Rebuilding project excites Edwards

MANKATO, Minn. | Jared Allen can’t take it anymore. He wants out, and he wants it to happen now.

Sound familiar?

He’s walking off the Minnesota Vikings practice field, wrestling with his shoulder pads and pouring sweat in the meantime, trying … to get these … damn things … off. He wriggles his way out of his new uniform, the one with the purple on it, and bellows as the cooler air surrounds him.

“Much better,” he announces, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

Allen has a new home now, but he spent the previous four years trying to do the same thing: slip out of something that got less and less comfortable the longer he waited and the more he squirmed.

The Chiefs drafted Allen in 2003. Said they thought he’d make a good long snapper. Then Allen became one of the NFL’s best defensive ends and wanted everyone to know it. He wanted to be paid like it, too. He and Chiefs executives had a loud, public feud over a long-term contract, and the feud didn’t end until Allen was gone from Kansas City.

The Chiefs went 4-12 last year and decided it was time to rebuild. Herm Edwards was finally getting his way. He likes these projects. But for it to happen properly, the Chiefs needed draft picks — and had to give up something to get them.

Edwards says a trade was a necessary part of the Chiefs’ rebuilding process. He says he’s known this project was coming since he took the job in January 2006 — but couldn’t begin until the time was right. When that time came, and the Chiefs were wounded and the front office and ownership were desperate for ideas, Edwards raised his hand.

It was a Tuesday in April when Allen received the NFL paperwork that approved his trade to the Vikings. The Chiefs received three draft picks in return. They parlayed those into five players for Allen, whom the Chiefs believed was perfect trade bait.

“It’s like fantasy football,” Edwards says. “You have a real opportunity to build your team, build your foundation. Now, to do that, it doesn’t come free.”

Edwards says he still has a good relationship with Allen. Says he’s proud Allen went to a place where he’s happy and to a team that paid him.

The Chiefs have moved on, too, and Allen says he’s glad about that. Allen has stopped sweating now, and for the moment, he’s calm. He says he’s been happy for months.

“The way the paths split but came back together,” Allen says, still airing himself out, “it was the best for both situations. They got the picks they needed; I’m in a place where they’re competing. I can spread my wings. So can they.”

•••

The coach strolled onto the practice field early in training camp and looked at what he’d gotten himself into. He looked at all those players, so many of their faces unfamiliar, and wondered if this would work. If it could work.

Free agency hadn’t been an option. The team had to go young.

“You didn’t have much choice,” the coach says. “It was time.”

The coach identified with some players, and some players identified with him. One of the players the coach liked was an undrafted rookie cornerback. He had rare passion and seemed determined to make the team. And the cornerback was interested in how the coach had built the team.

The cornerback’s name was Herm Edwards. It was 1977, when Dick Vermeil rebuilt the Philadelphia Eagles using young players.

“We didn’t talk much about rebuilding,” Vermeil says now. “We talked about working hard and developing the players we had.”

Edwards started every game that year. He watched as those players grew together and led the Eagles to the playoffs the next year. Two years after that, they won the NFC championship. Edwards says he learned how to shape a team by watching Vermeil build the ’77 squad, which Vermeil says was a “lousy” team.

But Edwards learned during his introduction to the league that sometimes, starting over is necessary.

“I was paying a lot of attention,” he says.

This is what Edwards likes. He enjoys a project. He likes ribbing young players, running with them, talking about what might happen if their skill matches their potential.

Edwards rebuilt the New York Jets before the 2003 season. The Jets had gone to the playoffs during Edwards’ first two years, but Edwards says now he knew a rebuilding project was coming. He says the Jets had good but aging veterans, and once they had been maximized, the time had come. They built the team through the draft, and after one losing season, the Jets were back in the playoffs in 2004.

Edwards says his current project is similar to the one he engineered in New York. Edwards replaced Vermeil as Kansas City’s coach in 2006. He says he knew then that he was inheriting an older team and that he’d eventually have to rebuild. But he had to wait until the right time.

“It sounds easy,” he says, “but you can’t just do it. It doesn’t work that way.”

There are contracts and skeptical executives and, hey, the Chiefs had a playoff team in Edwards’ first season; they had to ride those veterans until they gave out. That happened last year. Even before the end of the season, Edwards had decided: The Chiefs were going to start over. He says they would’ve done it if the Chiefs won eight games in 2007. It was an easy decision when they won half that many.

“For me, I like this,” Edwards says. “In my mind, you needed to go this way — for the organization’s sake. Well, you can go the route of free agency and try to get some guys, but then you’re going to stay where you’re at. You’re going to stay basically a veteran football team. You’ve got to make a decision, and our decision was very simple: We’re going to play young guys.”

Some Chiefs executives had gotten used to a particular way of building a team. That included plugging holes with veterans and aging stars. It had worked before — the Chiefs rode Joe Montana and Marcus Allen to the AFC championship game in 1993. But ’93 keeps fading with the years, and considering the Chiefs haven’t won a playoff game since, so does that strategy.

Edwards has heard enough about how close the Chiefs came to the top. He says the only way to reach the top, instead of coming close, is to rebuild now, for the future.

That meant trading a valuable and popular player. It also meant the possibility of filling three or more of the team’s holes by trading that player — a player the Chiefs believe might have peaked last year.

