Peter King heartily approves the performance of the Kansas City Chiefs yesterday in their shutout of Oakland, 28-0. King gave his weekly Defensive Player of the Week nod to the Chiefs Derrick Johnson, who had 13 tackles on the day including an impressive performance that stopped the Raiders along the goal line. But King also gave Todd Haley his coach of the week title, an interesting statement about a coach rumored to be on the verge of being fired just weeks ago.
King writes, “There’s quite a bit of mayhem swirling around the Chiefs and their third-year head coach in the wake Kansas City’s historically bad start. But to go into the Black Hole with the Raiders all revved up after the big deal for Carson Palmer, and to have the team playing hard, and to have made the cool call of a seven-yard Wildcat touchdown for Javier Arenas … just a very impressive day for Haley’s ability to command his team, even with all the noise reverberating around his job status.”
Haley definitely added to his bag of tricks during the bye week and the NFL is taking notice of a resurgent Chiefs team that’s suddenly in competition for the AFC West lead. While we might say, “Hats off” to Haley, it’s clear that Haley isn’t removing his hat anytime soon.