Hunt says he has no plans to shake up the Chiefs

[Coach]

Hunt says he has no plans to shake up the Chiefs
By ADAM TEICHER
The Kansas City Star

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. | Herm Edwards and Carl Peterson can relax — for now.

Edwards, the Chiefs’ head coach, and Peterson, the team’s president and general manager, were given votes of confidence this week by Clark Hunt, the team’s chairman. In an hourlong interview at the NFL’s fall meetings, Hunt said Edwards and Peterson were doing their jobs well despite the Chiefs’ 1-4 record and the fact the team was not competitive in three of those losses.

Peterson also came under fire this week after the team could not grant tight end Tony Gonzalez’s request to be traded. The Chiefs’ woeful performance the last two seasons has prompted many fans to call for the firings of Edwards and Peterson.

Hunt, 43, became the Chiefs’ controlling partner in December 2006 after the death of his father, Lamar Hunt, the team’s founder. Clark Hunt made his first big impact after the end of last season, in which the Chiefs finished 4-12, the team’s worst record since 1977.

Hunt at that time announced the Chiefs would embark on a massive rebuilding program centered on young players. He also laid out a set of expectations to meet this season.

Hunt on Wednesday indicated no regret about the course the Chiefs have set. The Chiefs have 16 rookies — almost a third of the team’s roster — and many of them start or play significant roles.

“From my standpoint, I still believe it’s the right approach,” Hunt said. “It’s certainly not without some pain in the short term. Hopefully, the prize at the end of the process is going to be well worth it. …

“It’s been a mixed bag, but I’m not sure that’s different from what I expected.”

Highlights of the interview follow:

Q: Do you have the right people in place to see the Chiefs through this rebuilding process?

Hunt: I think so. I would point to our draft this year. At the time, we felt good about it. Five games into the season, I feel equally good about it. The staff, including the coaching staff, did a great job of identifying the type of players they felt would be a good fit, the type of players they felt could become starting players in the NFL, the type of players they felt would become good Chiefs. The coordination and the sharing of a common perspective between the scouting department and the coaching staff is as good as I can remember it in the last 10 years.

Is Herm Edwards doing a good job?

I think he is. Certainly, competing in the NFL with as many rookies as we have on our team and as many rookies as we have in our starting lineup is difficult. But Herm is doing the right thing. He’s giving those players experience. I’m sure to some degree, some of those decisions are very tough. But he knows where he wants to go and what he needs to do to get there.

He will have one year left on his contract at the end of the season. Will he be coaching the Chiefs next season, and if so, will he receive a contract extension?

We haven’t made those decisions. Something that’s true for all our personnel is we will evaluate that thoroughly at the end of the year. I don’t feel that doing it in the middle of the year serves any purpose.

Is Carl Peterson doing a good job?

I think he is. Going back to our discussion about the scouting side working hand in hand with the coaching side, that really starts with Carl. He’s done a good job of overseeing that.

Have you made a decision on his future?

I haven’t. I would give you the same answer with him that I gave you with Herm.

His contract also has one year left when this season is over. Have you had a discussion with him about what he wants to do?

When we re-signed Carl three years ago, he mentioned to me at the time that he planned to retire at the end of his contract. He and I have not had a specific discussion on that point, but I don’t have any reason to believe his desires have changed.

Do you regret not bringing in a few more veterans to stabilize the situation?

Our head coach has a mind-set of how he wants to go about the rebuilding process. It does not involve keeping players or signing players who are at the end of their career. Could some older players make the difference in one or two wins? The answer is probably yes. That probably doesn’t take the team in the direction of developing the core group of guys.

After the end of last season, you set out some expectations for this year’s team. One was that the Chiefs would be competitive for a playoff spot. Is it still reasonable to expect that?

It’s very hard to project out what this team will look like later in the season. I’d like to think they’ll get better as the year progresses. If you look back at other teams who have gone through similar rebuilding processes, they’ve had a very tough first half of the season followed by a second half where things really turned around, and I really think the Chiefs have that chance if Brodie (Croyle) can stay healthy. That’s going to be a big part of the equation.

If you want to point to something we’ve seen in the first five games, I would point to the New England game and the Denver game as examples of what the team can do. Hopefully we’ll see more of that type of effort and consistency as the season progresses and less of what we saw in Atlanta and Carolina.

