If you're into science experiments, the Broncos and Chiefs just started a pretty interesting one.

Talent or coaching? What makes an NFL winner?

Well, both, of course, but in what combination? Which matters more?

The Chiefs put their money on talent Wednesday, naming the top personnel man on the market, Scott Pioli, to run their football operation. Pioli will pick the coach and the players.

The Broncos put their money on coaching, naming Josh McDaniels to replace Mike Shanahan. Pat Bowlen doesn't plan to name a general manager. The existing personnel department will suffice.

The two AFC West rivals both mined the same NFL vein - the New England organization that has produced three Super Bowl champions this decade. The Chiefs chose its top talent scout. The Broncos chose its latest bright, young coaching prospect.

If you believe that talent is fundamentally what wins football games, the Chiefs' move makes more sense than the Broncos' move. In fact, you can argue the Broncos could have had them both if they had hired Pioli. With a coaching vacancy to fill, he might have gone back to his old organization to get McDaniels himself. Or he might have chosen the defensive coach many fans wanted.

After two press conferences, I'm still not sure I understand Bowlen's logic. He doesn't want to be GM, but he insisted on hiring the coach himself. I'm guessing this is because he did so well the last time, picking Shanahan. Of course, he had a much longer history with Shanahan at that point than he has with McDaniels now. And over the past decade, even Shanahan the coach couldn't overcome Shanahan the GM to get the Broncos back to the top.

But Bowlen's move was consistent with Broncos history. Over 49 years, the organization has never had a strong general manager.

They started with a man named Dean Griffing in 1960. The team went 7-20-1, and he was gone in two years. Apparently, this experience soured them on GMs forever. In 1962, they hired Jack Faulkner as both head coach and GM, a pattern they would repeat with Lou Saban in 1967 and John Ralston in 1972.

Although the titles got more creative later on, they followed this template - giving the coach authority over personnel - with Dan Reeves in 1981 and Mike Shanahan in 1995.

In other words, this is the Broncos' DNA. They have never started with a strong football guy as GM and empowered him to choose the coach and players, unless you count Fred Gehrke, the Ralston front-office deputy who ascended to GM in 1977 when owner Gerald Phipps decided Ralston was wearing too many hats. After consulting with unhappy players, Gehrke fired Ralston as coach and hired Red Miller.

Edgar Kaiser's purchase of the team in 1981 put an end to Gehrke's reign. In fact, arguably the most important personnel move in Broncos history - the trade for John Elway in 1983 - was engineered by Kaiser, the owner.

The Broncos have had GMs along the way who played important roles on the business side of the organization - Hein Poulus in the early '80s, John Beake through the late '80s and '90s - but the coaches and their cronies chose the players.

The exception came in the two-year interim between Reeves and Shanahan, when Wade Phillips was coach. Phillips was not the empire builder that Reeves and Shanahan were. So Beake brought in Bob Ferguson, a personnel man from Buffalo, to help Phillips. Ferguson never had the GM title, but he had most of the influence over personnel during this period.

A year after Shanahan arrived, Ferguson was out and Shanahan's man - Neal Dahlen - was in. Ted Sundquist succeeded Dahlen as GM under Shanahan in 2002.

Bowlen has not given McDaniels the authority over personnel he gave Shanahan, but he also has not brought in a strong GM. The existing vice president of personnel, Jim Goodman, is said to have the authority, but the face of Bowlen's franchise is again the coach.

The Chiefs have had the opposite model, a strong GM who hires the coach, and it's fair to point out they have been less successful than the Broncos over the past 20 years, although I would blame their lone GM during this period - Carl Peterson - rather than the organizational structure.

The basis of good football teams is still good players. It's possible that McDaniels and Goodman, in tandem, can do in Denver what Pioli and Bill Belichick did in New England. But certainly Pioli's resume is stronger than Goodman's at this point.

The Broncos have made some very good personnel moves on offense and some rather bad ones on defense during his tenure. How many of either derived from Shanahan's influence is impossible to say from the outside.

Our comparative experiment will not be decided quickly. It will take Pioli a while to rebuild a 2-14 team in Kansas City. It could take the Broncos a while to rebuild the league's 29th-ranked defense.

But how best to begin the process? If you could start with the league's top talent scout, I still don't understand why you wouldn't.