Mike Holmgren made good on a promise to Andy Reid, and the rest is NFL history
Generations apart as the two Kansas City (and beyond) sports icons were born, Andy Reid never met Satchel Paige. But Reid would tell you he’d like to have known him. And inadvertent as it might be, his personal playbook reflects certain elements of the baseball legend’s rules for keeping young.
Certainly, Reid adheres to going “very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society” knowing “the social ramble ain’t restful.” And we know one of his guiding principles is to avoid looking back.
Something may be gaining on him, yes. But it also distracts from and can detract from right here, right now.
So as Reid stands on the cusp of tying legendary Green Bay coach Curly Lambeau for the fifth-most wins in NFL history (229, including playoff victories) entering their game Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium against the New York Jets (0-7), he wants no part of pausing to consider this.
Consider what happened when a former player texted him the other day after he matched another giant of the game, Paul Brown (on the career regular-season wins list with 213): Reid texted back, “Look, man, let’s not talk about it. Let’s get back on the Jets. That’s who we have coming forward.”
“That’s kind of, in a simple way, how you look at it: You never look back; you are kind of going forward,” Reid said, later adding that “you don’t hang on (the big moments and landmarks) for very long. …
“I’ll look back, hang on and grab a cheeseburger when it’s all over, and we’ll reflect.”
With so much on the verge of converging here, though, we’re compelled to reflect for him.
Sometimes soon, we can even ponder his prospects of further ascending towards Don Shula (347) with only George Halas (324), Bill Belichick (306 and presumably counting) and Tom Landry (270) in between.
But for now this also is about Reid’s NFL roots in Green Bay, a pivotal chapter in his life that connects with much before and plenty since and, shortly, specifically with Lambeau. Never mind the stark differences between them that include, well, Lambeau’s inclination to the social ramble.
“There’s a nice little symmetry with this whole story when you put it in the landscape of pro football history,” said broadcaster Kevin Harlan, who lives in Prairie Village but grew up in Green Bay where his father, Bob, became president and CEO of the Packers. “Isn’t it interesting to sit back and look at how it all is woven together?”
‘If I ever get a chance to be a head coach ...’
As a senior at Brigham Young 40 years ago, Reid was considering a career in sportswriting when coach LaVell Edwards nudged him towards coaching as a graduate assistant.
He reported to Mike Holmgren, Holmgren said in a phone interview, among others Holmgren was “kind of monitoring and doing whatever I was supposed to do with them.”
Reid’s personality, intelligence and thoughtfulness jumped out at Holmgren, who at 72 now is 10 years older than Reid. But he promptly saw him as a friend, as “the son I never had” ) as the father of four daughters) and someone he could trust … including with his own career.
“That’s where I first noticed what he was kind of made of and how he did things,” Holmgren said. “And I told him at the time, ‘If I ever get a chance to be a head coach anywhere, I’m phoning you first.’ We kind of laughed about those things.”
Who knew what was to come when Holmgren helped Reid get his first full-time coaching job at San Francisco State, a now-defunct program. From 1983-1985, Reid was part of a three-man staff there (that would come to include Tampa Bay Bucs coach Dirk Koetter) whose jobs also included selling hot dogs amid campus protests to fundraise.
The experience somehow further kindled Reid’s interest in coaching and led him to Mizzou (along with Koetter and current Chiefs special teams coordinator Dave Toub) as part of Bob Stull’s staff from 1989-91. That’s when Holmgren was hired to coach the Packers and was good to his word: Reid was the first person he called.
Holmgren understood answering yes wasn’t a no-brainer for Reid, who has said numerous times how difficult the decision was. For one thing, he was emotionally invested in Mizzou, where he was close to his players (and still is) and which he believed was nearing a turnaround.
As he came to befriend Reid in Green Bay, Bob Harlan always thought that Reid’s personality would make him a dynamic recruiter and lend itself to becoming a great college head coach. Indeed, the longtime offensive line appeared more on an arc to become a collegiate head coach than to start over in the NFL … at age 34 … as a tight end coach.
But Holmgren proved persuasive with one point in particular when Reid balked.
“I tell you what: ‘You’re going to learn the passing game by this,’” Holmgren remembered saying. “‘And that will be good long-term.’”
That proved quite an understatement.
‘Most fertile meeting room’
But it was just part of the extraordinary and influential dynamics in play with that first offensive staff in Green Bay, which included future NFL head coaches Jon Gruden and Steve Mariucci joining Holmgren from the Bill Walsh tree.
(That first staff also featured defensive coordinator Ray Rhodes and defensive backs coach Dick Jauron, each later NFL head coaches themselves. And it’s also when Reid met John Dorsey, then a college scout who joined Reid as general manager with the Chiefs when Reid took over here after the 2012 season.)
“That may have been the most fertile offensive meeting room of any NFL front office,” said Kevin Harlan, the voice of a recently completed 10-part Packers franchise history. “It was like this incredible laboratory of offensive thought … Connect the dots and you’ve got innovation, innovation, innovation.”
Honed by competition, competition, competition among them.
