"The lasting image that Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli has of Romeo Crennel is from a photograph taken in the mid-1970s. Crennel, then an assistant coach at Texas Tech, wore a bushy mustache and a big smile while he posed with the young daughter of colleague Bill Parcells.

"It's quite the image," Pioli said.

Decades later, Pioli is married to Parcells' daughter, Dallas, and is staking his reputation on the man with the mustache. The times have changed, and Crennel isn't the young and inexperienced coach he was in the photograph. He has learned from good times and bad, and Pioli announced Monday that he trusts that Crennel has learned enough to be the face — now with only a cropped salt-and-pepper mustache — of the Chiefs' future.

"I accept the challenge," Crennel said at the team facility."