"I'll be in Monday and Tuesday (after Sunday's season finale in Cincinnati) and I'll evaluate the players," Edwards said. "Coaches will get some time off, about a week or so, then they'll come back.

"I'll be in the office starting to look at the whole season, look at tape and start to plan. I'll get with Bill (Kuharich, the team's vice president of player personnel) to start talking about the Senior Bowl and prospects coming up in the draft. Free agency is going to start here pretty quickly."

Sure is. Maybe Edwards will be involved in it. Maybe not.

Right now there is no real certainty in Edwards' off-season plans. His future as the Chiefs coach likely depends on the whim of a new, as yet-unhired general manager, an outsider to replace departed team president/general manager Carl Peterson. The new man will make a coaching recommendation that team chairman Clark Hunt must approve, which he likely will.

Whether that recommendation is Edwards seems like a long shot in the wake of Kansas City's 2-13 season, one in which the Chiefs set a club record for losses. Their 2-22 performance since the mid-point of the 2007 campaign doesn't exactly cry out for Edwards' retention for the fourth and final year of his contract.

But until Hunt hires his new GM, and until that guy decides Edwards' fate, all a coach can do is prepare his team as best he can for a winnable road finale against the 3-11-1 Bengals. He must do so convinced that he's done all he can do in a difficult rebuilding season to set a foundation upon which this team will get better, then prepare plans toward making further improvements in 2009 and beyond.

Even if he's not the guy to carry out those plans.

But Edwards remains convinced that he, with the blessing of Clark Hunt, did the right thing in rebuilding an aging Chiefs team from the bottom up through the draft instead of relying largely on free agency, a process better suited to reloading than rebuilding.

"I see them competing next year," Edwards insisted for about the eighth consecutive week.

"I think this is going to be a good football team next year, I really do. I think the players feel that way too. You look at nine games (only one a Chiefs victory) that have been one-score games. The odds are that you're going to win your share of those.

"This team has gone through a lot this year and they'll be much more experienced next year," Edwards added of a team that currently has 18 rookies and 30 players with three years experience or less. "After what happened to them this year, they know where they're at, and they'll be much more confident coming in in the spring. That's what you're looking for."

Or, what someone else will want to see.

SERIES HISTORY: 25th regular-season meeting. Chiefs lead 13-11. Kansas City won the last meeting, 27-20, last October at Arrowhead. Cincinnati snapped a nine-game Kansas City winning streak in 2003 with a 24-19 win in Cincinnati.