Heartless Attack
The opposing sidelines at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday could not have looked more different. On one side stood Dick Vermeil, at 64 the second-oldest head coach in the NFL, clad in a knight-white golf shirt and khakis. Vermeil did not want to be there.
Jon Gruden, the youngest head coach in the NFL, patrolled the other sideline. He wore a Vader-black long-sleeved T-shirt and matching black togs. He also wore a perpetual I-double-dog-dare-you sneer. Gruden not only wanted to be there, he acted as though his life depended on being there. He punctuated his Raiders’ 27-24 win by jumping in the air, high-fiving no one and screaming “Fuckin’ A!” He acted like Dick Vermeil 25 years ago — the youngest coach in the NFL chasing his first Super Bowl in Philadelphia.
Vermeil has been telling us for nine months that he doesn’t want this job. We just haven’t been listening. “I’m not retired, but I am retired from football,” Vermeil said last December when a reporter for the Fox Sports Network asked if he was interested in coaching the Chiefs.
In January, Carl Peterson traveled to Vermeil’s ranch outside Philadelphia to beg his old friend to help him get to the Super Bowl. Vermeil refused him repeatedly. He had gone out on top in St. Louis and needed only to sit back, ride horses and wait four years for his Hall of Fame induction. His kids were happy to finally have their dad to themselves, and nothing was going to change Vermeil’s mind.
That’s when Peterson played his trump card. Where loyalty, friendship and groveling had failed, money succeeded. We’re talking Lamar Hunt-sized money — $10 million for three years. “I didn’t come back because of the money,” Vermeil told CBS on Sunday. “But I wouldn’t have come back without the money.”
There was a time when Vermeil was the most driven coach in the NFL. He slept in his Philadelphia office, shaved over his trash can and lived and died with every snap on Sunday. Those days are gone. Vermeil has matured into a revered NFL legend who sports a St. Louis Super Bowl ring the size of one of those chuckholes on I-70. He has an impeccable resume. He just doesn’t have the fire to go with it.
Prior to the Chiefs’ season opener, Vermeil gave us a peek at what was going on inside his head. “If I would have known I was going to come back, I would have stayed with the Rams,” Vermeil has said several times since January. Doesn’t quite bring to mind Knute Rockne’s win-one-for-the-Gipper speech, does it?
It’s tough to fault Vermeil for taking the bucks and trying to help an old friend. Peterson’s salary offer to Vermeil was as ridiculous as the Chiefs’ staunch company line that the team is not in a rebuilding mode. Make no mistake: These Chiefs are nowhere near ready to compete for the playoffs this season. Their running backs can’t run and their wide receivers can’t get open.
This does not appear to be a team that will perform well on the road — which is where the Chiefs play three of their next four games. When you are unable to hold an eleven-point third-quarter lead at home against your most rabid AFC West rival, it does not conjure up optimism for the eight road games the Chiefs must face. When Todd Peterson cannot convert a chip-shot fourth-quarter 37-yard field goal on a glorious September opening day in front of 80,000 of his best friends, what’s going to happen at Oakland in December in front of the cast from Planet of the Apes?
Two years ago, the Chiefs hired in Gunther Cunningham a flat-out maniac who was not equipped to handle the pressures of game day — or even Wednesday. We are still paying the price of watching Cunningham snort smelling salts on the sideline and embarrass the Chiefs organization almost every time he spoke into a microphone. Peterson tried to erase that error by hiring Vermeil, a symbol of maturity and class.
The only problem is that Vermeil left his heart back in Philadelphia. Look for Vermeil to realize his mistake sometime around the end of November and name Al Saunders as his successor for the 2002 season. Back at his ranch, Vermeil’s horses are waiting and they will forgive him for losing his head over an offer he couldn’t refuse.
