We Need to Pump Up Trent Green Pt. 3: Neither Loser Nor Winner

Trent finally takes off individually, but the Chiefs just can't find a way to win games.

(Welcome back into the Trent Green universe. I believe this to be fairly effective as a standalone article, but does benefit from the context of the first two parts of Trent’s story. If you’ve missed either the first or the second chapters, I highly recommend going back and checking them out.)

I’d like to begin by offering a correction about Tony Gonzalez. In my last article I said that by the time Trent got to KC, the years that made him a hall of famer were gone. This is not true. What I meant (and should have said) was that Tony’s all time great His Year season (2000) was behind him. Trent did not get the benefit of it, and he will never get to that level again. Slight but important correction.

Speaking of Tony Gonzalez, he’d spent the 2001 season being the only Chiefs receiver of any value whatsoever. Along with every non-Priest Holmes KC Chiefs offensive skill player, 2001 is the worst year of Tony’s NFL career (if you exclude year one and two of getting his feet under him, which I do). However, for Tony, 2002 will only continue this downslide. It will not stop it, and I’m about to tell you why.

If you recall, the 2001 Chiefs were an exercise in trying to jam a square-shaped West Coast personnel group into a round-shaped vertical offence hole. This left the Chiefs with offensive players that were good at being shaky and getting open, but entirely unqualified to stretch the field in the way the Chiefs were now looking to do.

This led to Trent making a lot of mistakes (a career high 24 INT) trying to force plays where there were none. Even with great QBs, this is a more common occurrence than you think. It can happen when you put a big play QB into a small play offence. Juxtapose the best and worst years of Carson Palmer’s career (an exercise I might do myself in the future) if you want another example of this same phenomenon.

Check your favourite QB’s football reference page. It’s likely that they have a jarring out of place season that’s well below their standards. All the greats do. It happens for two reasons. The first is that they’re being jammed into an offence that they are entirely ill-suited to operate. The second is that their skill position players fall into a sorry state around them.

Combine both of these issues, and you get the disaster that was negative EPA/Play Trent Green in 2001. However, there was good news. That good news is that out of nowhere the Chiefs had found the second best RB in the NFL (behind only Marshall Faulk in 2001) who also happened to be perfect for their scheme.

Priest (like a lot of RBs of his time) was not particularly fond of catching the ball out of the backfield, but in 2001 (the first time he was asked to do so on a consistent basis) he was already very good at it, and over the years is going to become the best receiver in the NFL out of the backfield. This is a series about Trent Green, but the importance finding one of the better RBs (in terms of peak, not longevity) that the NFL has ever seen off of the scrap heap cannot be understated, and I’m about to tell you the reason why.

Priest is locked under an atrociously team friendly contract due to being signed to a multi-year contract coming off of being a backup in Baltimore. In the modern day, he would’ve just held out after year one in order to force either renegotiation or a trade, but in 2002 that isn’t really done, and having the NFL’s best RB on journeyman money provides the Chiefs with an unholy amount of roster flexibility going into 2002.

In fact, we already saw this at the end of 2001. Eddie Kennison was a first round draft pick all the way back in 1996. Funnily enough considering the context of this story, he was the first round selection of the St Louis Rams, and he came right out of the gate producing, but fell off quickly, and was already gone by the time Trent or Kurt Warner or any of that crew showed up. By 1999, he was seen as being a total bust at the NFL level, but his speed (being a legitimate threat in national track and field events at LSU) meant that he kept getting chances.

He was horrible for St Louis. He was not worth the second round pick that was traded to get him to New Orleans. He was not even worth the fifth round pick that Chicago traded New Orleans for the privilege of giving him a chance there. When free agency finally rolled around for him, he was not signed on the first day. He was not signed in the first month (never a good sign), but eventually he did sign with the Denver Broncos. Was he worth it?

Absolutely he was. He produced better than ever in his half season with the Broncos, but then one of the weirdest sagas I’ve ever seen took place.

