Behind scenes of Super Bowl run, Veach rewired defense, willed Chiefs to draft Mahomes
Before he became the relentless force who nagged, pleaded and otherwise compelled the Chiefs to check out this Patrick Mahomes fellow …
Before he orchestrated a dizzying renovation of their defense that cemented a Super Bowl run …
Brett Veach’s initial brush with the NFL hardly could have been more inauspicious: a 2004 summer internship with Andy Reid’s Philadelphia Eagles.
“His people skills are second to none, and his energy level is second to none — he doesn’t need any energy drinks to get going,” Reid recalled earlier this week as the Chiefs prepared to play San Francisco in Super Bowl LIV Sunday at Hard Rock Stadium. “And he’s got a great eye for talent.”
Despite making what proved to be a lasting and meaningful impression, there was no obvious or instant future there. So the former University of Delaware football star returned to his alma mater as supervisor of intercollegiate athletics.
Until 2007. That’s when Reid had an opening for a fascinating, multi-pronged job that also is a grind and doesn’t sound like much. Officially, Veach became Reid’s coaching assistant, which is something like a cross between his personal assistant and shadow — the job tens of millions might glimpse Porter Ellett carrying out for Reid this weekend.
From there, Veach was promoted into the Eagles’ scouting department in 2010. Following the 2012 season, he came along with Reid to Kansas City in a player personnel capacity.
Impressive as his path and ascent might have been, his tale came with an asterisk attached: With little else known about Veach in Kansas City at the time he was introduced, even he understood that he might be perceived as so beholden to Reid as to be a rubber stamp.
“It doesn’t mean we’re always going to agree, but at least he’ll know where we’re coming from,” Veach said soon after taking the job. “The thing about Andy is, when you really get to know him, he’s not a control freak and he’s not power hungry.
“He surrounds himself with guys who work hard and guys who challenge him. He likes people … who come to him with outside-the-box thinking because it elevates his game.”
His words proved accurate — and prophetic.
Speaking of elevating Reid and the Chiefs’ game, first consider Veach’s fundamental role in the formative stages of their pursuit of the sensational Mahomes, who seized the NFL Most Valuable player Award in his first season as a starter before his encore performance propelled the Chiefs to their first Super Bowl in 50 years.
It started about as subtly as Veach’s NFL career.
One day in the spring of 2016, Veach said Wednesday, he was watching video in his office when Reid wandered by and asked, “What are you doing?”
Veach, the team’s co-director of player personnel at the time, then “kind of half-joking,” told Reid, “I’m watching the next quarterback of the Chiefs, Coach.”
So Reid sat and watched what Veach called “a couple plays” of Mahomes, who was soon to enter his junior year at Texas Tech.
“Pretty good,” Reid said … then walked away.
However intrigued Reid was at that point, Veach was becoming enamored and all the more determined. By that fall, he remembered sending Reid clips of Mahomes “like, nonstop.” And then sending more. And more.
Until …
“‘Alright, just stop,’” Veach remembered Reid saying. “‘We’ve got a ton of time here’” before the draft.
A few weeks later, though, Reid was bringing up Mahomes to Veach.
Just not the way Veach had hoped.
Reid had come across a mock draft that didn’t tout Mahomes as a first-round pick. So he maybe joked with Veach, “Are you watching the right guy?”
But considering it was an indication Mahomes wasn’t on everyone’s radar, Veach figured such examples were only good for what was becoming his quest. And he felt no less conviction himself.
He kept pushing Mahomes to Reid and Dorsey as the draft approached. He also conveyed to Mahomes how much he believed in him, something that resonated with Mahomes as some skeptics dismissed him as a so-called system quarterback who didn’t win enough games, or appeared to take too many risks on the field.
“I knew from Day One that he liked me a lot,” Mahomes said, smiling. “He showed it with everything that he talked about. … And I wanted to make sure that his confidence was well-earned and that I could go out there and produce every single day.”
All of which led to the pre-draft meeting between Reid and Mahomes that finally had Reid swooning and set in motion Dorsey’s trade up to select Mahomes 10th overall in 2017.
After what played out as a redshirt season being mentored by Alex Smith, Mahomes validated Veach’s judgment last season as he guided the Chiefs to the AFC Championship Game against New England only to see them fall 37-31 in overtime.
That loss once and for all illuminated what the Chiefs had to do to make the Mahomes phenomenon more than just a novelty act.
For his career to have true resonance in the form of championships, the defense had to be purged.
The process started with the firing of defensive coordinator Bob Sutton, who was replaced by Steve Spagnuolo and a new scheme, revamped staff and radical personnel changes engineered by Veach.
Gone were the likes of Justin Houston, Dee Ford and Eric Berry, most notably making way for Frank Clark in a trade and Tyrann Mathieu in free agency, among other significant acquisitions.
“What really made me jump towards (Veach) was he wasn’t just trying to get me to come to Kansas City,” said Mathieu, who signed a three-year, $42 million contract. “It was his whole idea, this vision that he had for the defense. You don’t always get that from general managers or head coaches, alright?
“Like if the offense is good, (they might just say), ‘Let’s just stack the offense and just score as many points as we can … (and the defense) can take care of themselves. But here, it’s just overall a team concept of, ‘We can’t just rely on Pat Mahomes’. It’s, ‘We have to get better, we have to put pieces around him.’ ”
That didn’t stop after the season started. An injury-riddled team was bolstered by in-season acquisitions such as offensive lineman Stefen Wisniewski and defenders Mike Pennel and Terrell Suggs.
Now, in the process of this Super Bowl revival, the Chiefs’ fortunes in attracting players to Kansas City could be all the more enhanced. The idea left Veach smiling, calling it “kind of a double-edged sword” since at some point “we’re going to run out of money.”
Perhaps especially considering the exorbitant contract Mahomes is expected to command after this season.
Still, the very notion is both a promising harbinger of the future and a signature of the impact Veach has made as, in fact, an outside-the-box thinker who challenges Reid.
“I think it will be one of the storylines that probably doesn’t receive enough coverage, because the focus is going to be on Andy and the job that he’s done with the team the last seven years,” owner Clark Hunt said. “And Andy is definitely very deserving. But Brett has been a big part of it.”
Noting all it took to revamp the defense, Hunt added, “Getting that right, getting those players to fit together, getting them to work in a scheme with the new coaching staff, that was a heavy lift. But he did a magnificent job.”
As he keeps making the most of an internship that didn’t even seem to pay off right away.
This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 4:00 AM.