Scott Pioli speaks on football philosophy

INDIANAPOLIS – Former Patriots’ Vice President of Player Personnel Scott Pioli just wrapped up an in-depth session with the media here at the Scouting Combine. While he talked about a lot of the responsibilities involved in his new job as G.M. of the Chiefs, he also discussed — at great length — New England’s football philosophy. In addition, he offered a glimpse at the guy who will be taking over many of the aspects of his old job, Nick Caserio. (We’ll have more from this Q&A session later today…)

On Caserio…
Nick is a very bright, hardworking football guy. He’s got a strong background — he’s got a business background. He worked out in the private sector before he came back to coaching. He came into New England and worked in the scouting department, then went into coaching, then scouting, back and forth. Nick’s a great guy, one of hardest workers I know. He’s a good football guy, but he’s also got a lot of background in a lot of other areas.

Now that Thomas Dimitroff is in Atlanta and Josh McDaniels is in Kansas City are you worried about them going after the same type of players you coveted in New England?
I hope we find more than Josh, especially in the division. I don’t know … when we say that, I don’t think anyone has the market cornered on what they’re looking for. It’s just a matter of them going out and finding the players and actually making the right decisions. In New England, we made plenty of bad decisions as well. We made some good ones, we made some bad ones.

You try and get those players, but I don’t think the market is cornered. I think a lot of people are looking for smart players, a lot of people are looking for tough players. It’s a matter of finding them and making sure their type of toughness, their type of intelligence fits into your specific philosophy. Because there’s different types of intelligence and because you run different systems, it’ll fit differently. There are a couple of different types of 3-4 defenses. When we were in New England and when [Romeo Crennel] was in Cleveland and Bill (Parcells) was down in Dallas, that 3-4 and the type of 3-4 players they were looking for were different than the ones that coach (Dick) LeBeau looked for. There are different styles. Different matches.

On the biggest difference between New England and Kansas City…
Biggest difference. … I think it’s that the food isn’t as good. I’m sitting in my office eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every night because my family is back in New England. I don’t have any home cooking. That’s probably the biggest difference. Obviously, it hasn’t affected me a whole lot, but….

Some of the things are different. They are different than when I left New England but very similar to when I arrived in New England. It’s when you get in and try and meet people, learn people, teach them your process, understand the process they went through. There’s evaluation going on. It’s more similar to how it was when we first arrived in New England, which is similar to what it was when we arrived at the New York Jets and we arrived with the Cleveland Browns. Every time you get to a new place and you’re trying to change the culture, those things are very similar. But again, you can’t compare a program in its first five weeks to where you were after nine years.

On Kansas City now having a leg-up when it comes to drafting certain players that might be sought after by the Patriots…
Todd (Haley) is a different coach from a different system, who is looking for different types of players, skill-set wise. Again, we’re looking for big, strong, tough, smart, disciplined football players. But, what we’re going to do schematically isn’t necessarily exactly what we had done … I’m not going to be coaching, so it’s not going to be the same thing we did in New England. So they’ll be different types of players we’re looking at for different positions.

I don’t think we’re necessarily battling over the same players as New England. The players I have to go out and get for the coach are different, because we have a different coach and we are running a different system and a different philosophy Makeup-wise, they’re all very similar. But from a positional and skill-set standpoint, it’ll be a little different