Big Little Men … Tuesday Cup O’Chiefs

There’s one thing we know for sure about Dexter McCluster – if he’s going to fit in with the other little guys that played for the Chiefs over the years, the rookie needs a nickname.

The three smallest players in franchise history were Michael Clemons, Noland Smith and Mark McMillian, a trio otherwise known individually as Pinball, Super Gnat and Mighty Mouse.

Ever since the game of football was organized into teams and then leagues, it has attracted physical freaks. Not the type from the carnival, where there’s a guy with three arms and the bearded lady. No, these are remarkable bodies that are usually big, sometimes close to 300 pounds, but with 8 percent body fat and the ability to dunk a basketball or run 40 yards in a blink of the eye.

Sometimes those unusual bodies are on the opposite end of the height/weight scale. They are quite small, yet powerful and sturdy enough to take the beating that comes from playing a game that is one collision after another for 60 minutes every week.

(Here’s a list of the shortest and lightest players in Chiefs history.)

Consider some of the stars of today’s NFL. Jacksonville RB Maurice Jones-Drew is but 5-7 in height, San Diego has a stick of football dynamite in Darren Sproles, who is just 5-6. Last year DeSean Jackson burst on the scene for Philadelphia; he weighs 175 pounds soaking wet. New England’s Wes Welker led the NFL in receiving, at 5-9, 185 pounds. Carolina’s Steve Smith has been catching passes for a decade at the same size. Baltimore’s running and receiving threat Ray rice is but 5-8.

Little can be big in the NFL. The Chiefs grabbed two of the smallest in the 2010 NFL Draft when they selected 5-8, 170-pound McCluster in the second round, and followed up a few picks later with the 5-9, 197-pound Javier Arenas. They were two of the smaller players selected in the draft; the only man smaller was returner Trindon Holiday, all 5-5, 166 pounds out of LSU who was grabbed in the 6th-round by the Houston Texans. There were three other players listed at 5-9 that were drafted: WR Jacoby Ford in the 4th-round by Oakland, DB Deji Karim in the 6th-round by Jacksonville and CB SyQuan Thompson in the 7th-round by Denver.

As small as they are – and despite the presence of other mighty mites, they are small – the Chiefs are counting on big things from McCluster and Arenas when it comes to performance and production in the 2010 season. McCluster is already making a place for himself in the Chiefs offense, where he will work at any number of positions, including possibly as the Wildcat quarterback. Arenas is pegged for roles in the nickel defense and returning kicks and possibly punts.

They are being counted on as other little men who got things done were in the past that wore the red and gold. Players like Smith, the Super Gnat who in his rookie season ran back a kickoff 106 yards for a touchdown and during his short career with the team averaged 26.8 yards on kickoff returns. He was listed at 5-6¼ and 154 pounds.

Mighty Mouse McMillian intercepted eight passes in the 1997 season and returned three of those for touchdowns. He was 5-7, 148 pounds. Dante Hall established a host of Chiefs and even a few NFL records as a returner in the last decade, all while standing 5-8 and weighing 187 pounds.

RBs like Mike Garrett and Priest Holmes were big-time runners and stood just 5-9. In the 1990s, the wide receiver duo of J.J. Birden (150 pounds) and Willie Davis (150 pounds) who in the first seasons with the Chiefs did not weigh combined as much as defensive tackle Dan Saleaumua (305). They eventually put on weight and got as high as 170 pounds or more.

Little guys were not always a big part of the program for the Chiefs. The coach who used smaller players was Marty Schottenheimer, with guys like McMillian, Birden, Davis and many others who were added to the roster for a few weeks for a few years. The man who seemed to use the least was the smallest person to ever be the head coach of the Chiefs – the diminutive Hank Stram. The Chiefs roster for the 1966 season when they appeared in the first AFL-NFL Championship Game (Super Bowl 1) had just one player listed under 6-feet tall: Garrett. Stram would later go on to add smallish backs to replace Garrett, guys like Robert Holmes (5-9, 221 pounds) and Warren McVea (5-9, 182 pounds.)

With smaller players there is usually a balancing act between seeking production from their speed, quickness and athletic ability, and not using them so much that their smaller bodies are damaged and broken. In his short time with the Chiefs, Smith had 69 touches in one year and 44 the next; he did not start a game. Hall started only 10 of 97 career games with the Chiefs and had seasons of 148 touches (2005) and 142 (2003).

Here’s a look at the big three when it came making contributions even though they were too little and light: Smith, McMillian and Hall.

NOLAND SMITH: when he was drafted by the Chiefs, he was listed as 5-8. Remember this was in the days before there was a combine where all the players would be measured and the results standardized. Another one of Lloyd Wells finds from the black colleges of the south at Tennessee A&I, Smith was measured at 5-6¼ and to this day nobody is quite sure if that quarter-inch was for show or was real. Barely over 150 pounds, Smith was sensational in his rookie season and never regained that production level. Less than two years after that sensational rookie year, he was out of Kansas City.

MARK MCMILLIAN: when McMillian first walked into the locker room of the Philadelphia Eagles in 1992 as a 10th-round selection in the NFL Draft, supposedly the late Reggie White took one look at his new 5-7, 148-pound teammate and said: “Who let the little kid in here?” As McMillian remembers, he fired back an expletive at White that was something he wasn’t used to hearing as a minister. With that McMillian set the tone for his career. With the Chiefs, he was surrounded by some very good cornerbacks in James Hasty and Dale Carter. When he was in the game, opposing offenses went looking for him. Sometimes they were successful, but in that ‘97 season McMillian was sensational, grabbing eight interceptions and returning three for touchdowns. In 32 games, he also contributed 101 total tackles.

DANTE HALL: at 5-8, 187 pounds Hall came to the Chiefs in the 2000 NFL Draft out of Texas A&M as a running back. But he soon was moved to wide receiver, and after a very poor rookie season, a spring in NFL Europe helped him make the transition to receiver. With the addition of Dick Vermeil as head coach, Hall’s career blossomed in a big way; from 2003 through 2005 he averaged 136 touches per season. The most he ever had on offense was in the ‘03 season, when Hall had 56 touches on offense. Every time an attempt was made to get him more playing time in the offense, there would be a drop in his return production and the coaches would back off the offense. With his 11 TD returns, few players of any size had as many big plays as Hall.

As he goes through the OTA sessions that start again on Tuesday at the Chiefs facilities, McCluster and Arenas are trying to build his own history. So many times he’s been told he wasn’t big enough, but that didn’t stop him as a schoolboy sensation in Florida or an all-around contributor at Ole Miss. Arenas always battled doubters who did not think he was durable enough to handle returns and play defense.

They hope to join a fairly small group of former players for the Chiefs who were very big, little men.

NFL PERSONNEL FILE/FRIDAY-SATURDAY-SUNDAY-MONDAY, MAY 28-31

• BEARS – signed 3rd-round draft choice S Major Wright to a 4-year, $2,638,000 contract. The signing meant that for the second year in a row Chicago was the first team to sign all of its draft choices. It helped that Wright was their highest choice; released DL Lawrence Wilson – an undrafted rookie free agent out of Ohio State who had a knee problem.
• REDSKINS – signed UFA OL Artis Hicks to a 3-year contract for a maximum payout of $9 million. Hicks played left and right tackle and right guard over his NFL career.
• SEAHAWKS – released RB LenDale White, saying in a team statement that White “was not ready to be a member of the Seahawks.” There are also reports that White faces a four-game suspension for violating the NFL’s drug policies.