Why the Chiefs are bringing Eric Bieniemy back as offensive coordinator
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Andy Reid rehired Eric Bieniemy to tweak Kansas City’s offense, not overhaul it.
- Reid will retain play-calling authority and demand internal adjustments from staff.
- Bieniemy brings practice-level detail, player rapport and ideas from other stops.
Over a 15-minute Zoom call Monday, Chiefs coach Andy Reid alternated between expressing confidence in his former-but-now-new offensive coordinator and stumping for his most-recently former offensive coordinator to get a head coaching job elsewhere.
It was a bit of a tightrope act, particularly when you consider the contrasting personalties of Eric Bieniemy and Matt Nagy.
At one point, Reid stopped mid-sentence and said, “We’re not comparing (the two) here.”
He’s not. We could. And I’m sure we will. But there’s something far more important about the switch in coordinators than pointing out their differences. It’s pointing out what remains as the most striking similarity of their tenures:
This is still Andy Reid’s show.
The Chiefs re-hired Eric Bieniemy as their offensive coordinator after a three-year hiatus that included three destinations, and Nagy is still looking for work after the Titans went in a different direction to fill their head coaching vacancy.
It’s a change in Kansas City — in the offensive coordinator’s name, personality and leadership style.
But as the Eagles and Chargers — teams that made the postseason — prioritized a different direction, if not an outright shakeup to their offenses, Reid prioritized familiarity. He did not branch out but instead hired from his own tree. He still plans to call the plays.
It all says a lot about where he believes the Chiefs are and what he believes they need. In fact, he could offer a sermon on his 2025 offense, and it still wouldn’t reveal as much about what he thought of its performance or the reasons for its performance.
He believes the Chiefs are close — in need of tweaks, not a transformation.
The 6-11 season wasn’t enough to prompt Reid to reinvent the wheel, but instead give it a quick rotation and hope that’s enough to keep it moving.
Which means? The real test of whether the Chiefs can improve must come from within.
He must adjust.
He must innovate.
He must — what were his quarterback’s words? — bring new ideas into the building every single day.
For all the voices in the offensive meeting rooms, and there are a lot of good ones, the responsibility for the successes — or failures — of the offense will rest most squarely with Andy Reid.
Same as it always has.
To be clear, Bieniemy will bring real value to the room, in ways audible if you show up to practice and in ways behind the scenes with players and even coaches.
Maybe the Chiefs will run the ball more effectively, and maybe they’ll be more inclined to stick with it when they do. It would open up the passing game. Maybe Xavier Worthy will better learn the location of a sideline. Maybe Patrick Mahomes won’t have to quarterback the team and stress the importance of everyday details to his teammates at the same time.
“He’s going to be very direct with players, very direct with coaches, and it’s a different flavor,” Reid said of Bieniemy. “... There’s nobody like E.B. on the field that way.”
That’s valuable. But it also underscores the point. Reid is bringing Bieniemy back to Kansas City because of what he knows he provided in his last stint here — not to spearhead what he hopes can be an offensive makeover. In his last stint, Bieniemy emphasized the importance of details in making Reid’s offense function. That’s why he’s back.
He has undoubtedly picked up a thing or two from his three stops since departing Kansas City in search of his own head coaching job that never came — a one-year stop as Washington Commanders offensive coordinator, a one-year stint as the UCLA offensive coordinator before the school elected to move on, and most notably one year on Ben Johnson’s staff in Chicago.
Reid will welcome new ideas. I’ve talked to plenty of people who have been part of that room over the last decade. Reid seeks collaboration. Everyone plays their part. Reid wants ideas — though he believes they can come from watching other teams just as much as stealing coaches from them.
Absent the coordinator shakeup, those ideas will come with the same stipulation in 2026: Does it fit into the offense we like to run?
Reid said Monday that he didn’t believe his offense had grown stale. Or, more precisely, that it was “very seldom stagnant.”
The plethora of fourth-quarter collapses offers refuting evidence. The Chiefs were predictable in big moments, a product of the longevity of their successes.
It’s more than a fourth-quarter dilemma. The Chiefs have scored 31 points in a game only twice in the last two seasons. Only the Raiders have done it fewer, and they will lead off the draft in April.
There’s a reason why the Chiefs’ offense clicked for so long, sprouting one of the best runs in NFL history. They aren’t exactly out of their depth here.
But there’s also a reason why the success waned over the past three seasons, and it’s not just the Tyreek Hill trade or Travis Kelce aging out of his prime. The Chiefs, after all, still employ the best quarterback in football. They shouldn’t be keeping company with the Raiders in any offensive statistic, even if several of the others favored their cause.
Like this: They totaled more yards than anyone from Weeks 3-7. They were elite in yards per drive and the percentage of their drives that ended in points, at least until the Mahomes injury. But they faded down the stretch of the season, same as they did in just about every one of their losses, and that’s before the Mahomes injury.
That’s what they must seek to change, even if the scheme won’t.
“I’m fired up to get into this offseason and get going,” Reid said. “We didn’t do well this last year. I want to fix the problems that we had in all phases.”
Bieniemy can be a piece of that fix, no doubt.
But that has to be merely the start of it.