Eddie claimed during his best ever season (at age 28) that he no longer had any love for football, and retired from the game. The Broncos responded by releasing him from his contract and wishing him well. That is, until Eddie showed up less than a month later as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs. Mike Shanahan kicked up a fuss, and threatened to go to the league, but in the end the release was final and binding.

That’s right, this happened at the end of 2001, but it was too late to make a difference, so I’m mentioning it here. The Chiefs have found their big play threat.

With Priest, Gonzalez, and Eddie Kennison all in place, the Chiefs use the 2002 offseason doing maintenance on the rest of the offence. The additional additions are slot-type receiver Johnnie Morton, unheralded CFL free agent Marc Boerigter, and actually Dante Hall, who despite not technically being an addition, is going to see significant time at receiver for the first time ever.

In addition to all of this is Trent Green himself. For the first time in years, Trent is going to be able to actually be at training camp. A lot of his time is still (and always) going to be siphoned off rehabbing his knee, but unlike 2001 he isn’t going to lose even more of his time being the only player who knows the offence, and having to teach it to everybody else. Tony Gonzalez is going to hold out of training camp and have an even worse 2002 than 2001 as a result, and keep in your mind (for real this time) that Tony is playing well below his best as all of what you will read is going on, but other than him, a team with Trent Green on it is firing on all cylinders for (in my opinion) the first time in his career.

If only this could’ve happened before he turned 32.

Of course, I do say all that, but a team featuring our man Trent can never be truly firing on all cylinders, because Trent Green repels good defence. The very bad defence from 2001 has gotten even worse, and in 2002 is now the worst defence in the NFL, 53 percent worse than league average.

53 percent may not sound like a lot, but it is in fact a chasm. This is the NFL. It’s just hard to generate that much separation, bad or good. For reference, none of the 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, or 2018 seasons featured a defence this bad at all. 2017 did, but 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011 all also did not. What I’m driving at is that defences as bad as the 2002 Kansas City Chiefs rarely come around in the NFL, and just how cruel is it that when Trent finally gets an offence to himself that actually works, this just happens to find him?

I happen to think it’s very cruel.

Week one encapsulates this situation perfectly. The Chiefs are on the road in Cleveland, and actually come in as underdogs (the pessimism around Cleveland just didn’t exist in the form it would eventually take) against an okay Browns team, but today the Chiefs are going to make them look like all-timers.

Trent’s first pass attempt of the season lands in the arms of Daylon McCutcheon for an interception (which coming off the nightmare 2001 couldn’t have helped anybody’s confidence), and from here finds himself in a fight to the death against Kelly Holcomb, a sentence that surely nobody thought they would ever hear, but it is the truth. This KC defence is made of such thin toilet paper that there’s nothing that can be done, even against Kelly Holcomb and the Cleveland Browns.

The Browns score on each and every one of their first four possessions, and here something important happens that shows you how the character of this Chiefs team has changed. Trent comes out right after that interception and completes passes of 23, 19, 16, and 17 yards to respond right away and keep the Chiefs alive, all of this of course with the threat of Priest always looming, but no actual help from him (-6 yards on this drive). This is the big play profile the Chiefs needed all of last season.

It’s here now. That shows even more on the first drive of the second quarter when Trent and Eddie Kennison connect for the first time this season and it goes for 64 yards as KC scores again to take a 14-13 lead. From here, two unanswered Cleveland touchdowns around the half time break get us behind 27-14, and this is also a very important inflection point that shows how these Chiefs are different than the 2001 version.

They say that when you find out who a person really is when their back is against the wall. At that point, they will show you their true selves. I believe the same is true of football teams. When in desperate need of a score, they will show you what they really believe on offence. I bring this up because a lot of people like to simply heap praise onto Priest Holmes and ignore the fact that he had a top five QB standing beside him.

This is disrespectful to Trent, but it’s also disrespectful to the truth, because midway through the third quarter against Cleveland, facing a 13 point deficit, the Chiefs can still run here. It’s imperative they score, but not necessarily imperative to do so quickly. Nevertheless, in this situation, desperately in need of a score, they eschew the run game entirely and run eight passes compared to one rush.

