Chiefs coach Haley not the type to take it easy on his team

[tjw61]

Chiefs coach Haley not the type to take it easy on his team
By KENT BABB
The Kansas City Star

It was building inside Todd Haley, and nobody wanted to be counting clouds when the coach’s fuse expired.

Chiefs wide receiver Dwayne Bowe jumped when he didn’t have to and dropped an easy pass. Rookie tight end Jake O’Connell dropped a few, too. Thursday morning’s practice was a sloppy one: a 90-minute workout on a rain-soaked field and a group of players whose minds were veering toward vacation plans.

Then it happened. Another rookie made a mistake, and Haley’s patience clicked down to zero. There was an explosion. A loud recoil. And an unfortunate victim. Haley let the kid have it, and the rookie sulked back toward the huddle.

“I don’t know what happens to me out there,” Haley says later.

Haley hasn’t yet coached a game, but that might be a simple task compared with the first-year Chiefs coach’s offseason project. He’s trying to change a culture that has grown and spread the last two years in Kansas City: a belief that losing is unavoidable, that youth and weaknesses excuse the worst two-season stretch in franchise history, and the notion that willpower and faith — and not hard work — are the keys to playoff spots.

Haley disagrees, and he’s not always polite about it. Players acknowledge that Haley is their boss and they have to do what he says, but there has been a roughness to the coach’s first six months that this Chiefs locker room wasn’t used to under former coach Herm Edwards.

“One coach has a little bit more personable style,” veteran safety Jon McGraw says of Edwards, “and the other coach goes about it in a little bit different way.”

Haley and guard Brian Waters reportedly shared a fiery confrontation in March that, as of last week, hadn’t been resolved. Long practices end with relentless running sessions. Players who report overweight are grilled by coaches, dogged by trainers and dangled to the media. Other players have questioned whether Haley’s no-nonsense, one-sided approach can work — and whether it will work in time for the Chiefs to keep the faith.

There are doubts, but Haley says he won’t be fazed. He is in a tough, but perhaps necessary, position: a man who has led and been led by unrelenting and determined forces, and he believes he’s one of 32 NFL head coaches because that method works.

No sympathy. No censorship. No filter. That’s the way the Chiefs are being run these days. And although Haley admits his approach might lead to some defections, maybe that’s what this is all about: discovering who can cut it in a system that refuses to wait for greatness.

“Right now,” Haley says, “if I’m losing you, I probably don’t want you. That’s my philosophy. I want guys that I can’t lose right now, regardless of what I do.”

• • •

The practice field is quiet, and there’s a man running in the distance. He’s being punished. It’s the late 1990s, and Bill Parcells is in charge of the New York Jets. Parcells isn’t the type to overlook mistakes, whether a star player steps out of line or a grunt coughs up the wrong answer to a big question.

Players are watching as the man runs to a fence — coach’s orders. Some of the players are confused that an assistant coach, a young Todd Haley, is in Parcells’ crosshairs this time. Haley made a mistake, and he understood the hard way that there were no excuses and no compassion. He messed up the Jets’ practice schedule, and carelessness has consequences. So Parcells made him run.

“In front of the whole team,” Haley says now. “I was the whipping boy. I think Bill did most everything he could to get me to quit or to see what I was worth.”

Other coaches did quit. They couldn’t handle the abuse. Haley admits that he sometimes questioned Parcells’ approach and whether he fit into this unforgiving game. Haley’s dad, the legendary personnel man Dick Haley, might get a talking-to from his general manager if he missed on a draft pick. But running to the fence while the boss watched and players cackled was never part of the equation.

Todd Haley craved validation in those days. Later, when Parcells hired Haley to coordinate the passing game in Dallas, the old coach often walked off the field with anger on his breath, cursing the pass offense and muttering that it must be the worst group in the league. Parcells said it loud enough for Haley to hear it, and that wasn’t an accident.

“If you coach for Bill Parcells,” Haley says, “there is not one day you can take a breath. It’s like dog years: One year working for him equals seven. But it makes you better.”

Haley has his own head coaching job now, among the many who left Parcells’ flock and eventually led his own NFL team. Parcells kept his assistants uncomfortable, and they coached with greatness and survival in mind. If Parcells was disappointed, an assistant coach’s life was hell. And if it went on long enough, the assistant would be cast out of the flock against his wishes, relief giving way to the inescapable trap of failure.

Parcells was hard on his assistants, but he was harder on the ones with a future. Parcells would find Haley in a quiet corner somewhere, drape an arm on the kid’s shoulders and tell him that he had something, and Parcells was being tough on him because he might be a head coach someday.

“All of a sudden,” Haley says, “you stand up a little taller.”

Haley says his experience is part of the reason he’s 42 years old and sitting in the top coaching office at Chiefs headquarters. But the hunger for validation hasn’t weakened. Haley says he wants to prove to Parcells, more than a decade after the old coach made him run, that Dick Haley’s kid knows a thing or two.

Todd Haley has been waiting for years for Parcells to call and tell him that he has made it. That all the hard lessons paid off. That Todd Haley belongs. Then again, Haley says, it’s the pursuit of that call that kept him up all those nights, made him push all those players, and drove the young coach to unimaginable heights. It’s the same reason he still arrives early, stays late and makes his players’ lives miserable. Maybe someday that call will come. Then again, maybe not.

