ESPN's Chris Mortensen is in St. Joseph, Missouri for the Kansas City Chiefs training camp. SportsCenter just aired a clip of Mort from the Chiefs facility at Missouri Western State University.
They spent about two minutes on the Chiefs specifically, another minute on whether the Chiefs, Raiders and Broncos can challenge the Chargers in the AFC West and then they moved onto Darrelle Revis' holdout.
Here are ESPN's three main story lines for the 2010 Chiefs:
- Offensive coordinator Charlie Weis and defensive coordinator Romeo Crenel
- Backfield features two 1,000 yard rushers from 2009 (Thomas Jones and Jamaal Charles)
- Rookies to watch include Safety Eric Berry and Dexter McCluster
And here's what Mort had to say.
"Well if anyone remembers last year they started with Chan Gailey as their offensive coordinator and it just wasn't a good match for Todd Haley the head coach so they let Chan Gailey go late. Haley takes over the offense. As the season wore on it started to spark a little bit especially with Jamaal Charles breaking out.
"But Charlie Weis now brings basically the same philosophy. Even though he may have been a failure as a head coach at Notre Dame, his offenses ran smoothly at Notre Dame. They're hoping to get Matt Cassel to the next level and, yes, he has weapons. Not just Jamaal Charles but, as you mentioned, Thomas Jones and Dexter McCluster, who could be a Wes Welker-type player in this particular offense."
"There's a feeling that this team is going to quietly build toward a .500 level. That's the interesting thing about this league. Everything competitively is designed for you to be .500 and then what happens, you go +2 or -2, but the Chiefs feel like they're on the way up."
And then on the AFC West.
"I think that the Broncos, Raiders and Chiefs are closing the gap on the Chargers. The Chargers obviously are still the pick. They still have Philip Rivers. They still have a lot of talent there. We know they have issues there with the left tackle Marcus McNeill, Vincent Jackson and Shawne Merriman.
"The Raiders are clearly to me going to be a better football team.
"The Broncos have been so far the most surprising team I've visited. It felt like bad news Broncos in every story you're reading but only to go in there and veterans like Champ Bailey and Brian Dawkins are really excited about this year.
"Then you come here to the Chiefs and you see the way they improved last year, I think all three teams close the gap on the Chargers. Is it going to be enough to overtake them? Probably not but I would say stay tuned."