Jo Po on Pioli News Conference

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Pioli reveals little in news conference
By JOE POSNANSKI
The Kansas City Star

There's one overwhelming goal that every new coach or manager or general manager has in his introductory news conference: Say nothing. New Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli met that goal on Wednesday. He surpassed it. He said less than nothing. He has a chance to be one of the great ones.

You may think I’m joking, but no, I’ve sat through enough introductory news conferences over the years to know that there is nothing at all to be gained by making promises or getting into specifics or revealing too much of the plan at the start. Carl Peterson may or may not have promised a Super Bowl in five years in his opening statement — there’s no record of him saying it — but it does not matter. The “Carl five-year plan” became part of his aura, and people never let him forget it.

Scott Pioli did not lay out a five-year plan or a 10-year plan or any plan at all. He did not guarantee anything but hard work. He did not mention a single Chiefs player’s name the entire news conference. He handled it all just right.

The truth is, Scott Pioli doesn’t know anything about the Chiefs yet. He hasn’t studied the tape. He hasn’t evaluated the players. He hasn’t spent time with coach-in-limbo Herm Edwards or any of his resume-preparing assistant coaches. He doesn’t know how much of a pain in the neck Larry Johnson plans to be or if Tony Gonzalez is going to plead for a trade or if Glenn Dorsey can thrive in a better defensive system or what the heck to do with quarterback Tyler Thigpen. He no doubt has some opinions about these things, but there’s no point in going public with those now. He might change his mind.

So, Wednesday’s news conference was what these big introductory news conferences always end up being … only more. It was a whole lot of nothing. Scott Pioli is not just the hottest GM prospect in the NFL. He’s not just the guy who helped build the three-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots. He’s not just famous around the league for his work ethic and keen ability to evaluate players. He was also trained in the fine art of speaking without saying — by the Master Bill Belichick himself.

“We want players who are big, strong, smart, fast, tough and disciplined,” Pioli said, finally bringing an end to the era of Chiefs executives who searched desperately for players who are small, weak, stupid, slow, fragile and unruly.

“I can promise you there will be no one in the league who will work harder,” Pioli said, a refreshing change from all those football coaches and executives who take extra vacation time.

“Everybody is going to know their role and do their job,” Pioli said, and “a challenge is a challenge,” and “I love challenges,” and “the key is getting it right,” and “Kansas City is a great community.”

And then there was what he said when asked whether he would fire Herm Edwards. He said that there is a process and he’s only starting that process because there are a lot of things that he has to process before the process will be done, so he would go through the process and process the information that needs to be processed and after the process had taken its course and he had processed everything processible, he would talk about the process …

It was a dazzling performance. When the news conference ended, we knew absolutely nothing more about Scott Pioli or his plan for the Chiefs than we had when it started. In some ways, we knew less than we did at the start. And that was the whole point.

We did pick up a few tidbits. Pioli seems like a nice enough guy. He has a 5-year-old daughter. He likes Italian food (and he will no doubt enjoy Garozzo’s and Osteria Il Centro, among others). He had a nine-hour interview with Chiefs owner Clark Hunt. He does not expect to be nearly as much of a public presence as Carl Peterson. He’s ready to go to work.

“I’m not here to collect talent,” he says. “I’m here to build a football team.”

There is every reason to believe Pioli will be successful. For one thing, he has already been successful, wildly successful, with the Patriots. For another, he has worked with a rather remarkable group of football winners — Belichick, of course, his father-in-law, Bill Parcells, Nick Saban, and so on. He was involved when the Baltimore Ravens drafted Ray Lewis, when the New York Jets went to the AFC championship game, and when the Patriots drafted Tom Brady in the sixth round. He has learned some things.

And on top of that, this is a good situation … and Pioli knows it. The Chiefs have a committed owner, a renovated stadium, a passionate fan base and millions of dollars of cap room. There just is not much more a football GM needs.

So I think this will work out great. Now, how exactly is it going to work? That’s all guesswork. I suspect he will want his own coach, though he did not say that. I suspect he will try to find a franchise quarterback, though he did not say that either. I suspect he will reorganize and restructure and modify the way the Kansas City Chiefs find players — I think the Chiefs will look and play a very different style from the one we have seen the last few years.

“There needs to be changes,” was all he would say about that, and that’s all that had to be said. It was just his first day. There are no answers yet. We have to wait for the process to unfold.

http://www.kansascity.com/sports/chi...ry/981973.html