For a coach who would like to forget last year's 4-12 season as quickly as possible, Herm Edwards nonetheless felt obligated to review it during his first team meeting of training camp.
Operating on the idea that those who fail to remember their mistakes often repeat them, Edwards spent some painful moments showing his players why they lost nine consecutive games after jumping off to a respectable 4-3 start.
"We went through every game and showed them exactly what took place and what we've got to clean up," Edwards said. "That's the good thing: It's all correctable, all fixable.
"Another good thing is more than half these guys weren't involved in it. They weren't here. All they know is they're coming to a team that started out halfway decent and then couldn't find their way towards the end. That's something we've got to correct, so it's something we talked about."
Edwards' review of an unpleasant history had another purpose. That is, to remind his players, a group everyone expects to struggle during this latest rebuilding phase, that they were better than last year's 4-12 record would suggest.
"I told them, 'As bad as people thought we were, we weren't a bad team,' Edwards said. "We got blown out in one game: Denver (41-7). Other than that they were competitive.
"Go back and look at the scores at halftime. We were ahead or tied with a bunch of good football teams going into the third quarter, and some going into the fourth quarter.
"But starting with the Green Bay game (when KC lost running back Larry Johnson for the season and a 22-16 lead with 5:18 remaining), in the second half we didn't function very well for some reason. Same coaches, same players played the first half. We just couldn't figure it out the second half.
"We just got into a rut where we lost a little bit of confidence as a football team. There are times in games where you've got to close the game out and we didn't close it out.
"The way you correct that is you talk about it. When bad things happen you want to know why so you can fix it. I think we're on our way to doing that."
CAMP CALENDAR: The Chiefs arrived for their 18th camp in River Falls, a commuter community east of the Twin Cities, on July 24. They will work out with the Minnesota Vikings (and former teammate Jared Allen) on Thursday, July 31. They break camp on Aug. 15.
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