Teicher: Gailey out as Chiefs offensive coordinator

[Tribal Warfare]

Gailey out as Chiefs offensive coordinator
By ADAM TEICHER
The Kansas City Star

From the start, the union between Todd Haley as head coach and Chan Gailey as offensive coordinator made no sense to Larry Johnson.

“There (were) too many roosters in the hen house, so to speak,” said Johnson, a veteran running back for the Chiefs. “Two coordinators, both passionate about what they do and how they call plays. To me, it was only a matter of time.

“It was common sense. It’s two offensive coordinators that have been to the promised land before, won games before, been in this league before, done it their way before. To have two offensive coordinators in the same room wanting (things their) own way, there’s going to be some type of disagreement.

“Somebody is going to have to bow out of the race. It’s just natural.”

Gailey, of course, was the one who lost out. Haley fired Gailey as coordinator and took over the play-calling duties. Gailey was reassigned to unspecified duties unrelated to coaching.

Haley, a rookie head coach, got his job because of the ability he showed in designing offenses and calling plays the last two seasons for the Arizona Cardinals. He acknowledged a strong temptation to enter training camp as the play-caller but eventually deferred to Gailey, a veteran coach who joined the Chiefs last year.

But after a month of training camp and three preseason games, Haley agreed with Johnson that working with Gailey wasn’t a good fit.

“Ultimately, the fate of this team and the accountability fall to me,” Haley said. “After going through three preseason games and a lot of (offseason practices) and a lot of practices in training camp, it just became more apparent to me that I had to be more involved.

“Once you get into the real game situations and things start to pick up, you start to see more that you didn’t see. Timingwise, it was better now than to go into the regular season. We have one preseason game left, and we’re going out to win and do everything we can to win. This was the time.

“Right now, the offense needs a little more attention.”

Haley inherits an offense in disarray. The Chiefs have two offensive touchdowns in their three exhibition games, all losses.

They lost quarterback Matt Cassel because of a knee injury in last weekend’s game against Seattle. Cassel wasn’t at practice Monday.

Haley wouldn’t specify when Cassel will return. Although the Chiefs aren’t planning for a long-term absence, clearly they are not expecting him to play in Thursday night’s final preseason game against the Rams in St. Louis or the Sept. 13 regular-season opener against the Ravens in Baltimore.

Tyler Thigpen took most of the first-team snaps in practice Monday, leaving a few for Brodie Croyle. Thigpen indicated that the coaches haven’t told him he’s the quarterback until Cassel returns.

“They haven’t said anything like that,” Thigpen said. “Right now I’m going with whatever the coach says, and they haven’t said anything.”

Haley didn’t commit to a starting quarterback for the Rams game or in the regular season during Cassel’s absence. He said the Chiefs would use Thursday night’s game to prepare for the regular season and not just to evaluate younger players.

“We’ve got to get our ducks in a row when we kick off here in 12 days or 13 days,” he said. “We’re going to play the guys that we think need the most work. I wouldn’t assume because of that, that (Thigpen is) not going to play or Brodie’s going to play.”

Haley will be Thigpen’s third coordinator in his three seasons with the Chiefs, following Mike Solari in 2007 and Gailey last year. Thigpen said Haley made a comment in the locker room after the loss to Seattle about making changes to the offense.

“It sounded like he was just joking, but obviously he wasn’t,” Thigpen said. “It’s almost unheard of that you’d have something like that happen.”

Haley indicated unhappiness with Gailey’s play-calling after the loss to the Seahawks. He wondered during his news conference afterward why the Chiefs moved away from a running game that was working so well.

But he said the game itself had no direct bearing on his decision.

“I was very disappointed in the game in general,” he said. “It’s just a matter of us doing what we feel is the right thing.”

The Chiefs figure to change little about their offense at this late stage.

“I’ll leave that for the Baltimore Ravens to figure out,” Haley said. “There won’t be wholesale changes. We’ve worked too hard.”

Arizona was second in the league in passing yardage last season but ranked last in rushing yardage. But the Cardinals, with quarterback Kurt Warner and wide receivers Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin, had strengths that the Chiefs don’t.

“This is not Arizona,” Johnson said. “Different players need different plays.”

The Chiefs used mostly a short, conservative passing game under Gailey. Wide receiver Bobby Engram said he was told the Chiefs would be more aggressive with Haley calling the plays.

“We’re going to open it up a little more now,” Engram said. “We just need to be aggressive and make plays.”

Gailey declined an interview request but issued a statement through the Chiefs. It read in part: “There’s never great timing for situations like this. However, Todd has to do what’s best for the team and for the future of the Chiefs. I respect that. It didn’t work out for us, but I certainly think that he has a very fine offensive mind and I feel very fortunate to have worked for the Chiefs these past two years.”

[Cosmos]

"Wide receiver Bobby Engram said he was told the Chiefs would be more aggressive with Haley calling the plays."

Soooo... we got an O-line suddenly?

[ChiefMojo]

You can still be aggressive and have a piss poor OL. There are many teams that attack with a quick aggressive passing game. We were to lack and pussy footing around with Gailey, imho.