So you might have heard by now that the Chiefs hired Todd Haley to be their new head coach, two weeks after firing Herm Edwards.

Haley isn't Bill Cowher, and he isn't Mike Shanahan. But make no mistake: The Chiefs got their man. Haley's name has been on the tip of Kansas City's tongue for weeks, even before Edwards was let go a little less than two weeks before Haley agreed to become his replacement.

What's interesting about this setup is that the Chiefs' plan last year of going younger just keeps becoming reality. Did you know that three years ago, the average age of the Chiefs' owner, general manager and head coach was 62 years old?

Now that all three of those updated pieces are in place, the average age of the same positions is 20 years younger. The old man of today's group, chairman Clark Hunt, will turn 44 in two weeks.

The Chiefs did something bold Thursday when they agreed to contract terms with the 41-year-old Haley. They continued the youth movement they began, and they'll now introduce a coach who the young players can grow alongside. The Chiefs have been in the process the past three years of flushing away decades of tired football and stale results. The project isn't finished, but it took a major leap forward when Hunt hired Scott Pioli, and now the two of them have hired Haley.

The hire was daring if not especially innovative. The NFL is moving more toward younger, fiery coaches with no problem mixing it up with players if that's what the job calls for. Haley has done that, and he'll need to be bold himself if he's going to get the Chiefs under control. He'll have to contain the frequent complaints of Tony Gonzalez and Larry Johnson, convince the youngsters that, yes, winning is possible in Kansas City, and figure out just who the heck is going to play quarterback for the Chiefs long-term.

It's an awful lot of responsibility, and Pioli and Hunt trust this greenhorn with it. Haley isn't one of those men who grew into a coach the same time he grew into a man. He was a personnel man until his late 20s, when he decided to give coaching a try. It was during that time that he worked alongside Bill Parcells, when he wasn't a highly paid consultant and was just a highly paid coach, and one of Haley's colleagues was an eager personnel chief named Scott Pioli.

Haley and Pioli eventually went their separate ways, but if we've learned anything from Pioli and the handful of words he's shared with us, it's that he doesn't forget relationships.

Think all you want about Cowher or Shanahan or whomever the Chiefs didn't get. From the beginning, it was clear that Pioli would hire someone who shared his vision and had taken a similar, hardscrabble path toward NFL leadership. University of Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, a former colleague of Pioli’s, was mentioned as a candidate for the Chiefs. So was Paul Pasqualoni, who gave Pioli his first football job as a graduate assistant at Syracuse.

Even when the bigger-name coaches were rumored as the top candidates, the ones Pioli had a connection with seemed to make more sense. Haley seemed the best fit. He was the up-and-coming star with fire and passion and the upside that Pioli couldn’t seem to ignore.

Look what he’d done for Arizona. The former receivers coach helped turn Larry Fitzgerald into the game’s best wideout. The offensive whiz kid helped turn a washed-up Kurt Warner into a quarterback worthy of MVP consideration.

Haley helped lead the Cardinals to last week's Super Bowl. That might not have been on Haley's official itinerary, but it was part of his interview with the Chiefs. He aced that portion and must have stuck the landing, too.

Now the hard work begins. Haley will appear sometime in the next few days in a suit. He'll sit in front of cameras and reporters and talk about goals and championships and trying to make this process as smooth as it can be. Haley will be suave and cool; that's tradition. The introductory news conference is about making a first impression and looking like you belong. It's a first look at the guy, a chance to size him up. The cleaned-up look never fails.

But the coach the Chiefs need is the one we've seen pictures of. You might have gotten a glance at them: Haley is unshaven, his shirt untucked, his fingers caked with dirt and sticky with sweat. He looks gruff. He looks youthful. He looks like he just rolled out of bed, threw something on and started churning.

As the Chiefs enter the final leg of their youth movement, a project that moved another step toward the finish Thursday, that's what Kansas City needs: a coach who doesn't care how it looks. Instead, the Chiefs need someone who cares about how it works.