Romeo Crennel On Kyle Orton, Matt Cassel And Ricky Stanzi

The Kansas City Chiefs made the announcement official on Monday: Romeo Crennel is the new head coach.

But that was the boring part. We knew that would happen. The interesting part of Monday's press conference was the quarterback talk. Crennel didn't give away any secrets talking about Matt Cassel, Ricky Stanzi and free-agent-to-be Kyle Orton but his words were nevertheless interesting.

I've got a transcript of all the quarterback talk posted after the jump but one line from Crennel stood out to me: "Kyle did a tremendous job for us and I'm probably not sitting here if Kyle hadn't done the job that he did."

For no real reason, I've gotten the impression over the last few weeks that Crennel wants Orton back in KC and that line didn't do anything to stop me from thinking that. It's obviously way, way early in the process but I can already tell this will be the topic of conversation this offseason. Crennel also indicated that he feels the Chiefs could win with Cassel so I'm not really sure what to make of all this.

Here's a Q&A of all the quarterback talk from Crennel today:

Who will the quarterback be next year? "We have Matt and Stanzi under contract. Kyle is an unrestricted free agent. We have to go through that process of evaluating our team, our team needs and then go through the free agency process and see what happens there. The thing about free agency is, those unrestricted free agents, they have a choice. They can decide if they want to return or whether they want to go elsewhere. We can have a desire to potentially get a guy back but if that guy decides to go someplace else, there's nothing we can do about that. Right now we have Matt and Stanzi on the squad and we'll see what happens after this free agency."

Will Kyle Orton be back in 2012? "Kyle did a tremendous job for us and I'm probably not sitting here if Kyle hadn't done the job that he did. I'm very appreciative of that. I'm also appreciative of the fact that he is an unrestricted free agent and we have to go through the process. I would be unfair to him not to say that I appreciated what he did for me. I'm not going to say I didn't appreciate it but the situation is the situation. We have two quarterbacks under contract. He's not under contract. So we'll play it out and see what happens.

Can Matt Cassel win in Kansas City? "Matt Cassel has won here. We've been to a playoff with Matt Cassel. I don't think that Matt Cassel has fallen off the wagon overnight. I think he's a good talent. He's a good quarterback and he's taken us to a playoff. So I anticipate that he can do it again."

Can Cassel and Orton be on the same team? "That still has to be determined and a lot of that has to do with how Kyle feels because he's unrestricted. If he were under contract and we had both of them here I think it would be more of a dilemma for me than it is now. But he's unrestricted and he's not under contract so we'll have to see how the free agency thing pans out."