use a corner, but so could everyone else, and the coverage has been pretty good all things considered.
Injuries: 6, because none of them appear to be long-term, but they are stacking up in a way that can effect long-term progress.
Run game: 3, because I know I’m in the minority here but I don’t think a team with Patrick Mahomes and Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce and Sammy Watkins and three running backs whose strengths are in the pass game and an offensive line that’s better in protection than the run game should want to ground-and-pound.
Coaching: 3, because Reid knows what he’s doing but Spagnuolo is still new here.
Mahomes’ ankle: 7, because he’s the only irreplaceable employee in the organization and he’s clearly limited at the moment, but it does not yet appear to be long-term.
I don’t think he has animosity, at least in the way that word is often used. McDowell went to the Colts locker room to talk with Houston, and the mere fact that Houston spoke extensively tells you this game meant a little more, but he didn’t slam anyone.
“That’s just like your old girlfriend,” he said. “You get a new girlfriend, you wanna show off.”
That’s not animosity. That’s natural.
Houston’s time in Kansas City and his legacy here are impossible to paint with broad brushes. I don’t think he was ever fully happy with the Chiefs, or abnormally disgruntled.
He was a professional. He treated football as a business, and there are both good and bad parts of that, same as there are good and bad parts of any approach. He worked hard, did his job well, and — reluctantly at first, because it’s not his natural state — turned into a leader because that’s what his talents demanded.
The Chiefs paid him well, so there’s that, but he was also growing into the league during the 2012 disaster. That can change a man’s outlook. The Chiefs waited too long to pay him, putting his wealth at risk with a bit of a direct challenge. That can change a man’s outlook, too.
Then, just as the franchise crosses over from hopes to make the Super Bowl to expects to make the Super Bowl he’s released.
Again, the Chiefs paid him well — around $80 million, according to Spotrac. But he also earned that money, playing out of a third-round rookie contract because NFL teams were nervous about a reported failed marijuana test.
The Chiefs released him after seven years, and the same way Houston seemed to treat his job as a business the team can do the same.
He didn’t express disdain at the Chiefs, at least that I saw. He was frustrated with Bob Sutton, but I don’t think we want to start dismissing all the players frustrated with Sutton the last few years.
Houston was in a long procession of effective pass rushers for the Chiefs, and while he never had the connection to Kansas City achieved by Jared Allen or Tamba Hali, he also played hard and did his part.
They don’t all have to be personal relationships. Sometimes they’re transactions.
One of the worst parts of social media — can I yell at the clouds AGAIN? — is that the weird natural human tendency to be offended at frivolities should be suppressed but instead is amplified.
I understand that if you have kids of a certain age you don’t need them in a place where foul language, drug use and strippers are glorified and, man, that is a really weird sentence for a human to type, but it’s true!
I get it!
But I also understand that as a parent you’ve already made a certain decision if you have your kid up at a Snoop concert at 10 on a Friday night.
So, I empathize with some of this sentiment. Let’s all be adults and at least pretend to maintain perspective.
But I also understand the basic point made by Pat Forde among others that, even if you consider NCAA rules broken and dishonest, people are in jail because of the trial and it’s not the best look to openly mock that or the NCAA Tournament ban that’s probably on the way.
Or, even going one step further, I cannot grasp how anyone could defend KU claiming victim status, then re-signing with their victimizer, then appearing to mock the whole thing and THEN issuing some prude apology that paints the athletic department as (pick one) dishonest or so naive and sloppy that basic competence must be questioned.
At best, the department acted stupidly.
I still can’t believe any of this is reality.
I believe that Bill Self is among the most prideful, stubborn, and feisty people I’ve known through a job that puts me in constant contact with that demographic.
I’m not shocked by much, but I’d be shocked if he left Kansas before this whole mess is concluded. If he is about what he’s built a career being about, he would see leaving a program under investigation as inarguably soft, which is about the worst thing Self can imagine.
Here’s what would not shock me: if Self took the arrows, coached through the process, and then created a clean break.
Depending on what the NCAA decides, that might even mean leaving before the punishments are served.
But at least at that point Self would have worn the toughest times, and the next coach could build something new from the ashes.
Two years is probably the right timeline. If it goes the way I have a feeling it might go, the answer will end up being a push: the punishments come down after this season, Self stays on through the aftermath, and then once it’s settled leaves for the NBA (which I’ve always thought is where he’d end up).
Well, yeah, but that’s not the SKC model. That’s the everybody model. The Chiefs and Royals both lost seats in the last renovation, and that’s the trend everywhere as stadiums are designed for the next 20 years.
Revenue is increasingly coming from television and premium seating, which means stadiums are increasingly designed for TV and giving more and more space to fewer but more expensive seats.
You bring up Sporting, and it’s a good example, because I’ve been told that if they could redo anything about Children’s Mercy Park it would be to add more premium seats even if it meant fewer traditional seats.
