Kansas City, MO (Sports Network) - Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Corey Mays signed his tender offer on Tuesday.

The Notre Dame product played in 16 games (13 starts) for Kansas City in 2009, posting a career-high 100 tackles.

The 6-foot-1, 245-pounder has played in 48 career games (14 starts) with New England (2006-07), Cincinnati (2007-08), and Kansas City (2009), recording 116 tackles, a pass defensed, a forced fumble, one fumble recovery, and 40 special teams tackles.

Shortly before the start of the 2009 season, Kansas City Chiefs coach Todd Haley fired his offensive coordinator, Chan Gailey. Then, shortly afterward, he fired Gailey's replacement.

Himself.

That should tell you something about what happened to the Chiefs and their offense last season. Both stunk. The Chiefs won four games, including one at home. The offense ranked 25th in yards and 23rd in points, and newly minted quarterback Matt Cassel was 25th in passer rating.

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The Kansas City Chiefs announced on Wednesday that quarterback Brodie Croyle, center Rudy Niswanger and offensive tackle Ryan O'Callaghan signed their free agent tenders.

Over his four year career, Croyle has played in 16 games with Kansas City, including nine starts. He has completed 57.7 percent of his passes (173- of-300) for 1,631 yards, eight touchdowns and eight interceptions.

Just how important are the following intangibles:

Has a passion for the game, a leader both on-and-off the field, high football intelligence, smart, works hard at his craft, plays through pain, team leader, durable, great instincts, self motivated, highly respected team player, and football must be the most important thing in his life?

For most teams, those qualities are highly desired. To other teams they mean little.

Scott Pioli said when he was hired as Chief GM, "I am not interested in acquiring talent, I'm interested in building a football team."

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The Dallas Cowboys just released a couple of veterans at two positions the Chiefs have needs.

The Cowboys released five-time Pro Bowl left tackle Flozell Adams and free safety Ken Hamlin.

Adams, who will be 35 in May, started 178 of 182 games played during his career, and was a Pro Bowler as recently as 2008. Adams struggled a bit last season, allowing a career-most eight sacks after giving up 53.5 in his first 11 seasons.

Adams was scheduled to receive a $5 million base salary plus a $2.5 million roster bonus in June, which made him expendable in Dallas.

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2009 was the first year with rookie head Coach Todd Haley, as well as the first year with new front office personnel, led by general manager Scott Pioli.  I don't care if you're a pop-warner team or an NFL franchise, merely changing the head coach has a huge impact on the day-to-day operations of any football team.  So you can begin to imagine the impact when most of the front office of a multi-million dollar operation changes in the same year as its head coach.  Growing pains.

The Chiefs fielded one of the NFL's youngest teams a year ago.  And it showed.  While KC did improve from 2008 to 2009 (2-14 in 2008 to 4-12 in 2009), fans were left thinking of what could have been.  Six of the Chiefs twelve losses were by seven points or less.  Seemingly, the biggest obstacle the Chiefs young core of players had was the inability  to perform at a consistent level throughout the entirety of a game, much less a season.  Young, talented players need maturation.  Maturation takes time.  All that young talent was able to keep Kansas City in the game, but wasn't able to close those games out.  Growing pains.

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