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Posted on Sun, Oct. 18, 2009

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Chiefs' Dorsey has hopes at last

BY KENT BABB

Kansas City Star

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —Glenn Dorsey is at a strange place, the crossroads of being ashamed of where he's been but proud he made it back. The Chiefs defensive end sits in the team's locker room, remembering the careless times that seemed so innocent — and the hard time he did as punishment.

Beads of sweat are still fresh on his forehead after his latest weightlifting session. He is as fit as he's been in years, a trim 298 pounds. Somehow, he's done it. He worked himself into shape after Chiefs coach Todd Haley thought it would be impossible. Dorsey has adjusted to a position that his body type, experience and skills didn't seem to match. He looks powerful, quick and dominant — if only occasionally — for a team that, months ago, thought his weaknesses might overcome his strengths.

Dorsey has started each of the Chiefs' five games in 2009. Haley says the second-year defender has improved in each of them. For the first time since Kansas City drafted Dorsey last year with the fifth overall pick, he is showing signs that his potential, once shadowed by sloppy play and bad habits, might soon be within his reach.

"I want to be a great player, man," he says. "That's what people don't understand."

Dorsey is embarrassed at this next part, but he is no longer willing to deny it: He gained so much weight after his rookie season that it put his future with the Chiefs — and maybe his career — in jeopardy.

Dorsey is 24 years old and 6-feet-1. He arrived at the team's offseason conditioning program in March and weighed a staggering 348 pounds. Haley gave Dorsey an edict: Lose 50 pounds within a few months, or don't come to Arrowhead Stadium looking to play.

"That," nose tackle Tank Tyler says, "would scare the (stuff) out of me."

Instead, Dorsey got to it. What were his choices? He said it's his job to do what his coach tells him, unsettling as it sounds. But his weight gain was so overwhelming that his body revolted. A player once deemed the NFL's next great defender was, in just one year, eating himself out of the NFL.

"It's been a long road for him," Haley says.

The Chiefs wanted Dorsey to play defensive tackle last season. His playing weight then was 320 pounds. Dorsey's rookie year was less than memorable, and so was the Chiefs' defense. Coordinator Gunther Cunningham left after the season, and head coach Herm Edwards was fired.

Haley took over, and he was talking about moving to the 3-4 defense. Dorsey didn't seem to fit. He wasn't the stout cinder block to play nose tackle, and he wasn't the towering and quick player to hold down an end spot. But end is where the Chiefs saw him. He'd need a kind of quickness, conditioning and motor that had been untapped in Dorsey's past.

"He's not necessarily the dimensions that you think of," Haley says now, "when you think of a defensive lineman."

So Dorsey went home after that rookie year, still undisturbed by consequences or reality, and started eating. His family is full of generous cooks, and Dorsey joked after being drafted last year that family meals' taste is overshadowed only by their bounty.

"I was working out and everything, you know," he says of the offseason. "I was just eating well."

Dorsey returned to Kansas City in the spring, having gained nearly 30 pounds in three months.

"It was a lot of weight that they asked me to lose, considering what I played at last year," Dorsey said. "I knew it was going to be for the better. I just had to actually go out there and put in the work to do it.... I knew it wasn't going to be easy."

Four months after Dorsey reported to the conditioning program, he still had work to do. Haley forced players to pass a conditioning test before they could participate in training-camp practices, and Dorsey failed. He wasn't the only player to fail, but he was the last one to pass. Day after humiliating day, Dorsey — whom the Chiefs pay during the regular season, doing the math one way, a guaranteed average of no less than $38,000 per day — worked on a stationary bike, burning calories and hours while his teammates played football. He pushed heavy pieces of equipment close enough to a line of fans that he could hear their taunts. He lay on his back and pulled a blocking bag with a chain, trying to lose enough weight that his body wasn't shocked when he tried to run.

Dorsey wishes he could say that his life eased after training camp, but he knows that that never will be his fate. Top-five picks don't have it easy, especially when they have yet to justify the draft spot and the money that slot commands. Dorsey was mentioned this week in trade rumors, and until he becomes known for more than his food preference, his exercise regimen and all the things he has not done, his future in Kansas City will remain uncertain.

But there is hope, Haley says. It showed the coach something that Dorsey defied expectations and lost those 50 pounds. Since then, Dorsey has shown enough improvement that the Chiefs not only aren't going to give up on him yet, but for the first time they're seeing glimpses of what Kansas City saw when it drafted him last year.

"The guy obviously has skill to play in the NFL," Haley says, "or he wouldn't have been taken where he was taken. That skill is starting to show itself.

"Two out of the last three weeks, he's been more like what you'd envisioned him being."

Haley called Dorsey's game against Dallas - the big man had four solo tackles and nearly sacked Tony Romo for a safety - the best of his career. Now, the coach says, Dorsey has to pass perhaps his biggest test yet: show that he can keep improving. Haley says today's game at Washington is critical for the young lineman.

Dorsey admits that he's still adjusting to playing defensive end. He says the pace and time demands are things he's never been faced with. All the Chiefs can do now is wait and see if he continues to pass his tests. When it comes to Dorsey, that has occasionally been a dangerous proposition. Kansas City needs him to prove his reputation wrong.

Dorsey says he's up for it.

"I ain't never going to doubt myself. Never," he says. "People are always going to have that opinion and what they think about things, and I can't control that. I talked to guys before I got here, and they told me: 'When it gets hard, you've got to keep on pushing. You best believe in yourself because nobody else will.'

"I'm going to control it better this year. I've got to."