That tells me something.

However much people may like to look back and attribute Trent’s success to this rush attack (I’m going to address this more later), Dick Vermeil is not looking back. Dick Vermeil is in the moment, and Dick thought his best chance to score was by rushing the ball once on the most crucial drive of the game. We only come out of it with a FG, but it’s enough to keep us alive to get into the fourth facing just a 30-17 deficit.

This is where the 2002 Chiefs really stretch their legs.

Immediately after falling behind 30-17 comes the most Chiefs drive ever. It starts with a Dante Hall return all the way out to the 44. It then features 29 yards on two passing attempts, and 27 yards on two rushing attempts, and a pathetically easy touchdown to narrow the score to 30-24. After the defence finally forces a turnover, one Priest Holmes rush and we’re in front 31-30. This cannot last however, and Cleveland is immediately back in the lead again 36-31.

Six minutes left on the clock means we’re still in a position to just let the Chiefs be themselves. 32 yards passing, 42 yards rushing, and another easy touchdown puts KC ahead 37-36. This still is not enough though, as Holcomb gets the Browns down the field and takes a 39-37 lead with 23 seconds to go.

What more can you do from here?

Do you remember what happens next?

You’ve seen this play before. It’s one of the most famous plays of all time.

Does the name Dwayne Rudd mean anything to you?

Trent Green drops back to pass, tries to wait for his receivers to get down the field, but finds himself in the grasp of Dwayne Rudd. As Trent is being pulled to the ground, he has the presence of mind to throw the ball to Tackle John Tait, who because everybody was in prevent defence is able to run 28 yards up the field before anybody could force him out of bounds.

Dwayne Rudd, thinking he’d sacked Trent and the game was over, throws his helmet in celebration, allowing one more untimed down which the Chiefs use to kick a field goal and win this game 40-39.

I want to talk about this play.

Most people use this opportunity to clown on Dwayne Rudd, but this is the Trent Green story. I want to talk about how he could’ve thought to throw the ball to an offensive lineman as he was going down.

More accurately, how many QBs would’ve either a) just accepted the sack and lost, or b) thrown a ball forward out of the grasp that had a zero percent chance of being caught by a Chief? I suspect almost all of them, but Trent did not. He had the mindfulness to toss the ball backwards (and therefore legally) to John Tait, who even if tackled (absent the penalty) would have fumbled the ball himself to at least keep something going. I find this to be an incredible, and not talked about often enough, part of the story.

In many ways, this is the Trent Green story. It’s little things. It’s details that are entirely lost to the greater public watching what they’re seeing, but are not lost to me. It’s the smart veteran head on a man who still has just 36 NFL starts, and if we’re allowed to criticize QBs for small moments that almost certainly didn’t matter (something done all the time), then I’m allowed to praise Trent Green for this veteran craftiness that absent the silly Dwayne Rudd penalty likely wouldn’t have mattered at all, but in this one case there was the silly penalty, and it mattered immensely, and caused the Chiefs to win. That’s what Trent Green can do for you.

Now 1-0 and with a fantastic moment of veteran savvy under his belt, Trent looks ready to take on the world, but admittedly spends the next two weeks struggling in losses against the Jaguars and against the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots that drop the Chiefs to 1-2.

In that week three game, Trent Green gets fairly easily outplayed by Tom Brady. In 2002, Tom Brady is not a particularly good QB. Granted, he is playing against the Kansas City Chiefs, which allows every opposing offensive player to show their best self, but this is still a bad look, and further feeds into the perception that the Chiefs are a one faceted offence, because Priest was killing the Patriots all day. In fact, the rush game did so well that the Patriots got very lucky to win this game 41-38 in overtime, and with even a little bit of help from Trent the Chiefs could’ve had a win over the defending Super Bowl champions.

This won’t do.