“If I didn’t get a call after getting the Arizona Cardinals to the Super Bowl,” Haley says, “I may never get a call.”

But Haley will keep pushing, just in case.

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• • •

Larry Fitzgerald enters the meeting room and notices the unforgiving face at the front. The Cardinals wide receiver is a star in the making, but Arizona’s offensive coordinator isn’t the type to be starstruck or even merciful.

Fitzgerald walks toward Haley and jokingly motions toward his wallet. How much will it take? How about a little mercy when the film starts revealing mistakes? Haley says Fitzgerald would walk away with his head down, disappointed and anxious for the upcoming verbal assault.

“He used to fear team meetings,” Haley says. “It doesn’t matter who you are. I’ve just been taught to hold everybody accountable, hold everybody to the same level.”

Haley doesn’t have the star power in Kansas City that his offense possessed in Arizona. There is no Fitzgerald or Anquan Boldin, and even the most desperate optimist might pause before comparing Chiefs quarterback Matt Cassel with Kurt Warner. But Haley does have individuals in that locker room, 85 of them now, that he has to contend with. Those are 85 personalities, 85 sets of feelings and opinions, and 85 levels of caution and pride. He had his run-ins in Arizona and Dallas, but Haley doesn’t apologize for his style.

Bowe said last week that Haley has suggested the third-year receiver tone down the attention-grabbing behavior of years past. Offensive tackle Branden Albert says Haley hasn’t let up on him since Albert reported overweight to offseason practice, even after Albert lost 30 pounds since March. All around the locker room, the personality has been muted. No loud music, no me-first interviews and not even a Chiefs logo on the side of the team’s red helmets. Not until those privileges are earned.

“There’s not a lot of bull,” guard Mike Goff says.

And not a lot of fun. Haley is so regimented that even fun has laws. Three of them: A man has to do what he wants to do, surround himself with the people he wants to be with, and do his job well.

“Otherwise,” he says, “you can’t have it. You shouldn’t be having fun if one of those variables is out of line.”

Some players have recoiled at the new way. Bowe promises that he will eventually return to the flexing and dancing on the practice-field sidelines. McGraw says that he doesn’t respond well to yelling and screaming, that his preferred coaching style is inspiration.

“I’m not big on being motivated by fear,” McGraw says.

But McGraw admits that however Haley decides to run this team, he will conform and will not complain. After all, the way the last two seasons went, who would argue that it wasn’t time for a change?

“Why do you think that Haley is here? It’s not because things have been going well,” says Len Dawson, the Chiefs’ Hall of Fame quarterback. “Sometimes you need that, to awaken you and get you focused.”

That’s what Haley says was the point of his singling out Fitzgerald. Haley says he saw greatness in the receiver and refused to let up until Fitzgerald reached his potential. There are players in the Chiefs locker room who might possess Fitzgerald’s talent and have at least gotten Haley’s attention. Albert, for better or worse, will remain in the coach’s sights.

And who’s to say a Chiefs player might not someday take Haley’s approach, channel the fear and intimidation and meanness into motivation, and be at the center of a story like this:

“I told Larry the first time I ever met him: ‘I’m not trying to be your buddy,’ ” Haley says. “ ‘I’m your coach, and I’m trying to get the most out of you. I’m trying to get you to be great. Hopefully, when it’s all said and done, we’ll be high-fiving over the Super Bowl trophy.’

“We didn’t quite get there. But when we won that championship game against Philly, that’s when Larry pulled me aside and said: ‘Thanks for keeping your foot on my throat. You did it. You made me great.’ ”

• • •

The Chiefs coach sits in a quiet room and talks football, ancient history and expectations. All of it leads to what Haley hopes is — “Whoa,” the coach says, his attention stolen.

A rookie leaves practice with a teammate and slips on his way down a concrete staircase. Haley sees the fall and watches as the player gets up, uninjured but embarrassed. Haley smiles and holds up both hands: If that was the player’s idea of sticking the landing, then Haley would judge it a 10. The player notices Haley’s reaction, and both men laugh despite the glass wall and the rungs of authority between them.

Yes, Haley appreciates the lighter side of football, too. The humor that inevitably grows from the cluster of 85 young and occasionally insecure men congregating inside the Chiefs locker room. Haley says it’s healthy to laugh and enjoy how far he has come.

“You can’t be a robot,” he says. “Robots don’t last long.”

But robots are built to work, and Haley is wired that way. He says the Chiefs have a long way to go before they shed the habits of the past. But they are making progress. The Chiefs had a sharp practice last Tuesday, and Haley rewarded players by nixing the afternoon run. Haley was leaving the field when he turned and noticed 20 or so players running on their own time and another 20 running routes or practicing their drops or reacting to snaps.

“We were starting to get it,” Haley says. “It’s showing up. We’re getting more and more guys who are doing it the way it needs to be done.”

It’ll take time, he admits. Thursday’s sloppy practice was proof that work remains — but patience does not. There’s only one way that Haley knows to improve the Chiefs’ odds of being better tomorrow than they were yesterday, and whether they like it or not, that’s the way he’ll keep directing them.

“When you’ve lost a bunch,” he says, “it becomes habitual. Those traits show up consistently on a team that loses consistently, so trying to get it going in the other direction, where people start to believe that all this is for the better, it takes some work.

“Maybe we can have some fun down the road. We all work too hard in this business, players and coaches alike, to suffer through too much losing. It’s not worth it.”