I tend to come at these things from an unrealistic perspective, but my hope is that as more premium seats are added teams make sure some chunk of tickets are available for $20 or less.
The Chiefs and Royals have done this, and I’m not a businessman but I have to think that it can be viewed as a sort of loss leader. If you don’t make it realistic for, say, a family of four with an income of $60,000 or so to make a game or two every year you’re choking off your future base.
Increased suites and premium options might very well spike the average ticket price, but if the number of low-cost tickets is the same or even more then everyone can win.
These are in no particular order other than how they come to mind:
▪ Zack Greinke’s trade demand. He didn’t want to be in Kansas City, had already shown he’s willing to walk away, and was performing like a No. 4 starter. The public nature of the demand put some urgency into the Royals’ approach, but they still found a haul that included Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, and Jake Odorizzi, who then became a key part of the trade that brought James Shields and Wade Davis.
▪ Pretty much any rant against Clark Hunt. I don’t mean this to promote Hunt as the best owner in the league. I think he’s closer to average, actually. But the NFL’s financial structure limits the spending capabilities of any single owner and Hunt has always cleared the only bar that matters: he hires the best people he can find, trusts them with football decisions, and spends to the salary cap’s limits.
▪ Pretty much every December or so when KU loses a basketball game and people act like the program is doomed. Doomed is not a loss to Davidson at the Sprint Center. Doomed is the NCAA scorned by Adidas hiring Snoop to mock the whole charade.
▪ There’s something similar to be said for Sporting fans around May or so, except for this year, because woof.
▪ Any of you — and you know who you are — who freaked out about the Royals giving up too much for Ben Zobrist and Johnny Cueto at the 2015 trade deadline. The Royals had a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Not maximizing it would’ve been malpractice.
▪ K-State fans when Frank Martin left. That was fun while it lasted, but it was never long-term.
▪ Chiefs fans — and is this recency bias? — freaking out about a 19-13 loss to the Colts on Sunday. You still have Patrick Mahomes for the next decade or two. Tyreek Hill will be back soon. Chris Jones. Eric Fisher. You get the point. Something close to 30 other teams (the Patriots are going to stay, and probably a few others) would trade places in both the now and future.
The best advice I ever heard on this was to ask yourself if you need to do it.
And be honest.
Is writing about sports something that sounds fun? Because you like games? Want to talk to people involved? Share stories? Share insight? That kind of stuff is important, to some degree, but it’s not enough. It misses the point of whether you need to do it.
Because there will be days the job kicks you in the teeth. Days it exposes you, publicly. Days it takes you away from your family or friends. You’ll work a lot of nights, and if you’re lucky you’ll get the kind of travel that makes sleep inconsistent and healthy living nearly impossible.
You’ll have to cancel plans at the last second because of some transaction that people will forget about in a day. You’ll have to get used to writing something you think is great but gets ignored, and of writing something you wish you could have back but everyone notices.
You’ll have to write something that powerful people won’t like, then show your face the next day, and you’ll have to do it all in a way that maintains professionalism and respect. You’ll have to do all this for very little money, at least for a while.
Do you still want to do it?
Or, more to the point: do you still need to do it?
Either answer is great, but it has to be the honest answer. Because if the answer is no, awesome, good for you. You’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble. Go to law school, or become a teacher, or go into PR or start a business or mow lawns or get into hedge funds. Do something else, either for the money or the enjoyment. You’ll be happier.
Now, if the answer is yes — the honest, 100 percent, not-going-back-on-it answer — then congratulations because this is a great way to make a living.
You mentioned writing specifically, and the best way to improve as a writer is to read. A lot. A lot. A LOT. Read everything you can. Pick out a handful of writers you like and drown yourself in their work. Read stories twice, when you can, the first as a consumer and the second as a student. Pick it apart. Find the tools they used, the calls they made, the questions they asked, and the structure they implemented.
Think about what you liked, and why. Think about what you didn’t, and why. Think about what you’d have done differently, and what the author did that you wouldn’t have considered.
And copy them. Don’t be ashamed. I’m not talking about plagiarism here. Plagiarism will get you fired. I’m talking about style, and approach. Take pieces of your favorites, combine them, add yourself and you’ve created something new.
Let yourself be different, and bold. If you never write something that you later end up thinking is garbage, you are failing because you’re not being honest and you’re not challenging your boundaries enough. You get better by failing, and by pushing yourself.
Also, and this might be the most important thing: be a reporter before you’re a writer.
The Internet has gifted everyone with a platform, but most don’t know how to use it. Anyone can write a take. Your value is in providing the reader with something they can’t get somewhere else. Ask questions of the people involved, research what’s been written, find studies, get different perspectives. Makes people laugh, or cry, or think. That’s how you stand out.
This week I’m particularly grateful for a home improvement project that’s been completed. Couldn’t use my home office for a week or two, and we had a big hole in our ceiling. These are first world problems, I understand that, but it’s nice to be back at full capacity.
This story was originally published October 8, 2019 at 5:00 AM.