As NFL opener nears, Chiefs’ Reid-and-Veach braintrust has girded team for repeat run
The singular moment materialized when they were exhausted but exhilarated in the wee hours of the morning after the Chiefs’ epic comeback over San Francisco to win their first Super Bowl in 50 years.
It landed somewhat subtly, too, at least in the sense that it was between the extremes of sheer deliverance in those final seconds ticking away and before a parade days later.
And it transpired, as it happened, between sets of Grammy Award winner Pitbull performing at the team’s post-game party in a ballroom at their hotel.
Seeing an opening near coach Andy Reid amid the hullabaloo, general manager Brett Veach pulled up a chair nearby.
Surrounded by the revelry of players and the Hunt family, the coach who had finally won the elusive Big One and the GM who began his rapid ascension in the NFL as his personal intern in Philadelphia paused to consider the journey.
Of all they shared right after the game and in the weeks to come, that scene resonated most with Veach.
“It was kind of that ‘wow’ moment,” he said in a Zoom interview Tuesday.
Only next thing you know, it’s the NFL Combine a couple weeks later … and in some ways it was like it never happened at all.
Reid “flipped the switch,” Veach said, “rather quickly.”
Any talk Reid might earlier have indulged about the parade and, you know, a third-and-15 play, had evaporated, replaced by stuff like, “Here’s what I want to do with the offense. And this is how we can be better. (And) do you think we can get Sammy (Watkins) back? And how’s the draft looking?”
To say nothing of Reid’s obvious interest in signing defensive tackle Chris Jones to a multi-year deal. And the long-term arrangement with superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes — who signed a 10-year extension worth about $500 million and has since become an investor in the Royals that left Veach joking, “I’m just waiting for him to buy Worlds of Fun.”
The Chiefs’ season, and offseason, have made for resounding validation of Veach, whose relationship with Reid seems to have grown as symbiotic as Reid’s with Mahomes.
Reflecting Reid’s mindset, Veach says he and his staff worked harder than ever this offseason for the chance to do something greater yet.
Even after time grinded still with the onset of the pandemic in mid-March, changing the dynamics of hopes to repeat in ways we can’t fully understand yet because they remain ever-shifting.
So with the NFL opener against the Houston Texans scheduled for Sept. 10 at Arrowhead Stadium, Reid is completely consumed with what’s ahead. That doesn’t leave much room for nostalgia now.
“Once you get there, you want to get back,” Reid said. “So that’s well and good, but you’ve got to go through the process.”
Because in coaching it’s always about what’s next, and the chase … even after you win a seemingly defining game that some figured you needed to guarantee passage to Canton and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
You might say it all comes back to what Dallas Cowboys running back Duane Thomas said before Super Bowl V when asked if it represented the ultimate game:
“If it’s the ultimate game, how come they’re playing it again next year?”
Reid has never said this aloud, as far as I know, anyway, but his approach to coaching reminds me of the words memorably inscribed on the southwest corner of Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium in Lincoln: “Not the victory but the action; Not the goal but the game; In the deed the glory.”
Of course he yearns to win. But he’s also moved inside by a certain passion for what he does for the sake of doing it: the creative outlet, the chance to sincerely make a difference in players lives, the joy of working to prepare to compete.
While it’s now force of habit, there’s a reason Reid so often prefaces his remarks with that line of “looking forward to the challenge of playing” whoever is up next.
This challenge, of course, is unlike anything he’s faced before as a head coach, both in terms of defending a title and simultaneously adjusting to the issues of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of course, struggling to be able to play games is a mild matter compared to the broader implications of a virus that has killed around 700,000 people worldwide and more than 150,000 Americans and continues to grip the nation with no end in sight.
For his part, Veach appreciates the fortune that this didn’t descend with more impact sooner.
“Can you imagine,” he said, “if this would have hit right before the Super Bowl?”
So the Chiefs are lucky to have a Super Bowl to defend at all. And they’ve had a tremendous offseason between the aforementioned deals, an intriguing draft, continuity in their coaching staff and being able to return a starting lineup largely intact despite running back Damien Williams and guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif opting out.
A year after a massive overhaul of the defense, including the scheme, the coordinator (Steve Spagnuolo in place of Bob Sutton) and much of their personnel, this unit may have a chance to play better together sooner.
In a weird way, Veach wonders if the onset of the virus also helped the organization follow in suit with Reid and turn its attention forward sooner. The parade was fantastic, but the rest of what he called the traditional victory lap was cut short.
But it’s hard enough to repeat as champions — it’s only been done seven times in Super Bowl history — even when there isn’t a pandemic.
And for all the advantages the Chiefs seem to have, it’s also hard to know what impact the inability to have traditional offseason training and preseason games might have on any teams.
Then there’s what the virus might wreak ahead.
“The health status is always a neutralizing factor, and multiply that by two or three times this year,” Veach said. “We know as a staff if we don’t have depth on this team, it doesn’t matter what our starters look like.”
Further illustrating the tightrope, Veach pointed to the injury Mahomes suffered last season at Denver that initially appeared potentially season-ending.
“If that thing was a millimeter to the left or right on that calf, I mean, the whole season is completely different,” Veach said. “The whole history of this franchise could be completely different.”
Without that one moment between Pitbull sets for him to remember ... and for them to build on.