A little more than 11 months ago, Chiefs coach Todd Haley stood at a lectern after a blowout loss to the Oakland Raiders that ended the regular season and discussed how the Chiefs would be OK after offensive coordinator Charlie Weis moved on.
News had leaked days earlier that Weis would be leaving for the same position at the University of Florida. He had been with the Chiefs less than one year. Now, not even a year later, Weis is on the move again, this time to be head coach at the University of Kansas.
Weis’ time with the Chiefs will be remembered as a brief but significant stay in helping to turn them into a playoff team. Losing him, though, might have been even more significant.
In the time since Weis’ departure became public in January, the Chiefs’ offense has hardly been OK. It led the NFL in rushing in 2010, and quarterback Matt Cassel was selected to his first Pro Bowl. But since word got out that Weis was leaving, the offense has been different. As the 5-7 Chiefs prepare for the stretch drive, the offense — led by new coordinator Bill Muir — is their clear weakness.
When Weis arrived, hired by former New England Patriots colleague Scott Pioli and joining Patriots co-worker Romeo Crennel as the Chiefs’ coordinators, he declared that “the first thing I wanted to do was help fix the quarterback.”
“It wasn’t like he wasn’t getting coached before,” Weis said during his first Chiefs training camp. “But I had to know what the problems were. … I wanted to know where we were with this kid.”
Cassel, a year after throwing as many touchdown passes (16) as interceptions, was outstanding under Weis. Cassel threw for 27 touchdowns and just five interceptions in his first 14 games of the 2010 regular season.
Not only that, but running backs Jamaal Charles and Thomas Jones formed the league’s best one-two rushing punch. Play calls were crisp and daring, and the Chiefs rode the offense to their first AFC West title since 2003.
Then the rumors began to swirl, giving way to confirmations and confessions. Yes, Weis was leaving. The first report came on the Friday before the Raiders’ game. It was made official a day later, on the final day of 2010.
Immediately, the Chiefs’ offense showed the effects of losing its leader. Cassel threw no touchdowns and two interceptions in a 31-10 loss against the Raiders. Oakland held Charles and Jones to 104 rushing yards, 60 fewer than the Chiefs’ average.
Something was wrong with the offense, though the team did its best to mask it.
“The game last week,” Weis said then, two days before the Chiefs’ first-round playoff game, “really has no bearing on the game this week.”
Only, it seemed to.
Against the Ravens, Cassel threw a season-high three interceptions and didn’t complete a touchdown pass in his worst game of the season. The Chiefs compiled 161 yards of offense and were again blown out, 30-7. Maybe it was Baltimore’s suffocating defense that caused the shift. Maybe it was losing Weis.
The Chiefs also did their best to mask the friction that developed between Weis and Haley, who assumed more and more play-calling duties from Weis as the 2010 season advanced. The pair never said much publicly about it, but the announcement that Weis was leaving — coupled with the timing, still during the regular season — reinforced that there was trouble at team headquarters.
“When you’re the boss, you’re the boss. When you’re an assistant, you’re an assistant,” Weis told The Star last January. “He’s definitely the boss, and I’m definitely the offensive coordinator. I think we had a very good understanding of what our roles were without any reservation. …
“But this decision had absolutely zero to do with relationships in Kansas City.”
Through a team spokesman, Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli issued the following statement Thursday night:
“I’m very happy for Charlie,” Pioli said, “and we wish him nothing but the best in his new endeavor as the head coach at Kansas.”
For his part, Weis insisted that he was leaving the Chiefs to be with his son, also named Charlie, as the young man entered college and hoped to work as a student assistant with the Florida football team. Weis, who spent five seasons as Notre Dame’s head coach, also never ruled out last year that he might someday want to lead a team again.
Not even a year since his move away from the Chiefs, Weis is again moving on — and moving up. The Chiefs, meanwhile, took a step back after Weis left, and they have not recovered. Before suffering a season-ending hand injury, Cassel was back to his 2009 form, throwing 10 touchdown passes and nine interceptions. The rushing attack, held back by a season-ending knee injury to Charles, is averaging nearly 64 yards fewer than it did a season earlier.
Now, regardless of the reasons why Weis left, the Chiefs will have a reminder less than an hour away that he did.
As if they needed another one.
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