Kansas City Chiefs Have No Choice but to Hire Romeo Crennel as 2012 Head Coach

Sunday's upset victory sealed the deal; Romeo Crennel will be the Kansas City Chiefs head coach for 2012 and beyond.

No, there's no official report from Scott Pioli, and once the season ends there will be the requisite interviews and rumblings about who is visiting Kansas City this week.

When the dust settles, though, Pioli and the Chiefs will go with their known commodity.

Clark Hunt hit the big red "reset" button in 2009 when he hired Pioli to replace Carl Peterson; Pioli then continued the house-cleaning by jettisoning Herm Edwards and hiring Todd Haley.

Haley obviously didn't pan out as they wanted, but Kansas City won't likely want to push that button again any more than absolutely necessary.

Elevating Crennel to head coach would help maintain the bulk of Kansas City's coaching staff. At the very least, the defensive staff should remain the same. That would bring some consistency to a team that's made great strides under Pioli's watch.

One of the reasons for those improvements are most likely due in part to the devotion Chiefs players have for the 64-year-old interim head coach. More than one player came out after Sunday's victory talking about their confidence in Crennel as their coach today and for the future.

Should Kansas City elect to go another direction with their head coach, that new coach would face an uphill battle winning the Chiefs locker room after a number of players spoke out in favor of Crennel.

What's more, the options for a different head coach would likely drop with the condition that Crennel at least remain in his current position. Assuming someone from outside the organization would struggle earning the players' trust just based on Crennel getting the job, imagine how difficult that task would be if Kansas City parted with Crennel entirely.

Finally, the Chiefs simply cannot argue with results. In all aspects, Kansas City looked more competitive Sunday than they have all season. The Chiefs offensive line blocked better, the secondary locked down Green Bay's receivers and Kansas City rediscovered their passing game.

Unless the Chiefs completely implode in their two remaining games, Crennel should get his chance to duplicate Bill Belichick's success after being fired by the Cleveland Browns.

That's a scenario Chiefs fans should be plenty excited about.