ChiefsPlanet - GRETZ: Welcome Back Boys

Year Two of the Herm Edwards Era begins Monday.

That’s when the Chiefs off-season strength and conditioning program gets underway at the Chiefs practice facility. It’s the start of formal work between the coaching staff and the players.

Not that there hasn’t already been some of that in the last month or so. Players have been filtering back into the workout facility and coaching offices for weeks. But things get organized starting Monday.

And things will be different. Veteran players will find new personnel to work with and new ways of doing things. Edwards put his mark on just about everything at Arrowhead last year. One spot that remained relatively untouched was strength and conditioning.

That’s no longer the case.

Edwards released both of the strength and conditioning coaches that were holdovers from Dick Vermeil’s staff, Jeff Hurd and Billy Long. Hurd had been with the Chiefs for nine years, since the 1998 season when he joined Marty Schottenheimer’s staff. Long had six seasons with the team, coming to the Chiefs with Vermeil in for the 2001 season.

“You don’t want to come in as a new coach and change everything,” Edwards said. “We had some good people here, but at the end of the day you are looking for guys that fit your philosophy, more of what you want. You give people the chance to adapt to that, give them a one-year look. I told everyone that stayed that they were being evaluated.”

Replacing them are Cedric Smith and Brent Salazar. Smith joins the team after spending the last six seasons in Denver, where he was an assistant strength and conditioning coach with the Broncos. He’s a former NFL fullback, playing in 72 games over six seasons (1990-91, 1994-97) in the league with four different teams (Minnesota, New Orleans, Washington and Arizona.) He was the fullback for Emmitt Smith at the University of Florida and was a fifth-round pick by Minnesota in the 1990 NFL Draft.

Salazar joins the Chiefs out of the University of Pacific, where he was the assistant director of athletic performance for them last year. He previously worked as an intern with the University of New Mexico and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and spent several months as an intern with the Broncos in 2005. Salazar was a collegiate tennis player at New Mexico.

“This was a chance to get someone who has the same sort of ideas that I have about conditioning,” said Edwards. “With Cedric, two things come to mind. First, he’s a former player and I think that’s big. He worked his way up in the league and he played. He worked his way up in the conditioning business. He was with a good organization (Denver) and I heard a lot about this guy. He has a great way with players on how to get them going.

“I felt going in a different direction would be good.”

So what direction are the Chiefs going to go with their off-season program? As with everything else that Edwards has touched in Arrowhead, there’s a method and plan to what he’s trying to get done in the weight room.

“If you are a veteran guy who has been here for awhile with the old staff, you have a comfort level,” Edwards said. “That’s gone now. They are going to be wondering what they are going to have to do. There’s some insecurity there. That’s good. That puts everybody on the same page.

“It’s more being a well conditioned team mentally as well as physically. There are certain ways you go about doing that, in the way you ask players to do things, that you can work on the mental side as well. When the players go in there, they will find out there isn’t a whole lot of time for chitchat. It’s going to be about getting things done.

“I’m constantly trying to put pressure on players and put them in that type of an environment. It’s going to be more competitive in how we do things.”

FROM THE NFL MEETINGS
The local media ignored a couple items from the NFL spring meetings in Phoenix this week so here’s an update:

* The league’s owners passed what I’m calling the Samie Parker-Dante Hall Rule on a 26-5 vote, with one team abstaining. This now makes it a five-yard penalty for spiking the ball in the field of play. Spiking the ball in the end zone after a score will not be penalized.
* A proposal to move the kickoff up five yards in overtime was tabled because of a lack of support among the teams.
* The idea of establishing sideline to helmet communication on defense was reportedly two votes short of passing. Expect to see this come back next year.
* While instant replay was made a permanent part of the rules, a proposal to allow all penalties to be reviewed except offensive holding never got off the ground. Also, the owners passed a change in the rules that now gives the officials just 60 seconds to look at the replay, not 90 seconds. No one ever paid attention to the 90-second limit, so it’s doubtful the change will have any effect on speeding up the process.
* There was no change in the pass interference penalty.
* The owners eliminated from the rulebook the penalty for excessive crowd noise.