The devil is in the details, so it's obviously hard to tell if Chesney would be a good hire, but I'd rather have someone on an upward trajectory than a retread that's proven to be mediocre or have warts that make it unlikely they'll be able to re-establish a consistently good program.
I wouldn't be crossing Chesney off the list based on the information currently available. It's hard to establish a decent college football program up here in New England, at any level. The fact he was able to do it at 3 different stops is a definite positive. And now he seems to have carried it over to an FBS program (granted, he didn't have to rebuild that one). He's superficially a much better risk than Rhule, for example. The big obvious question mark is can he bring in the big recruits.