KANSAS CITY, MO. – Herman Edwards was hired as coach of the Kansas City Chiefs yesterday, replacing the retired Dick Vermeil and inheriting a team that barely missed the playoffs. Edwards had already agreed in principle to a four-year, $12 million contract. His salary with the Jets was $2 million per year.

The Chiefs will give the Jets a fourth round draft pick as compensation. Edwards still had two years left on his contract with New York.

At a news conference, Edwards insisted his players would embody teamwork, saying “talent alone doesn’t win games. Teams win games.”

Edwards, who was a Chiefs assistant in the mid-90s, also issued a warning: Don’t ask about what happened during those last days in New York.

“It’s good to be back home. It’s good to be here. I believe in family. And what happened in New York stays in New York,” he said. “So if you have any questions about what happened, I’ll tell you right now, it stays with that family. … It stays in that house, and I threw the key away.”

Chiefs general manager Carl Peterson called his longtime friend Edwards “without question, one of the most qualified head football coaches in the NFL today.”

Vermeil retired after going 44-36 in five years but reached the playoffs only once and didn’t get past the first game.

Edwards, 51, was 39-41 in five years with the Jets, but made the playoffs three times, more than any previous Jets coach. He began his NFL career in Kansas City as a personnel executive and then an assistant coach under Marty Schottenheimer.

Edwards’s 2004 Jets team came within a field goal of reaching the AFC championship game. But starting with a loss in Kansas City in the season opener, the injury-wracked 2005 Jets fell to 4-12 and many fans became disgruntled.

On December 31, when 69-year-old Vermeil tearfully told the team he was stepping down, Edwards was still saying he wanted to remain in New York. Days later, Peterson was dropping hints that he intended to be reunited with his friend and protege of more than 30 years, and the relationship between Edwards and the Jets quickly turned sour.

“From a personal standpoint, I have wanted to do this for many years,” Peterson said in a statement released before the news conference.

Edwards began pressing the Jets for a contract extension and raise over his $2 million salary, which alienated owner Woody Johnson to the point that Edwards’s departure became inevitable.

Still, Jets GM Terry Bradway insisted the Jets wanted Edwards to stay.

“In Herm’s case, because of his relationship with Carl, the relationship that he has with a lot of people back there, it was an opportunity he wanted to look at,” Bradway said. “I think Herm knew that we wanted him. There wasn’t ever any conversation between anyone here that indicated otherwise.”

Meanwhile, the Jets continue searching for Edwards’s replacement, and are talking to Jim Haslett, Mike Tice, and Joe Vitt, all of whom were head coaches in the NFL this season.

Bradway said Haslett, fired last week by New Orleans, spoke with Jets officials yesterday. He said the team also will talk to Tice, Minnesota’s former coach, and Vitt, who went 4-7 as interim coach of the St. Louis Rams when Mike Martz left to have a heart ailment treated.

Bradway also said ex-Green Bay coach Mike Sherman might be in for a later interview but is not on his early list.