On NFL Draft night, every team is 0-0. But always and everywhere, karma is undefeated. What the Chiefs and, by extension, the league got as their marquee event of the offseason began is exactly what they deserve.
What came out of the recording obtained and aired by a Kansas City television station Thursday was appalling enough, beyond appalling. It was Tyreek Hill and his girlfriend talking last month about what happened to their 3-year-old son, the criminal investigation into alleged abuse and how they handled all of it. Everyone involved looks bad. You feel unfathomable fear for the safety of that child. You eat yourself up about what could have been done to prevent it.
You also wonder who would have such deep reserves of indecency, callousness and tone-deafness to extend the key figure in it all — Hill himself — the privilege of an NFL career and all the benefits it brings.
HILL IN 2016: 'Fans have every right to be mad at me'
But the Chiefs did, and so did the NFL. Now, their chickens have come home to roost, and, coincidentally, they came home on draft night, with the spotlight the hottest.
Three years ago this week, the Chiefs figured the heat they would take for taking Hill in the fifth round, with his past violence with loved ones well-documented, would be worth it. They’ve won a lot of games since then, finished one overtime game away from the Super Bowl last year, and got exactly what they wanted on the field out of Hill.
Their other gamble in that area, Kareem Hunt, eventually blew up in their faces. They had to cut him in-season when his own ugly incident came to light. The move hardly cloaked them in a shroud of nobility, seeing as how they weren’t forced to act until months after the actual incident … when video came out. Yes, this should sound familiar.
The light has swung back onto their deal with Hill. They took their chances again. A mere day earlier, they seemed to have dodged the proverbial bullet again when investigators declined to file charges once their investigation was done.
On Thursday, the bullet circled back and started closing in again. It happened when, this time, audio came out about their young offensive star. (UPDATE: Chiefs GM Brett Veach announced after the first round — video via KSHB-TV — that Hill will not take part in any team activities "for the foreseeable future.")
Sure, you recognize the pattern. It’s a familiar one with this league. It’s now a familiar one with this franchise.
MORE: Hill temporarily loses custody of son, report says
Of course, the Chiefs and the league and everyone else who loved watching Hill play can say now, as they said then, that Hill deserved a second chance, after the college incident that planted red flags all over him as a draft prospect.
He was passed over 164 times in that 2016 draft, surely a few of those times for reasons other than draft needs. The Chiefs were the ones who made the risk-reward assessment.
The "risk" part now stares them in the face and shouts in their ears.
All that talent made the risk worth it; a lesser player, for sure, doesn’t even get a second look. That talent doesn’t seem much worth it right now, even with the Chiefs as close to crossing that Super threshold as any team.
The NFL has continued to botch incident after incident with players accused of violence against women or, in this case, their families. The message it seems to want to send never quite meshes with the one it ends up sending. The league was fine promoting Hill throughout this past season and cashing in on that promotion. On Thursday, it couldn’t have thought that aligning itself with him was that great a deal.
As for the Chiefs, they grabbed up Hill. They grabbed up Hunt and then got rid of him (only to be rescued by the executive who took him while in his old job, Browns general manager John Dorsey). This week, they traded for Frank Clark, another electric, explosive talent with a past that includes an incident in college and an insulting, demeaning tweet to a female reporter who wrote about it.
No matter who the Chiefs claim they are, this is who the Chiefs have chosen to be. The same goes for the NFL.
Draft night is the pinnacle of the dead period of the offseason, designed to eliminate dead periods and the offseason. The more the masses scribble their mock drafts, the less they talk about court cases involving budding young stars.
No such luck in the 2019 draft. Karma begins the season 1-0. The Chiefs and the NFL are 0-1.