“I kind of take pride in being one of the all-time grinders ...,” Gruden, the coach of the Raiders, said in a 2018 media teleconference before a game with the Chiefs. “Reid beat me to the office every day, and he stayed later. He loves football more than me. He’s one of the few guys I know in my life that actually like football more than me.”
Indeed, Reid made it a habit to arrive at the office at 3:30 a.m. so he could get a few hours work done and then go home to see his wife, Tammy, and children before they went to school.
“Quite honestly, I used to worry about him getting enough sleep and things like that,” said Holmgren, laughing and adding that Reid told him even a few years ago that he still keeps an inflatable bed in his office. “That’s how he operates.”
He also operated like this: Even before Reid was promoted to offensive line coach in 1995 and quarterbacks coach and assistant head coach in 1997, he was scheming up plays. Specifically for use in the red zone … perhaps not surprising when it comes to tracking the evolution of the architect of such imaginative concepts as Hungry Pig Right and Rose Bowl Right Parade.
“I used to give 100 bucks, a little spending money, to any coach who designed a play and if I chose it and we scored,” Holmgren said. “It’s funny, the little things you think are no big deal that became such a big deal to these guys.”
So much so that Holmgren wasn’t surprised to discover that Reid, Gruden and Mariucci had a scoreboard in their office tracking who had the most plays used.
“Andy showed that type of creativity and that type of thought early on,” Holmgren said.
A calming presence
That creativity still resonates. Holmgren said he recently playfully chided Reid about abandoning everything he taught him. In response, he said, Reid laughed and said, “No, no, no, just watch it carefully: It’s the same stuff. We’re just kind of disguising it a little bit. Same principles.”
Reid showed so much promise with those principles that Holmgren did something he said he’d never done before or again.
In 1997, after the Packers won Super Bowl XXXI, Holmgren blocked Reid’s departure when Mariucci left to take over the San Francisco 49ers and wanted to make Reid his offensive coordinator. Holmgren still calls it “that time he was mad at me.”
A raise and a promotion to quarterbacks coach helped. So did another promise Holmgren kept: to help him get a head coaching job when the time was right.
Angry as Reid might have been, what happened next demonstrated his equilibrium in an entirely different way to Holmgren. Between the impassioned forces of Holmgren and quarterback Brett Favre, Reid was largely unflappable and proved a buffer.
“This is going to surprise you, but I had a little temper,” Holmgren said.
Laughing, he alluded to a picture he’s seen of Favre standing behind Reid “kind of laughing” as Holmgren yells at Reid.
By Holmgren’s recollection, that moment went something like this:
Holmgren, furious at Favre through Reid: “It’s his fault.”
Reid, calmly: “No, it’s my fault.”
Holmgren, angrier yet: “No, it’s not your fault, it’s his fault.”
Along with the work ethic and imagination and calming presence, Holmgren and Bob Harlan, understood that Reid had an unusually powerful way of relating to people — instrumental both in communication and motivation.
“That personality, it has to appeal to everybody,” Bob Harlan said, adding, “I think he’d be a delightful guy to work for, I really do.”
That’s been a virtually universally embraced point since Reid took over as head coach in Philadelphia in 1999 despite being what The Associated Press at the time called “relatively unknown.”
The same article noted his resemblance to Holmgren. In fact, each has had fun signing autographs on behalf of the other in events of mistaken identity, identities Reid is forever grateful intersected as they have.
Holmgren still has Reid’s ear in various ways, including prevailing on him to trim his “out-of-control” mustache after he saw him on TV during the playoffs last season. And Reid believes Holmgren, who won three NFC titles and a Super Bowl in 17 seasons with the Packers and Seahawks, belongs in the Pro Football of Fame.
“I don’t think anybody could do it better than he did,” Reid said Friday.
But increasingly few have done it better than “the adopted son” Holmgren said to tell hello.
Exact opposites
Reid’s resume soon, if not imminently, will include matching the victory total of Lambeau. Rising through the ranks leaves Reid in a rarefied air in the history of the NFL. But certain comparison points are incompatible given the polar difference in eras of the game.
Lambeau, after all, was the co-founder of the Packers and a pillar of the fledgling NFL who guided his team to six championships. As his bio in Canton succinctly puts it, he also was the first coach to make the “forward pass an integral part of the offense.” In a sense, that makes him a precursor to the way Reid has made the pass all the more integral, especially in collaboration with Patrick Mahomes.
But any other similarities are purely coincidental.
The flamboyant Lambeau was understood to be a tyrant who once made “salary adjustments” after a loss to the Chicago Cardinals. While players tended to fear Lambeau, they revere the under-stated Reid for the respectful way he treats them.
And while Lambeau was widely considered a philanderer who was thrice-divorced, Reid and his wife have been married nearly 40 years. They have such a bond that Kevin Harlan was deeply struck by how Reid wouldn’t let her leave his side after the Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV.
Reid is “the exact opposite of Curly Lambeau,” said Kevin Harlan, laughing and adding, “They could not be two more different people.”
Just the same, they’ll share a line in NFL history here soon — if only fleetingly with so much seemingly ahead for Reid and his defending Super Bowl champs.
And that still will make for a moment to look back and appreciate how it came to this … even if Reid doesn’t want to look anywhere but ahead.