ST. JOSEPH, Mo. _ The bet is on environment. The bet is on coaching. The bet is on teammates. The bet is on themselves, despite the most recent version of themselves.
Cornerback David Amerson is here for a lot of reasons, most obviously that the Chiefs' defense and in particular the secondary was not good enough last season. He is here as part of the cleanup crew, in other words, on a one-year contract with a base salary of $2.25 million and in that way he is no different than dozens of moves made in every offseason in every sport.
If that's as far as you go with this, you are missing the interesting part.
Because Amerson is the personification of a revealing truth about this front office and coaching staff _ confidence or arrogance, depending on your perspective. This is belief in the coaches and personnel evaluators above everything else.
Defensive coordinator Bob Sutton stays, given a mostly new group of players, chosen by mostly the same group of coaches and evaluators who chose the last one.
This is a belief in culture, that they can reveal a player's best in a way that two teams including a division rival have already failed.
"I definitely think Coach (Andy) Reid is definitely old-school," Amerson said. "The practices are a lot tougher. So I can definitely see how it prepares you for the games, and how this has been a winning program over the years."
The bet is relatively small financially but fascinating and potentially season-altering in scope. Because cornerback is a critically important position, and the Chiefs were critically lacking.
They could have spent more capital at cornerback _ Richard Sherman, Aqib Talib, Trumaine Johnson, Malcolm Butler, Aaron Colvin and others were available in one form or another this offseason.
Instead, they traded away their best cornerback, traded for the excellent Kendall Fuller, and are apparently set with the solid if unspectacular Stevie Nelson and Amerson behind.
This is Amerson's third organization. He was a second-round pick in 2013, has played five seasons and has been cut twice. The Raiders gave him a four-year, $38 million extension with nearly $18 million in guarantees two years ago and cut him in February to save $6 million in cap space.
He lost most of last season to a foot injury, but over six games he allowed a 156.3 passer rating when targeted in coverage, according to Pro Football Focus. That's only two points shy of the highest rating possible. The year before, in a full season, the number was 101.1.
None of this is said to discredit Amerson. He's talented and earned that extension with the Raiders for a 2015 season in which he made four interceptions and allowed a 62.7 passer rating. The potential is there. That's not the point.
The point is that the Chiefs' biggest offseason purchase went to Sammy Watkins, who plays a position that wasn't a weakness on the side of the ball that was already a strength.
The team's philosophy at cornerback is that improvement will come from a more diverse pass rush, and a better culture.
We'll see about the pass rush. There are reasons to be optimistic, even if Justin Houston can no longer be consistently dominant.
But the culture part is worth talking about now.
The most obvious move here was in trading Marcus Peters. The Chiefs decided he was no longer worth the trouble, not for the national anthem protests but for behaviors more closely tied to football. The team wears blame here for not being able to make it work, because the front office and coaches knew what they were getting with the 18th overall pick in 2015.
Signing Amerson is a different angle of the same idea.
This is a bet that the struggles of the last two years were at least as much about the environment in Oakland as his own play. This is a bet that he was too often put in positions to fail, and that he'll be better positioned for success.
Which is interesting, right?
The Chiefs were less than the sum of their parts last year, which became more obvious as the season went on. The team with one of the worst defenses in the league despite former Pro Bowlers playing prominent roles at every level is betting a significant role on someone else's discard.
Maybe Peters was the root of all those problems. Maybe the fix is as simple as trading him away, welcoming safety Eric Berry back from injury, and getting younger and healthier.
But that bet relies on so much going right, and so little going wrong.
Amerson is the personification of the bet, a talented but recently unhelpful player joining a group that underperformed last year.
If it works, the Chiefs will have remade themselves based on their most generous view of themselves.
If it doesn't, the Chiefs will have to remake themselves. Again, and more fundamentally.