You also mentioned wanting to see the many young players getting better. Are you seeing signs of that?

I am. It’s very hard with rookies who are all of five games into their careers to notice improvement from week one to week five. I think the coaches, who spend a lot of time looking at the tape, will tell you they can see that progress. I’ve certainly been pleasantly surprised with the play of Branden Albert, Brandon Flowers, Brandon Carr. … Will they get better as the season goes on? I would certainly expect it. You can also look at a couple of players from the draft a couple of years ago, (Bernard) Pollard and (Jarrad) Page, just to pick the safeties. I think their level of play is improving. It’s good to see guys like Turk (McBride) and Tank (Tyler) earning some significant playing time.

You also wanted to see offensive improvement, but we haven’t seen that. Is it reasonable to expect a better offensive team as the season goes on?

Yes, with the caveat you always have to have on injuries. Last year, losing Larry (Johnson) for half the season hurt the performance down the stretch. Likewise, not having Brodie for most of the first five games this year has clearly hurt the offense. There have been some signs that the offense is better than it was a year ago, but you really have to reserve judgment on that until we’ve seen the team with Brodie at the helm for a number of weeks.

Was it a difficult decision for the Chiefs to at least investigate a trade for Tony Gonzalez?

I don’t think there’s any other player on the team we would have been willing to do this for. But Tony’s been such a big part of the Chiefs, such a terrific pro, that we felt the right thing to do was to see what kind of interest there was out there in him and see if there was a transaction that made sense for Tony and also made sense for the Chiefs. At the end of the day, there wasn’t.

Have you talked with Gonzalez yourself?

No, I haven’t.

It obviously doesn’t help Brodie Croyle to lose Tony. Was that a consideration?

Ultimately it didn’t play into the decision, but it did occur to Herm, Carl and myself that having Tony stay with the Chiefs would help Brodie develop.

Can you see the light at the end of the tunnel and that 2009 will be better for the Chiefs than 2008?

Very much so. That’s part of the reward for playing so many young guys. Once those players get into the second and third years of their careers, they’re going to be that much better. If we can keep this core group of guys together going back to some of the players we drafted in 2006, we could really have a talented and still young but experienced football team in 2009 and 2010.

You strongly endorsed this rebuilding program. If it fails, how much blame should fall on you?

As the individual who has responsibility for hiring the general manager, there certainly would be some part of it that would fall on me. But philosophically, we’re going to be an organization that builds our football team through the draft. So to an extent, we’re always going to be in the process of rebuilding. We got away from that in the early part of this decade, which is why our team hit the wall last year.

I don’t think you can really fail at what we’re trying to do. Maybe the success won’t come as fast as we’d like it to. If we don’t have that quick success, we’re not going to abandon what we’re doing and go to the opposite approach, which is to build a team by signing free agents.

There have been a handful of teams that have been able to do that and be successful, but typically, that success is short-lived and you don’t really have the foundation that allows you to be regularly competitive at a high level.

Is there a division at Arrowhead Stadium right now between a Herm Edwards camp and a Carl Peterson camp?

That’s an interesting question, because I’ve had other people ask me that. I don’t sense that. If it exists, I’m not aware of it, and I’m around the organization a lot, so I think I would see it if it was there.

In your interviews shortly after the end of last season, you were full of praise for Edwards but basically indicated you didn’t fire Peterson because Edwards didn’t need the burden of working with an unfamiliar general manager. If indeed that division exists, it is something you perhaps created?

The intent was not to elevate one over the other. We have a head coach who was and is very eager to build the team through the draft. That’s something I also believe in. Carl, to his credit, was willing to let Herm take that path and had the scouting department in place to help Herm pursue that path in terms of building the team. You may have taken away from that conversation that I was lifting one above the other, but the truth is, for us to be successful, we need them to be working together with a common vision. I’ve been very pleased with what I’ve seen in that regard.

Are you aware of the anger among the fans in Kansas City about the Chiefs right now?

I am, and I certainly understand their frustration with a 1-4 record. I share their pain. I hate losing more than anybody. The path we’ve chosen to take the team in terms of trying to rebuild it posed the risk that the early part of the season was going to be tough. We’ve been living through that. … I do share in the frustration. But I do believe in the direction we’re headed and that the team will get better as the season goes on.

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