But not as coach/GM. Not because I think he’s horrible, but how many times has it ever worked out where one guy can do both jobs well? Not too often. I think the last one was Vince Lombardi (and good though Cowher is, he’s no Vince Lombardi).

Biggest problem with arguing about who the new GM should be, though, is that most of us have no clue who the promising new candidates would be.

I could see him keeping Chan in place see that they worked together in the past. So there would even be some stability for the team, though as I type this I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

You wouldn’t want to score too many points :)

Just because someone says it doesn’t make it true

I’m a veteran pro talent evaluator too. Anyone believe me?

If he’s available. He seems pretty happy with his NFL gig, and he’s not exactly young anymore. But I thought he made smart decisions with the Texans. Taking Williams over Bush seems like it was the right move, even though he got blasted for it at the time.

I’m willing to agree that Herm’s got a good record with defensive backs so far. Most of them appear to improve under his tutelage. But I think the rest of the record is spotty at best. Tyler and McBride haven’t proven anything yet…they’re second year players on a terrible defense. Maybe they’re good, maybe they’re bad, we just don’t know. Same with Jamaal Charles and Mike Cox (they’re rookies so they haven’t played a season yet, although both have shown promise). Hali and Bowe were both talents when drafted, but we haven’t seen Bowe improve at all from first to second year and Hali appears to have regressed in three seasons.

So it boils down to these two questions. 1) Are Herm and Kuharich good at finding talent? The answer to that appears to be “maybe”. 2) Can Herm develop talent? So far outside of the defensive backs the answer appears to be “not really” because outside of the defensive backs few of the players on the Chiefs appear to be any better than they were when they were drafted.

Starting from scratch with your management is a disastrous approach. If you can Peterson and Herm at the same time, you’re basically going to have a GM come in who’s got little to no idea of what he’s got on hand in terms of talent, who’s already going to have his hands full getting his own people up to speed (since he’ll likely be bringing in a lot of staff he’s comfortable with) and who’s basically going to be flying blind when it comes to bringing in a coach who can play to the Chiefs’ strengths. Add to that the rebuilding of the front office that inevitably comes with any regime change and letting your head coach and GM go simultaneously means the entire franchise will be thrown into chaos once their deals are up at the same time. Not to mention that they’ll both be lame ducks for that final year and any work they do on the draft or free agency will essentially be useless because it may be counter to what your new GM will want to do.

Once you’ve made the decision that a GM isn’t helping the situation, you should be immediately looking for (and quickly hiring) the replacement so you can get the new guy situated as soon as possible so he can start prepping for the offseason and the next year. Then you can let the new guy decide whether he wants to keep Herm around for another year or cut Herm loose and go in a different direction. The GM should get to pick the coach, after all, and you want him to have as much time as possible to scout through his selections before making the hire…you don’t want to put him under the gun to get a coach hired right away otherwise he’ll either be forced to rush things and make a bad decision, or he won’t be able to act quickly enough to get the best available coaching prospects.

If we’re not sure about retaining Herm (and I seriously doubt Clark Hunt is absolutely sure about keeping him after the way the team’s performed thus far), then what makes the most sense is to hire a new GM to make the decision on whether to keep him or not after this year (or for the course of this year).