I don’t think Trent likes all this talk, and he gets plenty of it in the run up to week four against the Dolphins. Believe me, the Miami players are talking like this is still 2001, and do not shy away from giving bulletin board material. Why would they? In their minds, this is still one of the worst QBs in the NFL going up against their elite defence.

The Dolphins are correct to have confidence in themselves, as their defence is fantastic (fourth in the NFL at the end of 2002). They’ve just picked the wrong man to mess with.

Week four against the Dolphins is one of the very few times throughout the entire course of his prime that Priest Holmes is entirely shut down (he carries the ball 23 times, and four of these are successful. Ouch), and the rush game is nothing but a weight around Trent’s neck. Knowing these are the circumstances, you would not think that this is going to be Trent’s best game as a pro so far, but that’s exactly what happens.

Trent generates 0.695 EPA/Play (the cut-off for an all time great game is 0.66, so this qualifies) in a game where his team needed every bit of that production, because of the aforementioned running game struggles and because despite generating five turnovers this is still the KC Chiefs’ defence, and therefore this game ends 48-30, with the Chiefs not taking a two possession lead until 8:13 of the fourth.

To say that the trash talking Dolphins were gobsmacked after this game would be an understatement. Safety Brock Marion called the game “frustrating and humbling.” All-Pro Linebacker Zach Thomas cut even further to the chase: “I didn’t expect their passing game to be that good.”

That folks, is what happens when you stack the box against Trent Green. You look like idiots and you get humbled 48-30. If you ever found yourself wondering in this era why more teams didn’t just stack the box to stop Priest, that’s why. This isn’t 2001 anymore, and if this can happen to Miami, it can happen to anybody.

In week five against the New York Jets, Trent proves himself in an entirely different way.

This week five game is the beginning of a new era in New York. It’s the first start for Chad Pennington, looking to get him in there against the softball KC Chiefs to build some confidence. This is a good idea, but turns out to be entirely unnecessary, as Chad is going to go on to be the best QB in the NFL in 2002 (if you think this is a joke, it isn’t. Read the His Year article if you need more detail) who, much like Trent, is forced to carry a defence intent on destroying the season along for the ride with him.

In this clash that nobody knew until months later was between the NFL’s best two QBs in 2002, Trent has to go on the road into Giants Stadium, armed with a pass defence that cannot contain Chad Pennington, who was facing the exact same circumstances on the other sideline, and try to walk out with a win.

In a very entertaining football game that you almost certainly don’t remember, it comes right down to the wire, with both teams trading blows all the way through, and in the end it comes down to the Jets kicking a FG to go up 25-22 at 2:58 of the fourth quarter, leaving Trent just under three minutes to go get a win.

Once again, three minutes is a lot of time. If the Chiefs wanted to use Priest Holmes in this spot, they could have.

They didn’t.

Three minutes is a really odd amount of time in football, as it means you can’t really operate quickly (for fear of leaving Chad over a minute to burn this horrendous defence we’re lugging around), but you can’t operate slowly either. Trent manages it perfectly, taking care to complete passes in the middle of the field and in bounds, completing passes of 13, nine, six, 12, and eventually a 19 yard touchdown catch and run to Priest.

The commentators spend this whole drive gushing about how fantastic Priest Holmes is, which is correct but also unfair. Why is no time spent talking about how well Trent Green has played today? He’s generated 0.342 EPA/Play after all, which is a very very good showing. People would say that he’s not doing anything but completing easy passes over the middle, to which I would respond with if you can complete easy passes and flare screens all the way to the end zone, why would you do anything else?

This is another part of the Trent Green story. It all looks so easy that onlookers begin to believe it is easy.

Believe me folks. Just because Priest Holmes is on the team and we now have receivers that are actually good at their jobs does not make this easy. Ask Deshaun Watson whether having an elite RB and elite receivers and an all around fantastic offence makes it easy. I bet the Cleveland Browns wish they had Trent Green right now.

All of this makes me think back to the label that the LA Times put on Trent in 2000:

Neither a loser nor a winner.

