Scouting players for a professional football team is one of the toughest, most thankless jobs in sports. This is a point I’ve made at least once or twice before, and it’s one I will continue to make. For starters, football teams are twice as large as baseball teams and five times as large as basketball. Furthermore, there is no proper farm system or minor league. There are secondary leagues like the CFL and AFL, but secondary leagues don’t present coaches and scouts with the opportunity to properly observe a player’s work ethic. Instead, they must rely on limited drafts (seven rounds, shortened ultimately from 17 prior to 1977), informed largely by game footage and multiplayer talent showcases like the NFL Combine.

It is no wonder, then, that when coaches turn to free agency and the waiver wire to round out teams, they tend to seek out players they know. It’s the reason why Gunther Cunningham, for instance, called on players like Carlos Hall, Rocky Boiman, and most recently Turk McBride to shore up the bottom half of his defenses–not because he expected them to develop into star players mid-career, but because he understood what to expect from them. That consistency, or, in some players’ cases, consistent inconsistency, makes a coach’s job simpler, and for an incoming coach or GM, it keeps at bay a bevy of potential headaches that comes from in-depth evaluation of all of his predecessor’s picks.

In this regard, Todd Haley and Scott Pioli have hit the proverbial easy button. 23 players on the current depth chart are new from last year. Six of them came via the 2009 Draft and two more came from the undrafted free agent pool. The remaining 15 were either claimed from the waiver wire, signed as free agents during the offseason, or traded for.

Six of them had played under Haley before. TE Leonard Pope comes from his Super Bowl offense in Arizona; TE Sean Ryan and WR Terrance Copper from his three year stint as Dallas’s receivers coach and passing down coordinator; and WRs Bobby Wade and Bobby Engram, along with S Mike Brown, come from his prior service in Chicago. Six more came from Pioli’s New England teams: QBs Matt Cassel and Matt Gutierrez, OT Ryan O’Callaghan, LBs Mike Vrabel and Corey Mays, and CB Mike Richardson.

Thus, 12 of the 15 are accounted for from the ranks of the head coach’s and GM’s former employers. The remaining three are OT Ikechuku Ndukwe and OGs Andy Alleman and Mike Goff. Ndukwe and Alleman come courtesy of a trade with Pioli’s father in law, current Miami Executive VP of Football Operations Bill Parcells. Goff is the only true outsider of the lot–he spent the past five years with the San Diego Chargers, and prior to that he played for six years in Cincinnati.

Apparently the new guys aren’t much for window shopping. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. Still, I have a tough time buying that Copper legitimately outplayed some of his preseason competition, notably Ashley Lelie and Amani Toomer, or that Ndukwe and Alleman outplayed anybody other than Wade Smith. But none of this is new. Most incoming coaches and GMs probably don’t do it quite as extensively as Kansas City’s guys, but they all do it to an extent. Haley claimed he could win more than two games with 22 players off the street. Given that Matt Cassel was the sole attractor of any outside interest in the lot, I’d say that three wins could constitute a delivery of said promise.

Speaking of which, when exactly are these elusive victories scheduled to take place? I need to set my VCR.

Want to discuss this article? Join us at the Home of the Chiefs Forum.