It's clear from his comments that Todd Haley believes the Kansas City Chiefs claiming Kyle Orton off of waivers was a "no-brainer" since it's his phrase of choice in a recent press conference describing the Orton acquisition. Certainly the Chiefs needed to add some sort of quarterback insurance with the loss of Matt Cassel for a year. Yet Haley says a player like Orton was shocking to him that he was even available, so the option to add him was something he felt the team had to do.
"We had the injury to Matt [Cassel], obviously," said Haley. "We had a couple days there just trying to see how the surgery went and seeing if there was any option there with keeping Matt available as the year went on. As that became clear that there wasn’t any, that the best thing was to go ahead and put Matt down, that left a void in the quarterback situation. At that point, Kyle’s name came available, which was a shock to me, I know. For us as an organization, a no-brainer to add depth first and foremost.
"Like I said yesterday, I have great confidence in Tyler [Palko]," he continued. "I really believe that he will continue to get better and give us a chance to win a big game this week. We had confidence in Tyler. That’s why we began the season the way we did. We had a number of opportunities to add people and didn’t, but now we were down to two, so from a depth standpoint, a no-brainer and ultimately, from helping to create and keep competition alive, like we like to do at all positions, again, a no-brainer for us.""