ChiefsPlanet - Chiefs Q&A with Herm 5/19 (first day of OTA's)

Q&A with Herm Edwards - 5/19
May 19, 2008, 2:55:00 PM

OTA
Highlights
HERM EDWARDS: “The thing the veteran guys realized was they’re in the minority now. A bunch of them grabbed me and asked, ‘who are these guys?’ I said, ‘you’d better find out who they are. That’s what this team is.’ I think they’re embracing it. I think the turnout was good. Everyone was here except one kid from Rutgers (Ron Girault) who wasn’t here because of school. We had 91 guys, I believe, out there. You can only go to camp with 80 so there will be some guys that are going to have to be let go before that. They know that.”

Q: What are you asking your players to do?

EDWARDS: “They’re in the classroom. I told them it’s like going to school on the first day. When you go from elementary school to junior high school you always had a nice shirt on, your pants were clean and you had sharp pencil. It’s the same way when you come here now: you need to have a sharp pencil. And you need to stay sharp and 10 days from now it can’t get dull. It’s about learning and that was established early today in how we’re going to coach them in the classroom. Take it from the classroom to the practice field and try to apply it.

“We’ve got two stages going right now. The first four days are basically more of a passing thing. We’re having a walk-through offensively and defensively because for a lot of these guys it’s a new offense. So, that alone will take some time.”

Q: What do you want to get out of these OTA’s?

EDWARDS: “I think you find out what these guys transfer from the classroom to the field and then the competitiveness in what we ask them to do. It’s going to be very competitive here. There are actually 12 players left with seven or more years of experience on this football team. It might be six years, but the point is the rest of them are five years or less. I told those guys there are going to be a lot of guys competing for jobs here. I’m talking about at every position.”

Q: Are all your veterans here today?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, they’re all here.”

Q: What’s going on with Greg Wesley? Was he here? Are you trying to trade him or release him?

EDWARDS: “He wasn’t here. We’re not worried about Greg. We’re moving and practicing.”

Q: He was you only guy under contract not here.

EDWARDS: “Right.”

Q: You kind of have him out of your plans?

EDWARDS: “I don’t want to talk about one guy who isn’t here when there are 91 who are here.”

Q: With so many young guys is the objective of these OTA’s different than past years?

EDWARDS: “Oh yeah. I think your install[ation period], for example. It’s a new system offensively. Defensively we’ve tweaked that a little bit and we’ve changed some guys position-wise. There are different ways we’re going to do things on defense.

“You’re really putting in a new system [on offense] and then you’ve got a bunch of new players trying to learn a new system. I think there are 31 drafted and college free agent kids here right now. That’s a lot of college or drafted kids.”

Q: Any team that wants to have success wants a certain amount of experience. Are you concerned at all that you don’t have enough?

EDWARDS: “I’m comfortable with it because if you look now it’s more balanced. The problem is if you do this slowly no one makes a big deal out of it. But because after last year we were going to do this it’s a mass of numbers right now. We were lopsided as a football team. Now we’re more even. We have a bunch of young guys, a bunch of middle-aged guys that are good players and then we’ve got a group of guys who have 10 or more years of experience. At one time we had 17 or 18 players 30 years or older. That’s too many, too many. We’ve weaned ourselves away from that, not going after guys like that in free agency. We were going to sign some guys who were on their second contracts who were free agents.”

Q: This is Brodie Croyle’s second year starting and with a new offense, too. Do you feel comfortable with that? Do you feel good with his grasp of it?

EDWARDS: “I feel good with his grasp of it. He’ll be fine. All those guys will be fine. They’ll figure out that it’s pretty simple. We’ve simplified it a lot. We really have. Young guys will have to play a lot for us. Chan (Gailey) is a veteran coach and he’s coached a lot of football in this league. He has a way of running his system. He’s coached a lot of teams that have been in the playoffs. I think it’s 11 out of 14 times he’s been in the playoffs. The system will speak for itself; the players will get it, and we’ll go.”

Q: When you first got here this was Trent Green’s football team. Is this Brodie Croyle’s team yet?

EDWARDS: “I don’t think it’s anybody’s team yet. It’s forming. He’s the guy who’s taking all the snaps with the first team right now. He’s up and it’s his turn to show that he can be a starting quarterback in the National Football League and not only that but to win games. I think he knows that he’s been waiting for his opportunity. Thigpen is behind him and Damon Huard is the veteran.

“Damon’s not going to get a lot of reps. It’s not because we don’t trust him it’s just that we know what Damon is capable of doing. So, he’s not going to get a lot of reps right now. He’ll get his reps in training camp. But in OTA’s Damon doesn’t need a lot of reps.”

Q: Have you talked to Brodie about this season and how anxious is he to get a win and prove he can do it?

EDWARDS: “Very, but he can’t do it by himself. It’s the people around him and how we play as a team. I think he realizes that and I think the players know that, too. Now, he’s going to get a lot of the blame because he’s the quarterback. He’s got a pretty good mindset right now. He threw the ball pretty well today. It’s seven-on-seven with no rush. He threw the ball well on the first day out. He threw it in some tight spots.”

Q: Did Larry Johnson make it through today?

EDWARDS: “Yep, did everything, made it through. He was fine.”

Q: With so many new players it seems like an unwieldy process for you. Do you hope to figure out who your starters may be going into training camp?

EDWARDS: “You’d like to know by training camp. You would pretty much have guys penciled in. You’d have a pretty good idea athletically who they are and then mentally who they are. You put the pads on, however, you see difference sometimes.”

Q: Did you have Branden Albert working at left tackle?

EDWARDS: Yep. Left tackle.”

Q: Where was McIntosh?

EDWARDS: “He’s at the right tackle. We’re pretty big on our offensive line all of a sudden when you look at us. They look good. We’ll see.”

Q: Because the dynamics in experience on this team has changed, have the goals changed at all?

EDWARDS: “We won’t get into that depth right now. But we’ll set expectations and they’ll understand what they are. That never changes. It’s about winning and last year was a terrible season for everybody: players, coaches, fans, staff, for everybody.

“But I sense from the guys that were involved then – and it’s just today and everyone’s excited – but there is a different way they’re carrying themselves right now, a different demeanor, a different look.

“And for the others who are here? They don’t know anything else. It’s all new to them. They’re sitting in the classroom of a National Football League for the first time and they’re excited. You’ve got 31 guys from college trying to win a job.”

Q: Did you or do you feel it necessary to pull some of your veteran players aside and say this might not be fun right now but hang in there?

EDWARDS: “Yeah, and I’ve spoken to a lot of those guys before this even took place when the season was over with. So they knew. They anticipated what was going to happen and I’ve spoken to them since after the draft. They’re excited and you’ll visit with them. But I think when they walked in the locker room today they looked around and I know Brian [Waters] looked at me and said, ‘who are these guys?’ I said this is the team now. He said this has really changed. That’s good because it needed to.”