KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Most likely the name Lynn Stiles is at-best vaguely familiar to Chiefs fans. That was practically by design.

“He was not a man of pretense,” former Chiefs president Carl Peterson wrote in his recent eulogy to Stiles. “He was not a man of ego. He never (sought) adulation. He deflected it.”

Low profile notwithstanding, the amiable Stiles behind the scenes enjoyed a rare and distinguished NFL career and epitomized the underappreciated and vital contributions to the game of so many whose names you may never know.

Stiles, who died June 24 at the age of 85, was part of four Super Bowl teams in a variety of coaching and front office roles. He also spent 12 overall years (in two stints) with the Chiefs under Peterson.

Perhaps most notably of all, though, Stiles was essential to the success of Pro Football Hall of Fame coach Dick Vermeil from the pivotal days of his early career through every NFL stop.

When UCLA hired the then-Los Angeles Rams assistant to take over the program in December 1973, Vermeil retained seven UCLA staffers including Stiles and Peterson, whose history with Vermeil also is rich and substantial.

Named assistant head coach, Stiles did what Vermeil on Monday called “a beautiful job” running the program as Vermeil finished that season with the Rams.

Cementing the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Peterson recalled for the service at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Olathe, was an episode in the middle of Vermeil’s first staff meeting at UCLA.

Out of nowhere, Vermeil suggested the staff “take a little run around campus.”

As they finished the run some three miles later, Peterson and then-assistant Terry Donahue were lagging.

Meanwhile …

“Our man, Lynn, was right up front with Coach Vermeil,” Peterson said.

And eagerly took him up on it when Vermeil said, “That was great. Who wants to do it again?”

Stiles more or less kept saying yes to that question from Vermeil for decades to come and became instrumental in Vermeil’s own journey — sharing 17 years and four jobs.

“He didn’t work for me, he worked with me,” Vermeil, who also was a eulogist at Stiles’ funeral, said in a phone interview. “I leaned on him. He was involved in every decision I made that was serious. I always included his evaluation. I didn’t always agree but often I did, especially with personnel and the coaching staff.”

In certain ways, Stiles also was a great counter-balance to Vermeil.

“He had a unique ability to never be mad. … It could be an intense situation, coaching hard as hell, but he never over-intensified anything,” he said, later adding, “I needed that, I needed that, I needed that. Because I was the opposite.”

After Vermeil was hired from UCLA by the Philadelphia Eagles after the 1975 season, Stiles joined him (and Peterson) following three years as head coach at San Jose State. He coached tight ends and special teams as the Eagles reached Super Bowl XV, losing to the Raiders, and soon became the club’s player personnel director.

In the wake of Vermeil’s first retirement from the game, Stiles coached on two Super Bowl winners as part of Bill Walsh’s San Francisco 49ers staff — a development that later added all the more to his credibility with Vermeil.

“How could you go wrong asking him a question after that training?” Vermeil said.

Peterson in 1992 hired Stiles with the Chiefs as vice president of player personnel, a role Peterson said he thrived in. That helped the Chiefs go 52-28 in five seasons before Vermeil called.

He was coming out of retirement to coach the Rams, he told Peterson, and said, “I need Lynn.”

At the time, Vermeil also wanted to hire John Bunting and Carl Hairston from the Chiefs.

As Peterson playfully told the story at the service for Stiles, he informed Vermeil he’d need formal permission to do such a thing in the NFL. Then he inquired as to whether Vermeil was asking or telling him he wanted those Chiefs employees.

The response: “Carl, I am telling you that I am asking you.”

Stiles became vice president of football operations and tight ends coach for the Rams team that won Super Bowl XXXIV.

When Vermeil soon thereafter retired again, Stiles rejoined the Chiefs … and became instrumental in luring Vermeil to Kansas City.

Following the 2000 season, Stiles accompanied Peterson to Vermeil’s farm in Chester County, Pa., and did what Peterson called “probably his finest job of recruiting” — both of Vermeil and his wife, Carol — to coax Vermeil back out of retirement.

In an interview with The Kansas City Star, Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt recalled Stiles pulling him aside when the Chiefs were hiring Vermeil and saying, “You can’t believe how special this coach is.”

Vermeil went 44-36 with the Chiefs in five seasons but never could get traction in the postseason ... to his eternal regret on behalf of Lamar Hunt.

Clark Hunt remembered Stiles as a “really talented personnel guy” who did a great job for the organization in a variety of ways — including taking the lead role in designing the current Chiefs training facility near Arrowhead Stadium.

So it was for a person Peterson thinks of as the “consummate” team and family man, one he considered as fine a human being as anyone he’s ever known.

“When we talk about a man’s character, character is an accumulation of virtues,” Vermeil said. “I don’t know what virtue Lynn Stiles didn’t have.”

Per his obituary, Stiles is survived by his wife, Marigene, children Staci, Shon and Tiffany, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his son, Blake.

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