A year ago, they asked if Andy Reid could ever win. Now, they ask if he’ll ever stop.
Andy Reid came to Kansas City as a man who could not manage the clock. Remember that? That’s what people said.
Reid came here as a man just good enough to break your heart in the end. Remember that? He had been the NFL’s Best Coach To Never Win A Super Bowl for so long it became part of his identity, like the mustache and jokes about sweet and sour pork and saying time’s yours.
Now, he is on the forefront of the NFL’s (overdue) increasing aggressiveness on fourth down and the coach of the next potential dynasty.
Super Bowl LIV was full of questions about whether Reid could ever win a championship. Super Bowl LV is full of questions about whether the rest of the league can stop him and the Chiefs from winning more.
The context around him is often viewed so differently, but he’s the same guy now and before.
“I think you evaluate better if you don’t have the high highs or the low lows,” he said. “I’m in one of those positions where I teach, and I evaluate. I think the more level headed you keep it the better. It’s a high stress job. When you’re playing games and you’re making a living playing games there’s going to be times when you’ve got to be under control or things get away from you. And you don’t ever want that to happen.”
Sports change fast, especially the NFL, so this is not without precedent. Patrick Mahomes used to be a wild gunslinger in the eyes of many. Heck, Michael Jordan was once just a scoring champion, and Mike Krzyzewski a coach who couldn’t win the big one.
But what’s striking with Reid is how consistent he’s been through all of this. A man who works with Reid described him as “abnormally steady” this week, and that’s a good call.
Some of this we see publicly. Reid’s press conferences — especially before and after games, and ESPECIALLY before Super Bowls — are almost comically monotone. Reid plays a character in front of a microphone. He keeps his eyes level, his head steady, a stiff neck that makes him something like a talking mannequin.
He developed these physical cues as a reminder to stay inside the lines, to not give anything up, the process useful because the whole act belies an expansive, gregarious, brilliant and often hilarious personality. But, in front of the cameras, he is steady. It might be true that the first time he truly cut loose on the field was after last year’s Super Bowl.
He is equally steady with players and staff, though in a different way. People in all sports talk about trying to not get too high or too low, and they might as well be talking about wanting to be like Reid.
He was the league’s youngest coach and had never been the primary play caller when he took over Eagles, a 3-13 team in one of America’s most demanding markets. He went to four consecutive conference championships, lost a Super Bowl by three points, and went 4-12 in his last year.
Through it all: abnormal steadiness.
He came to Kansas City, charged with remaking a franchise that bottomed out with a 2-14 tragedy, and needed (among other things) a quarterback, general manager, speed, and organizational self-esteem.
Through it all: abnormal steadiness.
He is demanding but fair. A screen pass can require a left guard to be in one exact spot at one exact moment and if you’re a half-second late or two yards off you stay until it’s right. But he trusts you to get it right, and once it’s right, well, the list of players and coaches who say they get more time with family working with Reid than anyone else is too long for this column.
“Listen, I’m trying to treat people the way I’d want to be treated,” Reid said. “Whether it’s through what I’ve learned in church or family, I think we’re here as teachers. That’s what I do.”
Five years ago, the Chiefs started 1-5 and lost their best player to an ACL tear. The fifth loss in a row came when an offensive lineman accidentally knocked the ball out of the running back’s hands on a potential game winning drive.
“Things are close,” he said. “I still believe it.”
That team won 11 straight games, including Kansas City’s first playoff win in 22 years.
One year ago, the Chiefs won their first Super Bowl in 50 years. They did it with a trick play Reid stole from the 1948 Rose Bowl, and they did it with a daring play he called Jet Chip Wasp, and in the process they rewrote a franchise’s sorry postseason history and a city’s vulnerable relationship with football.
“There are a lot of areas we can get better,” he said afterward.
The Chiefs, somehow, did get better — 16-1 with the starters this season.
Football is defined by wild swings. That’s part of why so many of us love the sport. It can make you feel defeated and it can make you feel like a king and it can make you feel both in the same game.
The trick is that football cannot be played without emotion, at least not at the highest level. Lives and legacies are decided in a blink, and if you aren’t physically up for it you’re lost in the dust. Reid, more than most, embraces this.
Let your personality show, he tells his players, and that trust has worked to spectacular results. Travis Kelce has a naturally short fuse that once led to personal foul penalties in four straight games. He also has an unnatural skill set that Reid knows is best amplified close to the edge, no small part of him producing the best five-year run of any tight end in football history.
Chris Jones could be described similarly. He plays with relentless emotion, which has led to some mistakes but also enough problems for opponents that Jones earned and has so far played up to a contract worth $60 million in guarantees.
The whole thing works in no small part because the man they play for has universal respect, and is the one not letting his personality get in the way — or, perhaps, the one who’s molded his personality to fit his specific place in life.
In other words, he’s built for this.
Reid’s press conferences would be more entertaining if he talked about cannibalism, and maybe this column would do more traffic if we had a story about Reid dog-cussing an opponent.
But if that was Reid, we probably would be writing about a different coach before the Super Bowl.
The NFL that Reid currently works in is enormously different than the one he started with 22 years ago. Back then, they said he threw too much, and now he’s the example of why other teams should throw more. His strategies and play calling are up for constant change, but the personality and work ethic behind it are the same.
Jerry Glanville famously said the NFL stands for Not For Long, but two decades after Reid’s hiring was largely slammed in Philadelphia he’s still here. Only six men have coached more games, only five have more wins, and we have no reason to believe Reid will retire soon.
You want to know how to conquer a constantly changing force?
Turns out the best way might be to never let yourself change.