Interesting: Chiefs War Room Shake Up... I didn't know.

[nychief]

this is from that Most Valuable Network, so take it for what its worth...but I found this interesting.

A facelift in the Chiefs’ War Room

First, allow me to comment to all disgruntled Chiefs fans (or draft enthusiasts) that cringe looking back at the numerous day 1 busts under the Chiefs’ watch (Siavii, Freeman, Downing, even Ryan Sims, among many others).

What’s amazing about the Chiefs’ first day draft busts, is that the Chiefs are one of the more effective teams in the league at drafting in the second day. This is a telltale sign that the scouting department knows what they’re doing, but the personnel heads are clueless. Credit Chuck Cook for great late round picks, like Parker, Thorpe, and Allen; discredit the head honcho of personnel, Lynn Stiles, for the numerous first day busts. The word on the street is that Stiles’ methods of scouting are antiquated–he relied more on phone calls and word-of-mouth recommendations than on actual scouting.

The good news is, Stiles is no longer heading up the war room. He volunteered to leave his draft responsibilities (whether he was pushed out or voluntarily walked out is up to debate). Regardless, Stiles was leading a leaky ship for way too long, and clearly should have been held accountable a long time ago for the Chiefs’ day 1 draft failures.

He was replaced with Bill Kuharich, who held similar responsibilities for New Orleans. The point of concerns is that he wasn’t a draft guru in New Orleans either. In fact, apart from Willie Roaf, he does not have a history of drafting impact players. However, he does bring new blood into the war room and I’d like to believe he can’t be any worse than Stiles. The hope is that he will listen to his scouts more than Stiles did. Considering how successful Cook has been landing players in day 2, imagine how successful he could be if he had input on who gets picked in day 1. To boot, they hired another former scout by the name of Herm Edwards who has so far been very involved in this year’s scouting process. None of these points guarantees any success, but there is plenty of reason to believe that their perpetual draft day gaffes are a thing of the past.

[StcChief]

The proof will be in this draft and future ones under Bill Kuharich....
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Hope the collective minds can start making day 1 good decisions.

[booger]

Just another example of ego. That plus a touch of the good ole boy network.

I am not saying Stiles did or didn't belong in the front office. The 4 stints he had there 3 of them he was hired by Carl. Twice in KC and once in Philly. The other DV brought him to STL. It sure seems like he was in over his head from '01 - '05 and probably didn't deserve his title or responsibilities being second in charge of all player personel next to Carl. Our drafts sucked for the most part with our first day picks.

Alot of that IMO was DV as well. In '01 we didn't pick until the 3rd round. Robinson was enamored with Downing and had to have him. Saunders and DV were hell bent on changing the WR core and took Minnis. We pretty much had to take a DT the year we took Siavii. We didn't do anything in FA to address that and got stuck like we seem to often do with having to draft a specific postion with our first pick. Gun and everyone thought we should look into a wide body tackle and we reached on Siavii. Later Saunders just had to have Kris Wilson.

Both picks were reaches. Siavii was a raw DT with potential. Not to mention he was a 25 or 26 year old rookie that would have also caused him to drop. Wilson was a hybrid type player. At 6'2 250 he wasn't and probably isn't ever going to be considered a #1 TE because of his size. He is a HBack. They don't get drafted until the second day. If you reach you do it in the 3rd rd not the 2nd.

DV Loved Tyler Brayton and Chris Kelsey the year we took LJ. I won't put sims on anyone because he was a late riser on everyone's board and was a legit top 10 pick according to most. They had coaching insight from John Bunting on sims and Phillip Fulmer (him and CP have been good friends for years) on Henderson and haynesworth.

My problem is letting coaches, even assistants have so much imput on the first day of the draft. They don't even look at it probably until mid january to early february because of the season itself and end of the season evaluations. Yet the scouts do this from August until the draft and have followed these players for 3-4 years and have the knowledge on them, Hell it is their damn job to know these players. But once the draft comes the coaches step in and seem to know more than the scouts all of the sudden.

To me it's just stupid and ego driven.

Chuck Cook is a good scouting director and has hired and lost several good area scouts. I can't remember the year but it was recently in which len Pastabelly named him as an unsung type of guy as far as a draft evaluator. He listed 10 or so guys and when he talked about Cook and KC he mentioned to many people making descisions and not giving Cook enough input.

So to me when I hear Cook say ( access arrowhead recently) that he is happy Herm has been a scout, knows their job well, and wants their input and will give them more say, it seems like a good change to me.