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CHARLES AND SUCCOP HONORED BY TEAMMATES
January 5th – 10:25 AM

A few weeks ago, each player on the Chiefs roster was handed a set of ballots. With the ballots, players voted for Pro Bowl selections, 101 Award Nominees, NFL Man of the Year candidates and team awards.

Of the vote-able awards, the most prestigious inside the Chiefs locker room may be the team awards. Both the Derrick Thomas MVP and Mack Lee Hill Awards carry extra special meaning to Chiefs players because the award is given based off a vote of their peers, who work beside each other day-in and day-out.

The Chiefs have spoken…and named both their team MVP (Derrick Thomas Award) and Rookie of the Year (Mack Lee Hill Award) winners.

There wasn’t much surprise in the voting, as many fans likely would have filled out similar ballots. RB Jamaal Charles was named the winner of the Derrick Thomas Award while K Ryan Succop earned the Mack Lee Hill Award. Each player will be presented their award at the 40th annual 101 Banquet on March 6th at the Westin Crown Center.

Charles led the Chiefs in nearly all major offensive categories, including rushing yards, yards from scrimmage, combined net yards and total TDs. He became the first player in NFL history to rush for over 1,100 yards on fewer than 200 carries. He became the ninth player in franchise history to rush for 1,000 yards and was the first to accomplish the feat since 2006. All incredible marks considering Charles spent just over half a season as the club’s feature back.

Succop’s rookie season was the most productive in post-merger history. his 86.21 FG percentage tied for the best FG make percentage by a rookie since the NFL merger in 1970. He also made the most field goals by a rookie in franchise history with 25 connections, passing Pro Football Hall of Famer Jan Stenerud’s mark of 21 in 1967. Not bad for the final pick of the 2009 draft.

A year ago, TE Tony Gonzalez took home the Derrick Thomas Award while CB Maurice Leggett earned Mack Lee Hill honors.

If you’re interested in honoring Charles and Succop in person at the 101 Awards, tickets are available by calling Premier Sports Management at (913) 681-6990.

LAST DAY OF SCHOOL
January 5th – 6:11 AM

Yesterday, the setting at Arrowhead was similar to the last day of school. It was a time to pack up the lockers, put a year’s worth of junk in a massive trash bag and trade contact info before heading off for the summer.

You might see some of your classmates over the summer, while there are others that you won’t see again until school starts. Some of them, for that matter, you may never see again. The final bell of the 2009 school year rang for 20 NFL teams yesterday, Kansas City included.

Just like those good ole’ grade school days, some of the players scattered out of the Arrowhead practice facility as fast as they could once the final meeting had concluded, baggage in tow. Others hung around a bit longer for end of season medical tests and a final workout. A few also stayed back and recapped the season with members of the media.

One of the players who took part in the latter was G Brian Waters.

The world seemed to be spinning on its proper axis once more in Kansas City. The Chiefs were coming off a quality win that featured explosive plays, no sacks allowed, record-setting performances and a 40-plus point scoring binge. The voice that Chiefs fans have associated most with the offense was talking again as well. If Arrowhead was a school scene, Waters might as well be one of the professors.

Waters, a four-time Pro Bowler and permanent fixture along the Chiefs offensive front for the past decade, had declined all media requests since training camp began. Inside the locker room and on the game field Waters was the same person, but his external personality and vocal leadership remained hidden from the public for all of the 2009 season.

“Honestly, with all the stuff that I came back here with during the offseason, I just wanted to kind of stand out of the way and do my job to allow the this whole situation to how itself,” Waters explained. “I didn’t want to get in the way or seem to be in the way. People try to make it seem like you feel this way or feel that way. I just wanted people to see this whole program for themselves and I didn’t want to be in the middle of it.

“It was just a good year for me to focus on my own job and help these younger guys get better,” Waters finished.

Although Waters wasn’t in the middle of the Chiefs program, off the field (except for his always generous community relations efforts), he was smack in the center of the Chiefs 2009 offense. Waters played in 14 or more games for the ninth consecutive season and was once again a vital part of the Chiefs offensive package.

