Kansas City Chiefs: Gauging the Temperature of Todd Haley's Hot Seat

Has anyone who was up for Coach of the Year honors one year been so firmly on the hot seat the next?

Todd Haley took the Kansas City Chiefs to the postseason last year, but the Chiefs got their lunch handed to them in the opener, losing 41-7 to Buffalo, and things got even worse in a 48-3 loss in Detroit Sunday.

There is no place except perhaps Washington, D.C. where a ``what-have-you-done-for-me-lately’’ attitude is more pervasive than in the NFL, and Haley is this year’s textbook case.

Two losses. Two blowouts. Two games in which the offense and the defense had a ``who’s worse?’’ competition. Put it all together and Haley is feeling the heat like no one else in his position in the game.

Kansas City is a place that takes its football seriously. Hank Schram and Marty Schottenheimer are the franchise’s only two coaches to have been kept around for more than 80 games, and they had to win consistently to do that.

And while Haley had the Chiefs go 10-6 to finish first in the AFC West last year, he was 4-12 in his rookie season as the head man, so the 41-year-old’s record to this point is 14-20, and that seems to have him on a down-bound train.

And if the opener against the Bills wasn’t the most embarrassing loss in franchise history, the complication of the loss to the Lions made for what has to be the most embarrassing back-to-back losses the Chiefs have ever experienced.

The loss of tight end Tony Moeaki to a left ACL injury in the season’s final preseason game has hurt, because the passing game under quarterback Matt Cassel was supposed to be the Chiefs’ strength. It hasn’t been, not with Moeaki, who had 47 catches last year, no longer a target.

Haley is a target, however, as the ever-judgmental world of the NFL focuses on winners and losers.

The current management of the Chiefs, led by Clark Hunt and Scott Pioli, has been calling the shots for just short of three years now, and if they see a falloff in the crowds at Arrowhead Stadium related to the first two weeks of the season, it would be an easy call to go in search of a new coach.