This has proved frustratingly sticky, and reminds me of Shannon Sharpe flipping out a few weeks ago over the Aaron Rodgers minicamp drama and yelling “Aaron Rodgers won’t be the reason the Jets lose, but he will be the reason they win!” This was meant to be a shot at somebody (the media? The entitled QBs? The fans?), but what it did was remind me of Trent Green and others like him who try their heart out and perform well but continually lose for factors beyond their control.

After a 35-34 week six loss where Trent was fantastic but got no help from the rush game, from Tony Gonzalez, from the defence, or from anybody else we get week seven, where Trent stinks up the show, but Priest plays fantastic, and the Chiefs again lose 37-34. Following this is a fairly anonymous game from Trent where the team actually lifts him for once to a 20-10 win over the Super Bowl Bound Oakland Raiders.

That leaves us at our week nine bye with a 4-4 record. As of week nine, Trent is sixth in the NFL in EPA/Play, with his 0.184 putting him behind only Jeff Garcia, Chad Pennington, Jay Fiedler, Brett Favre, and Rich Gannon. These are the best players in the league that our man is rubbing shoulders with, and we can’t even manage a winning record. This is what I was talking about before.

Considering the Chiefs losses came by 23-16, 41-38, 35-34, and 37-34 scores, Trent is not to blame for the losing, but he’s also not winning. This is a problem Trent is going to continue to face through his whole career. How do you give proper credit to a man with top of the league numbers who just can’t manage to win? This is a whole series dedicated to trying to do so.

Am I doing a good job?

This is not a half season phenomenon either. In week 11 Trent generates 0.505 EPA/Play, but despite detonating an H-Bomb on the Buffalo defence can still find just a one point win. In week 12 on the road in Seattle, Trent generates 0.409 EPA/Play. Priest and the run game generate 0.475. This is one of the better team offensive performances in NFL history, made even better by the fact that this was done on the road (most all-time great offensive performances come at home), and yet the Chiefs still manage to lose, allowing the Seahawks to generate a ludicrous 31.57 total EPA on them in a 39-32 loss.

The 2002 Seahawks offence is not all that good by the way. This is a big enough performance to skew their stats for the entire season, but they only generate positive EPA eight times all year, but when they play the Chiefs it just doesn’t matter. It never matters. This KC defence is so bad (0.091 EPA/Play Allowed for the season), that every offence Trent goes against is the 2023 Green Bay Packers.

The Green Bay Packers were a top five offence in 2023.

Trent has to go against that every week.

It is tough constantly trying to fight this uphill battle, and week 13 lets us know what we could have had if things had worked out differently (without the Trent Green rule), as Trent and the offence play less well than they did the week before in Seattle but manage to win this game 49-0 thanks to the combination of Jake Plummer and Josh McCown being determined to screw it up.

Winning 49-0 in a down offensive game.

Is it beginning to sink in yet? Do you need to hear any more about how ridiculous these circumstances are?

I don’t think you do, but there’s a need to tell one final story anyway, because week 14 sees Trent welcoming his former team into his new home. The St Louis Rams are coming to KC for a matchup that must be full of regrets, hard feelings, and humble pies.

How could it not be?

Recall Trent got traded before 2001 so that the Rams could keep Kurt Warner. I discussed in that chapter how this was without doubt the wrong choice, and by 2002 it’s clear to see why. Kurt Warner has already been benched for poor performance. He will soon be cut for that poor performance, so it isn’t Kurt Warner Trent is going to get his revenge against. Trent’s ultimate replacement, Marc Bulger, is at this point still a bench player who has gotten a few starts but not cemented his place yet. Trent won’t be exacting revenge on him either.

Instead, it’s poor Jamie Martin who gets to endure the Kansas City Chiefs, and boy does he ever.

This begins like a normal Chiefs game, with the opposition scoring ten points in the first quarter, but these are the Chiefs, so those points only buy the Rams a 14-10 deficit, and as the second quarter rolls along, and the Chiefs score again, and they score again, and again, it truly begins to feel like kicking a dead horse. The Rams are already dead. They don’t need any help from us.