He was part of a Chiefs offensive transformation that began the season by giving up 30 sacks over the first eight games. As QB Matt Cassel routinely found himself on the move, the Chiefs ground game also sputtered quite often and didn’t post a rushing touchdown through the first half of 2009.

Naturally, fingers were pointed in every direction at the Chiefs offensive unit as they struggled. Head coach Todd Haley received criticism for his late training camp decision to become the offensive coordinator and fans growled about receivers dropping passes and RB Larry Johnson’s yards per carry mark that hovered in the 2.0s, but the majority of the blame was directed towards the offensive line.

Waters heard it, but he still didn’t speak back.

“Whether it is fair or not, it’s kind of a hard deal because we do have a job to do,” Waters said of criticism directed towards the line. “Part of our job is being at the bottom of the barrel. Let’s be honest. Being an offensive lineman…if they say that stuff rolls downhill, we’re at the bottom.

“We take that burden because we’re big boys and we understand that this is not a high priority position even though it’s key to most teams,” Waters continued. “Was (the criticism) fair? No. The last few years I think that some of my offensive line mates haven’t been judged properly. I think that a lot of eyes that have been judging some of my teammates are unqualified eyes and there are a lot of people basing their opinions off of what they know and people don’t know football.”

Sure enough, as the season went on, the Chiefs offensive line began to settle and Haley identified hidden strengths such as Jamaal Charles, a hurry-up attack and formation shifts at the line of scrimmage to keep opposing defenses off-balance.

Games nine through 16 showed just how far the Chiefs transition had come. The sack total was cut in half from 30 to 15 over the final eight games, while Sunday’s win at Denver was the first time the Chiefs held a defense without a sack since December 14th of 2008.

The Chiefs run game went on to see Charles become the first player in NFL history to register 1,100 or more rushing yards in a season with less than 200 rushing attempts. Charles also had the second-most yards from scrimmage in the NFL since Johnson’s release on November 9th and the team took that goose-egg total for ground game TDs and turned it into a one per game average over the final eight contests.

“I think that we finally got comfortable in what we were trying to do,” Waters said. “Even though the offensive scheme was pretty much the same, the idea of what we’re trying to do from game to game has changed throughout the course of the year. I think we finally settled on this was who we are and we are going to continue to grow from it.”

Waters went on to say that a very big reason for the Chiefs drastic offensive improvement over the second half of the season was in fact due to Charles’ NFL arrival as a feature back. He actually called Charles “the most talented” player that he’s ever played with. But Waters also said that a primary reason for the early-season struggles was a last-minute change in the offensive scheme prior to the season.

“It affected us greatly,” Waters said of changing coordinators. “I think that we’d be lying to ourselves to not think that changing offenses two weeks before the regular season started didn’t harm what we already kind of got going. That’s the head coaches’ prerogative to make those changes and we as players have to do our job no matter what changes are made.”

The change, however, was not made on an emotional whim, but rather in an effort for what Haley thought would be in the best interests of the football team.

“That change was made with a longer vision and not a shorter vision,” Waters said. “To us older guys, longer vision isn’t exactly our strong suit because you never know how long you’re going to play the game, but we do understand why he made that decision.”

Waters has played for the last four Chiefs head coaches and has gone through 11 offseasons as a member of the organization. He is the longest tenured Chief in the locker room by half a decade. If anyone knows about change in Kansas City, it’s Waters.

As Chiefs leadership builds off the nucleus of players unearthed in 2009, Waters expects to see plenty more roster transition as the team prepares for 2010. He wouldn’t name a wish-list of potential additions, but he did identify a key trait he hopes to see the Chiefs build their new faces around.

“You want as many talented people as possible,” Waters said of his wish list. “You want as many talented people who understand the culture that you’re trying to breed here. One of those things is about putting the team first. There are a lot of talented guys out there and you’ll hear a ton of big names that people think we should go after. The thing is whether or not they’ll be able to fit into this locker room.

“In this league, there is a very small amount of difference between a talented team and a team that people deem ‘not so talented,’” Waters continued. “There a lot of great football players in this league who make the best use of their talent no matter what it is. We want 53 of those guys on this team.”

Video of Waters’ Q&A Session, in-full, is available in the Media Center on kcchiefs.com.