New offense, new start for determined QB Croyle

"It's just like anything else," said Croyle. "You have to learn. And the only way to learn is to get out there and do it. You can learn as much as you want in practice, but, until you get out there, every play is going to give you something different."

What is different about Brodie Croyle and this year's Chiefs is their offense. There is a new coordinator in Chan Gailey and a new approach to football. Gone are the voluminous playbooks, the constant motion and the myriad formations. Now it's football the old-fashioned way, with the Chiefs relying more on their running game and less on their quarterback.

That's OK by Croyle, especially because Gailey allows him the freedom to check out of plays with audibles. A year ago that wouldn't have happened. In fact, it couldn't.

"Wait a minute," I said to him. "If you saw something you don't like -- say, an eight-man front and only seven blockers -- you'd call a timeout, right?"

"No," Croyle said. "You would have to run the play."

Worse, there was no quarterback sneak in the playbook. You heard me. Zilch. Now there will be.

"I started feeling really good about this offense about the second day of OTAs," said Croyle, "because it's a lot of the same things I ran in college. It's a different terminology, but my coach (at Alabama, Mike Shula) coached under Chan at Miami. So it's a lot of the same things.

"(At OTAs) is when I started believing that we're going to be pretty good. Then when training camp got here, by the fourth or fifth day it was like (he snaps his fingers) there it is! The running game started popping open, and (Dwayne) Bowe and I started getting the feel for each other again.

"No offense to the other (coordinators and their approaches), but that was more a '1-2-3-4-5, this guy; 1-2-3-4-5, that guy.' And with this (offense) it's more like you're reading a concept as opposed to going 1-2-3-4.

"It's more like: Just go out there and play football. You're a football player; you have football instincts; we're a young team. So just go out there and play."

Croyle will do that. And, just a hunch, but I think he plays well enough to get this team back on track. Not this season, but in the seasons to come.

As Edwards said, what's going on this year is all about "doing something for the long haul." Look for Croyle to do most of the hauling.

"Nobody has expectations for us," he said. "You look anywhere, and everybody's like, 'Aw, they'll be lucky to win four games this year.' That's not a bad spot to be in."