If you walk down South Street on any given day, you’d likely run into a certain crazy old man, and he’d challenge you to a fight.  This gentlemen is quite good at what he does: you’d want to fight him despite the facts that he is: (1) old, and (2) crazy.  The man is so compelling, so practiced in his challenges, that you lose all perspective and sense; and you find yourself resisting a compelling urge to fight an old man.

Herm Edwards is the NFL coaching equivalent of South Street’s crazy old fightin’ guy.  The Chiefs should have fired Herm at least sixteen months ago, and their failure to fire Herm has morphed the man into a quixotic odyssey into the insane.  Herm has left football strategy behind as he journeys into increasingly mind numbing expressions of the Chiefs’ failure.  Here’s a sample of Herm quotes, any one of which would result in instant release from a sane NFL team:

-    Herm on losing: “Get over it, it happens, it’s called life.”
-    Herm on the 2007 Chiefs season: “Am I glad it’s over?  Yes, I’m glad it’s over.”
-    Herm on obviousness: “When you play the games, the players have to make the plays.”
-    Herm on obviousness, Part 2: “We have more three-and-outs than anybody in football.  We have more negative plays than anybody in football.  It’s hard playing that way.”
-    Herm on the running game: “It would be nice if we could run the football.”
-    Herm on last season’s 0-2 start: “We got into that wreck again.”
-    Herm on winning, and losing: “It would have been a good win for us, because we could use on of those right now.”
-    Herm on high-powered NFL offenses: “When we score seven points, I’ll say we’re slow starting. If we score 21 points, I’ll say, ‘Whoa, we scored a lot of points.’ Twenty-one points – that’s a lot of points. Thirty points? That isn’t even a football game. That’s Arena Football. We’re talking about real football.”
-    Herm on one of his losing seasons: “The only good thing about this is, it’s only one season.  It’s not a bunch of seasons.”

Bear in mind, these are only glimpses into the mind of Herm Edwards.  The actual machinations behind these utterances will never come to light, and the world is a saner place for it.

Examining Herm quotes overshadows the other painfully obvious reason he should be fired: the Chiefs’ egregiously poor performance.  Defensive specialist Edwards has created a defense that surrendered 300 rushing yards to the Raiders.  The Chiefs have now lost eleven straight games.  The performance issue is not nearly as important or interesting as the crazy issue.

So the question is, why hasn’t Herm gotten his pink slip?  My own arm-chair theory is a variation on the car wreck hypothesis: this Herm thing is just too compelling to end.  Any sane person watching the Edwards’ saga is compelled to stop and observe as events that defy the mind unfold.  Every week, I look forward to Herm slapping common sense in the face; making common sense his bitch.  In the same way, I look forward to running into crazy old fightin’ South Street guy.  It’s a moment in an otherwise banal day where something disturbing, insane, but strangely wonderful cracks into the world.  I expect some authority, some force of sense and order, to end the madness, and yet it continues.  That some businessman would allow Herm Edwards to helm a professional organization, with unimaginable wealth hanging in the balance, is so utterly bizarre that I hope it never ends.

Postscript

Here are some other famous Herm quotes:
-    Herm on work ethic: “You’ve got to earn it. You can’t count on other people to do your job for you.”
-    Herm on alternative careers: “I did a lot of preaching this week. I had my sermons ready. The good part is the congregation was listening. I wish I had passed the collection plate. I would’ve made a lot of money. But I did it for free.”
-    Herm on linguistics: “Talk is free. You never know what’s going to happen after you talk.”