Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid joined NFL Path to the Draft today on NFL Network live from the 2013 NFL Combine. One of the experts on the Path to the Draft panel was former Chiefs GM Scott Pioli.
Reid was seated right next to Scott and as you can imagine, it was a trip to Awkward Town. Population 2.
Pioli helped get things going by touching Reid on the arm while making a weird joke about his (Pioli’s) daughter toilet-papering Reid’s new house in KC.
Then Reid was asked about his initial press conference in KC. Shortly after being introduced to the KC media, Reid was asked about the QB position.
"Well, we’re in the process. That’s the key to that question. We’ve looked at the QBs that are in house. I like a couple of those guys. I know that you can win with a couple of those guys. We’re in the process of going through the free agents and looking at them and these kids that are in the draft. Any trade possibilities, we keep all that wide open. It is a process. It is a process. A very important position."
Reid went on to relive his “we need to find the next Len Dawson” joke before our boy Scott Pioli jumped in.
"I’ll tell you, regardless of whether that QBs in-house or that QB comes from outside of work? that QB position is going to be better because Andy’s there. Andy and his staff, they’ve done a great job. You look back, you had Donovan but they’ve had other QBs that were good players that became better. He and his staff and his people have developed QBs, they just do a great job with it. So whether that guy’s in-house or out, that doesn’t matter They’re going to do a great job with it. They really are."
Translation: PLEASE KEEP MY BOY MATT CASSEL AND MAKE HIM LOOK AMAAAAAAZING.
Reid ignored that and instead fielded a question about how much he likes the current Chiefs roster.
"I like the guys. Scotty did a great job of bringing in guys that can play and help you win football games."
Nice! Scotty Pioli. We’re rolling with that from now on.
Reid went on.
"Listen the guys that we have I now are good football players. So what you do is you go in and evaluate the whole picture and it’s important that you do that. That’s what we’re doing now. Thank goodness we have time to do that. That’s what this whole process is about. We’re sitting here at the Combine in Indianapolis and this is part of the whole. And so you go through this process and you have a chance to meet these kids and talk to them, like we did at the Senior Bowl and you take the next step when you have the individual interviews with them and so on. So it’s kind of a neat deal."
Next one of the hosts droned on for a while about how Andy Reid knows everything about every high school football program in California. Then, finally, we got to Geno Smith.
Here is Reid:
"I haven’t met him so I’ll have an opportunity do do that down here. I’ve had a chance to look at his tape and he’s a heck of a football player. Now I have this opportunity down here to look at him eye to eye and introduce ourselves to each other and get our ten minutes of talk with one another."
Next Reid was asked if there were some specific things Reid wanted to learn about Smith. Reid took the opportunity to use the word “process” again for the 300th time, which of course had Scotty Pioli, who has an “It’s A Process” tramp-stamp tattoo on his lower back, just beaming with pride.
"Again, there’s a process that you go through so really, out of that 15 minute period or whatever it is, what is it Scott? 15 minutes, by the time the scout gets done with the and the position coach gets done with them and your General Manager, you’ve got maybe five minutes with them. So you keep your ears open and you listen. You like to hear some background on him, where he came from, what he’s about, what went on during his season this past year at West Virginia. And then see how he would see himself fitting in to our program."
The Scotty dropped some more knowledge on all us fools.
"Andy’s right. That 15-minute window (Here Pioli snapped his fingers) closes quickly. I mean it’s, from the time you, you never get the full 15 minutes. I mean we used to train our scouts to make sure they got the guys in quick, get them out quick, get out of the room, get settled. We don’t let them shake hands with one or two guys because you gotta get down. That’s one of their tricks, too. They try to shake hands with as many of these guys as they can to cut down the interview time."
Then Scotty puckered up.
"I know this, you’ve got a heck of a staff there. John (Dorsey) is great and the rest of the staff that’s there, great people that are going to do a very thorough job."
Then, then Scotty Pioli said something that made the collective heads of every Chiefs fan watching live, explode.
"So whatever ends up happening, don’t be so locked in the QB. We were talking about it, he’s (Pioli’s co-host Paul Burmeister) so locked in on this QB thinkg. There’s a whole lot of other football players out there, Paul."
Then Reid said:
"There are Paul. But it’s…it is an important position. I understand where he’s coming from. I got it. We’ve just got to go through this whole process."
Sure, Pioli appeared to be joking about the whole QB thing but just to see him actually say the words “don’t worry about the QB” was probably enough to drive even the most light-hearted Chiefs fan temporarily insane with rage.
Not a whole ton of useful information here but it was high comedy (for me at least) to see Pioli sitting there with Reid while Reid talked about trying to clean up the mess Pioli left in KC.