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I don't see how they can keep Herm.
1) You can't keep him on a 1-year contract as a lame duck.
2) You take a huge risk giving him a contract extension. He's coming off a 6-26 stretch, which means he's on incredibly thin ice. If he starts out 09 1-5 or whatever, Arrowhead will be a ghost town and there will be tremendous pressure to fire him. Suppose he goes 6-10 -- are the Chiefs really gonna sell that as progress, especially considering what Atlanta and Miami did this year? So you have to fire Herm -- and owe him for the remainder of his contract (say, 2 years). AND you have to hire a new coach and pay him, perhaps very well if you go after a big name. Will Clark want to fork over all that money?
3) However, if you bring in a new coach, even if he goes 6-10 there's a bit more of a grace period. Because he's not Herm, the team and the fans can say, well, he was given a daunting task not of his making, let's give him another year to really turn it around, etc.
The new guy gets a clean slate. Herm doesn't. Herm comes with all this baggage and bad feelings. It just seems to me a huge gamble to bring him back. I don't see what it accomplishes. Plus, he's hardly an indispensable man. It's not like he's got a Super Bowl or two to fall back on as proof he's THE guy, like a Cowher, Shanahan or Parcells type. You would think Pioli is confident enough to have identified other coaches who can do better.
The ONLY thing that could make Herm stay, I guess, is if Clark simply puts his foot down and says he believes with all his heart, every fiber in his body, that Herm is the one guy in all of football who can lead this team. But if he really believed that, I would think they already would have announced Herm is staying.
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