<table> </table> People sometimes miss how hard it is to coach inexperienced football players. It&#8217;s hard on the stomach. It&#8217;s hard on sleep. It&#8217;s hard on peace of mind.</p><p>That&#8217;s why so many successful football coaches &#8212; throw in a couple of past Chiefs coaches like Marty Schottenheimer or Dick Vermeil &#8212; demand experienced players. They want experience, and they want it now. See, those guys know how to play football. True, they may not run as fast as the young guys, may not hit with the same fearlessness, may not always run their routes hard into the traffic.</p><p>But, by gosh, they probably won&#8217;t jump offside on third and 3, probably won&#8217;t blow a coverage by trying to play the hero, probably won&#8217;t turn the ball upfield when slipping out of bounds is the wise play. Those older guys know how to hold without getting caught, they know how to get down before fumbling, they know how to bait a quarterback into making the wrong throw.</p><p>Yeah, many coaches, probably most coaches, prefer the comfort of the known.</p><p>That&#8217;s why, no matter how you may feel about the guy, Chiefs coach Herm Edwards really is different. He loves this kid stuff. Loves it. He would rather play a talented and enthusiastic young guy over a steady and mechanical old guy. He lives on passion.</p><p>And, well, Herm&#8217;s got his kind of team now. The Chiefs have a bunch of young guys running around now &#8212; they could have 13 or 14 starters with two years or less of NFL experience &#8212; and those kids in the preseason are banging into each other, messing up assignments, making unbelievable plays, stretching their limits, doing stuff that is so absurdly stupid. Edwards and the other coaches cannot do anything but laugh. They&#8217;re also doing stuff that is so absurdly promising that the coaches find themselves feeling a little bit giddy.</p><p>&#8220;We&#8217;re going to have a bunch of kids running around like maniacs,&#8221; Edwards says happily. &#8220;We know that. We&#8217;re just trying to get them running the right way.&#8221;</p><p>Yes, he sounds so excited about this thing. True, people generally expect the Chiefs to stink this year. Edwards knows that. He knows that he can&#8217;t really argue with those expectations, either. But he really believes this is the beginning of something.</p><p>Edwards has known for a couple of years now that, sooner or later, he would have to blow up the Kansas City Chiefs as everyone knew them. He knew it would be painful, too. Edwards inherited an old team two years ago &#8212; an old team that had made the playoffs only once in eight years. Bad combination: Veteran team that wasn&#8217;t all that good in the first place. Then before his first game, the brilliant but ancient left tackle Willie Roaf retired. Chiefs all-time running back Priest Holmes could not decide whether he was going to retire. <em>During </em>Edwards&#8217; first game, longtime quarterback Trent Green suffered a nasty concussion and was unconscious for 10 minutes.</p><p>Edwards kept it going as well as he could &#8212; he somehow managed to sneak that first team into the playoffs &#8212; but he knew things would have to change. The Chiefs were a team built to win back in 2003, and they just kept grabbing for the smoke of that burned-out dream. They kept treading water by adding little pieces &#8212; a veteran linebacker, a veteran cornerback, another veteran offensive lineman &#8212; but nobody can tread water forever. Edwards knew it could not last.</p><p>Last year, the Chiefs lost their franchise running back Larry Johnson to an injury, and for more than one or two reasons it all fell apart. They lost their last nine games. They finished 4-12, the Chiefs&#8217; worst record in nearly 30 years. It was miserable. For all those years, nobody would argue that Chiefs president/CEO/general manager Carl Peterson had done a good job of keeping the Chiefs competitive and interesting enough to keep them in the playoff run and keep the home sellout crowds coming. Now, though, time ran out. And the Chiefs decided to blow it all up and start over.