Crennel Says He’s Likely To Play Veterans vs. Broncos

The Kansas City Chiefs and interim coach Romeo Crennel will do everything they can to beat the Denver Broncos Sunday and that means playing their most experienced players.

“Probably, I’m going to go the way it has been because we feel like the guys that we have been playing with basically have given us the best chance to win,” Crennel told reporters yesterday at his weekly press conference. “I don’t know that making a change now will change that.”

Crennel is likely right. With one game to go, while it might be nice to get a look at some of KC’s younger players on the field, they aren’t likely to be the team’s best option if they want to win.

That being said, Crennel isn’t ruling out the possibility that some players might not force their way on to the field based on their performance against the Oakland Raiders.

“Now, with that being said, I can tell you that [Jalil] Brown had a really good special teams game. He made a tremendous effort on that kickoff return to save the touchdown,” said Crennel. “He had a plus-two downing, I believe it was, downing the ball at the 2-yard line. He was blocking on kickoff return and he did a really good job. If an opportunity arose, then he might be able to get some playing time, but going into this game, knowing what we have to face offensively, our defense has to face a running quarterback in [Tim] Tebow and the option and all those things, so I don’t know that Brown’s abilities, how much they will impact what we need to do defensively. The other young guys, they’re still young and probably they might not get the opportunity if everybody stays healthy.”

The big question, which we talked about yesterday on AA, was the status of rookie QB Ricky Stanzi. While I thought a lot of readers would want to get a look at Stanzi, most folks who commented said they preferred another week of Orton.

Crennel agrees. When asked if Stanzi would only play if Orton got injured, Crennel replied, “Correct.”