Big Red has won 11 of 12 against the Chargers. Remember, they too wanted him in 2013
Refreshing the memory banks the other day on Andy Reid’s dominant record against the Los Angeles Chargers (a name that still feels wrong to write even three years after their move from San Diego, and despite their distant initial years in L.A.), I googled his name and theirs.
But through the secret sauce of search engines and, OK, maybe insufficient terms, the first hit wasn’t a trusted database detailing those games such as Pro Football Reference.com.
Instead, it was a headline on a Bleacher Report post from late 2012: “Why The San Diego Chargers Would Be Crazy to Hire Andy Reid.”
With Reid on the verge of being ousted by Philadelphia after 14 seasons, the premise hinged on the notion that the Chargers would be better off with “a younger, newer name.” After all, they had already “gone down the retread road” with the likes of Norv Turner and, previously, former Chiefs coach Marty Schottenheimer.
“The potential hiring of Reid wouldn’t do much to change the culture of football in San Diego …” the article suggested. “Hiring Reid is going back to too many of the same faults that got San Diego into this mess in the first place.”
We bring this up not to bash the author, though, but as a reminder of how pivotal that time proved to be for both franchises.
And the difference it made for Reid, who despite appearances given the state of the Chiefs at the time stepped into a fundamentally more stable situation in which he has thrived even as the Chargers became a muddled mess with their move.
We also mention it anew for what it might suggest entering their Week 2 matchup at the extravagant new $5 billion, 3.1-million square foot SoFi Stadium, home of the Rams and Chargers.
Each team is 1-0, with the Chargers eking past Cincinnati 16-13 and the Chiefs thumping Houston 34-20.
But you might reasonably anticipate yet another Chiefs win over the Chargers as part of a broader pattern and trend.
Looking back, it would be hard to find a more emphatic dueling inflection point than the one established in early January 2013 when Chiefs’ owner Clark Hunt so won over Reid that he canceled scheduled interviews with Arizona and the Chargers.
In that span, the Chiefs have won five postseason games and their first Super Bowl in 50 years, been in the postseason six times and gone 78-35 in the regular season. Reid is on trajectory to become one of the five winningest coaches in NFL history in the next few seasons, part of a body of work that likely had him en route to Canton even without his first Super Bowl triumph that we figure signals more ahead.
Meanwhile, the Chargers in that time have reached the playoffs twice, going 2-2, and gone 54-59 in regular-season games and made another coaching change in 2016: Perhaps fittingly, Mike McCoy was fired less than an hour after a 37-27 home loss to the Chiefs that marked the last game at Qualcomm Stadium before the move to L.A.
Which leads us to the simplest measure of all this: the head-to-head matchups.
As Reid’s Chiefs have emerged as the Colossus of the AFC West, going 27-3 in the division since the end of the 2014 season, they’ve won nine of 10 against the Chargers in that span and 11 of the last 12 overall.
They’ve beaten the Chargers in four stadiums, at Arrowhead and Qualcomm and the StubHub Center (primarily a soccer stadium now known as Dignity Health Sports Park) and Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.
In that time, they’ve beaten them on Saturday and Sunday and Monday (though not on a Thursday) and beaten them every which way.
They’ve won with defense, at one point holding the Chargers to 13 points in a three-game sequence and becoming a nightmare for then-quarterback Philip Rivers (replaced now by Tyrod Taylor):
Through those 12 games, Rivers threw 22 interceptions with his 14 touchdown passes.
They’ve won in romps like that 33-3 win in 2015, and with fast starts like they did in Patrick Mahomes’ first game as their full-time starter in 2018: In that one, they took a 14-3 lead less than 10 minutes into the game on the way to a 38-28 victory in which Mahomes threw four touchdown passes.
They’ve won in overtime, like they did to open the 2016 season, and won in the final seconds such as when Daniel Sorensen picked off Rivers in the end zone in Mexico City to preserve a 24-17 victory.
And most of the time, they’ve won with a home-field advantage … even on the road.
Chiefs fans typically dominated the scene in Qualcomm and at StubHub, and they were plenty audible at Estadio Azteca even if they may have been outnumbered.
This time, of course, they’ll have to do without that in an empty stadium a week after winning their opener against Houston before a crowd of about 16,000 at Arrowhead under pandemic restrictions. Safe to say it will make for an entirely different atmosphere, as Reid observed in the inaugural game there on Sunday when the Rams played host to the Cowboys.
“The thing that jumps out at you is, I mean, it was the sound there,” Reid said Monday. “There’s that percussion that takes place in the stadium. You heard the ball hit the goal post, and you can hear it on TV and as loud as can be. And … you can hear players talking during the game, so you understand that with nobody in there, things are … magnified a bit from a normal game.”
Not as magnified, though, as the dividing line in the fortunes of the franchise after the 2012 season and until proven otherwise.
And the crazy thing is it’s largely because of the difference between whatever might constitute a retread coach and the revitalized one the Chiefs hired.