Pioli: Opposed to small, weak, slow guys

Scott Pioli, the Chiefs’ new barrel-chested general manager, promises change as he takes control of football operations Carl Peterson had run for 20 long years.

Pioli said today that he wanted to build a big, strong, fast, smart, tough, disciplined football team. “It sounds very simple, and, hopefully, in certain ways, it will be,” he said.

Pioli joins the Chiefs after working as a personnel executive with the New England Patriots, a team that won three Super Bowls and went 16-0 in the 2007 regular season. The Patriots’ taciturn head coach, Bill Belichick, is a villainous figure in the NFL. Yet Pioli — perhaps Belichick’s most prize pupil — appeared gracious and even tenderhearted in the course of his 40-minute press conference. He seemed to choke up when he mentioned the “very special times” he had shared with Belichick and the Kraft family in New England.

Now in Super Bowl-starved Kansas City, Pioli said it wasn’t his job to collect talent but to build a team. “It’s not necessarily the best 53 players. Its the right 53 players.”