“I had some reluctance to the thought of trading Jared,” Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt says. “People felt that two years down the road, we’d be better down the road with those draft picks than with that money tied up for two years in one defensive player.

“The right decision was to trade him.”

•••

“You can’t miss,” Edwards says. “When you take a chance like that, you’ve got to hit on the picks.”

He’s talking about what might be remembered as the biggest gamble in Chiefs history. They traded Allen, a Pro Bowl player with elite skills, for draft picks. Those picks were gambles themselves, so the Chiefs had doubled down and were trying not to sweat.

Edwards says the Chiefs were combing their draft board when they realized there were too many good players in the first three rounds and Kansas City had too few picks.

The Chiefs wanted a first-, second- and third-round pick for Allen but knew that was a long shot. Minnesota offered its first — the No. 17 overall pick — and two thirds. The Chiefs jumped on it, and months after he led the NFL with 15½ sacks, Allen was gone.

Four days later, a dozen of the Chiefs’ top minds gathered in an underground room at Arrowhead Stadium. Their most pressing need was a left tackle, but another player kept appearing atop their lists.

They had been through the scouting and evaluation and had identified the player they thought was the best. It was Glenn Dorsey, the defensive tackle from LSU. Some executives have said Dorsey was the top player on the Chiefs’ board when their turn came, which is technically true. But they’d have taken Dorsey if they had the No. 1 overall pick.

“That was a no-brainer,” Edwards says. “The next mind-set for you is — it wasn’t even close: We have to get a tackle.”

There were 12 picks between the Chiefs’ spots and four tackles they liked. They were sweating in that underground room. They predicted a run on tackles as teams panicked and scooped up the top linemen. The Chiefs kept watching the board, waiting for one team to pick the player another team had targeted. Then they would pounce on the disappointed team with a trade offer.

The Detroit Lions had the No. 15 pick and wanted linebacker Keith Rivers. So when Cincinnati took Rivers at No. 9, the Chiefs started making calls to the Lions.

That’s about the time the run on tackles happened. Denver picked Ryan Clady at No. 12. Two picks later, Chris Williams was gone. Two tackles the Chiefs liked were left, but at No. 17, they might not be. They had to make another trade.

“That’s where the extra pick comes in, all of a sudden,” Edwards says, referring to the first-rounder the Chiefs received in the Allen deal.

Then it was done. Team president/general manager Carl Peterson hung up the phone. Kansas City had traded one of its third-round picks — another of the choices it received in the Allen deal — to swap places with Detroit. The Chiefs drafted Branden Albert, a player they’d identified as one of the top tackles in the draft, at No. 15.

“I told him our expectations and our hopes,” offensive coordinator Chan Gailey says. “I just wanted him to understand that he was going to be an important cog in what we’re trying to build here.”

The Chiefs drafted 10 more players, which Edwards says could give the Chiefs a quicker turnaround than the Jets after their 2003 reconstruction.

“The one thing we do know,” Peterson says, “is you can turn it pretty quickly — now.”

When the Chiefs reported to training camp last month in River Falls, Wis., Edwards finally had a team that had been built in his image. There was youth and speed, unlimited potential and the first completed step to the project Edwards imagined three years ago.

“You don’t try to sugarcoat it, man,” Edwards says. “You’ve got to hope people listen to you. But you’ve got to be committed to it. You can’t be half in, half out. You’ve got to say, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ Then you’ve got to go do it. Thus far, we’ve done it. And the way we do it, that’s the way it’ll be done for a long time.

“You’ve got a foundation, and now you’ve got to keep stacking on top of it.”

•••

Edwards stands a few dozen yards behind the defense, watching the seeds grow on a team still in its early stages. It is an afternoon practice in the heart of training camp.

Edwards was a defensive back, you know, and the wide angle is the one he’s used to. He blows his whistle to stop the plays, hollers playful instructions when a receiver beats one of the corners, gets in there to show these youngsters how an old gunner does it.

Edwards likes the enthusiasm. He likes that so many of these players weren’t around for last year’s meltdown. Their passion hasn’t been dented.

“They don’t know what they don’t know,” he says. “They’ll make some mistakes and all that; there’ll be some growing pains throughout the season. But you know what? I’ve done this twice. You deal with it.”

Edwards talks about Dorsey’s strength. Albert’s quickness. Brandon Flowers’ coverage skills. Jamaal Charles’ speed. Brad Cottam’s blocking. DaJuan Morgan’s instincts.

“It’s fun to be in this position as a coach because you’re surrounded by a bunch of guys, young guys, who keep the veteran guys excited because of the energy they bring every day,” Edwards says.

He says this is where he wanted to see the Chiefs. Sure, a losing season might be inevitable. But Edwards says that’s worth it if the Chiefs reach their goal of being a Super Bowl contender by 2010.

It could happen. The Chiefs want to add another draft class, have them play one season with the 2007 crowd, and then at the edge of those players’ prime, it’s time to make a run.

“It’s potential. All of this is potential,” Edwards says. “It’s the same way when they drafted Jared Allen. And he became the player he became.

“As you get older, you figure it out. All these kids are ours. We drafted them, and we’ll start playing them. And before you know it, that’s the team.”