Kansas City Chiefs GM Scott Pioli made the media rounds yesterday. He talked to the folks at 810 WHB. It's worth a listen (which you can do here).
He gave some of his final thoughts on the first 53 man roster.
"They are what we see they are," he said. Sounds a lot like Bill Parcells famous, 'You are what your record says you are.'
Speaking of Parcells, Pioli talked about some of the advice he got from his father-in-law.
"Another part of the challenge is understanding that it's not going to get done in a day.
"The first several months on the job it seemed like every day or every other day I was getting a voice mail message from my father-in-law down in Miami calling and he'd just leave the message, 'Hey, listen, it's not going to get done in a day.'
After the jump, I took notes on a few of the more interesting questions from the interview.
Can you give us your overall thoughts on this first 53 man roster?
"One of the interesting things about this roster, we talked about it last night, when we put it together and looking at it and seeing a lot of new faces, some familiar faces. One of the things that stood out to me, first of all, I think the roster overall is improved. At the top end, the middle and at the back of the roster.
"One thing that hit me is the number of new players. There's 21 new players on the 53 man roster. And I was looking back at the names of some of the players we've released since I've arrived here.
"One of the things that stood out to me was the fact that there were 30 players that were on the roster last year in some sort of role that are no longer here as of today Of those 30 players taht were on the roster, only two of those players have found new jobs in the NFL.
"The other 28 don't have jobs at this point in time.
"It's a bit of a statement that the roster needed to be improved or changed, when you have a number of players who leave here, and they're also not finding jobs necessarily from the other 31 teams. It's clear there's been a lot of change here and change needed to occur."
Is there a concern with Todd Haley biting off more than he can chew (with the new playcalling responsibility)?
"No, I don't. The reason is simple: This is not the first time this has happened in the National Football League. It's happening with first time head coaches and with experienced coaches.
"I think that's there's a lot of times where just because the announcement hasn't been made who's coordinating and offense or defense, you can watch the sidelines and know that when you're watching a team play, how involved the head coach is or isn't in the offense.
"There's a number of head coaches in the NFL this year who are doing that. You look back at Sean Payton, I know when he took over we know who was running the offense down there. I think we all did. I think when Gary Kubiak took over in Houston everyone knew what was going on there. I think we know who's running the offense in Denver and the defense in Detroit, so I don't think it's that unique.
"When it's happening here in our city, we look at it as being big news, and it is news to a degree, but I also believe that it's not that uncommon."
On adding veteran players after the first game:
"Absolutely. We had Jon Runyan in this week. We looked at him and gave him a physical and worked him out.
"There's going to be a number of players, where I"m talking to agents or we're looking at. That may be veteran players or a player on another team's practie squad that we can sign to our 53 man roster.
"I've said this before, there will be constant work to find opportunities. There's opportunities out there and we've having to find the opportunities.
"This roster...a team that only won two games last year is very much influx. But I'll tell you this, when we become a very good football team, we'll continue to do that work. Anytime you think your roster's set and everything's okay and you can't improve it, it's a losing attitude.
So is it safe to say the door's not closed on Jon Runyan?
"We talked to Jon and he's looking at some other situations as well. The door's not closed but it's not kicked wide open either. "