By halftime this game is 35-10, and just to rub a little salt in the wound (Vermeil has hard feelings with the Rams also) the Chiefs are still playing real offence into the fourth quarter. Only when Trent throws a touchdown at 10:02 of the fourth do the Chiefs call off the dogs and pull the starters.

There is a genuine feeling of sadness in the air as the Chiefs just keep kicking the dead body of one of the best teams in NFL history. In the end, this game goes into the record book as a 49-10 win for Kansas City. This game could have been so much more. It was put on the schedule with the intention of being so much more, but instead we got the Simpsons meme:

What more is there to say about Trent Green’s 2002? By this point he has already pulled into second position on the EPA/Play and ANY/A leaderboards (both only behind Chad Pennington, where he will remain), and the story is the same each of the remaining weeks.

So that’s that. In the end, Trent will end this season generating 0.211 EPA/Play (2nd) and throwing for 7.02 ANY/A (2nd) for what is by far the best offence in the NFL. Needless to say, this is by far the best season Trent has ever had in the pros, but nevertheless it is sullied by the fact that it ends with an 8-8 record and no playoffs.

If the Chiefs had made the playoffs, there’s a very real chance Trent could have won MVP. Rich Gannon did win it with worse numbers. Because they missed the playoffs he did not get a single vote, but with an MVP on his resume Trent all of a sudden looks a lot better to make the hall of fame.

On my 2002 QB tier list, Trent ranks third, because 2002 Pennington is untouchable, and Rich Gannon touched the ball 166 more times, but being the third best QB in the NFL is hard to do. It’s impossible to do if you weren’t born with some serious talent. My QB tier lists go back to 1981, and frauds do not make the top three. It’s very exclusive company, and Trent Green is in this club.

Just for reference, Russell Wilson has made this club just once (2015). Jim Kelly made it once (1991). John Elway once (1993). Donovan McNabb never made it, Drew Bledsoe never, Kirk Cousins, Michael Vick, name the QB you want. It’s likely they weren’t on the level of 2002 Trent Green.

Nevertheless, what people remember is one number, written twice, 8-8.

Never mind that the Chiefs scored 38, 34, 34, 32, and 24 points in five separate losses, people like to see their QBs winning. This is of course totally unfair, because in the entire Patriots dynasty era (2001-2004) they lost once while scoring at least 24 points, and that game was such a massive event that I wrote an article about it. Is this the QB’s space? Is this something a QB can control?

Or is it luck that Drew Bledsoe got injured before Trent got traded instead of afterwards, so he couldn’t lead the dynasty instead? I’m serious. This is a closer what if than you think.

When you put up big numbers in losses, people just treat that differently than putting up small numbers in wins. Take for example 2023 Lamar Jackson, who won an undeserved MVP award based off of having his bad games in wins where you wouldn’t notice. In my opinion, bad games in wins still count, and so do great games in losses.

Trent played fantastic in Seattle, almost dragged his team kicking and screaming to a win nobody but he wanted in San Diego, made up a two touchdown fourth quarter deficit against the defending Super Bowl champions, and had his team in position to defeat the Denver Broncos. If just two of these chances could’ve been converted, it’s likely the Chiefs do make the playoffs in 2002, and all of a sudden this offence becomes a team nobody wants to meet as a sixth seed. As I say this, think of the 2019 Tennessee Titans and the run they went on.

That team was just a less good version of this team, but you can’t change history. Therefore, 8-8 is here to stay.

Once again, Trent Green is neither a loser nor a winner.

At this point it becomes easy to wonder: if Trent and the Chiefs could have even passable defence, just how far could they go? Notice I did not say good. I said passable, as in not 32nd. If only they could find Trent, just for example, a 20th ranked defence to support this offence with, the NFL would have some real worrying to do.

Click back next time to at last see Trent and his Chiefs take the NFL by storm.

Thanks so much for reading.