Super (Bowl) mind-meld between Mahomes and Reid keeps creating sweet music for Chiefs
One day last season, when I was thinking some about the magic conjured between Chiefs coach Andy Reid and quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the image of the relationship between a composer and a performer somehow came to mind. That led me to an essay on a Stanford website attributed to Samuil Feinberg, a renowned Russian composer and pianist.
The piece had an uncanny application to the mind-melding dynamics between Reid and Mahomes — the living, breathing force that has been fundamental in the ascension of the Chiefs as they prepare to defend their Super Bowl triumph of a year ago against Tampa Bay in Super Bowl LV on Sunday in Tampa.
The virtual symphony they create on the field reflects an abiding sense of each other’s visions, literally and figuratively. And that animates an extra-sensory connection between the two men known to finish each other’s sentences and merge thoughts on what Reid has called his stacks of “Pat plays.” In some ways, it’s hard to know where one’s imagination begins and the other ends.
Which takes us to Feinberg’s work.
“The composer needs an intermediary-performer, a creative interpreter of his composition ...” Feinberg wrote, adding that at a certain point the artist “is not an ‘executor’ of another’s will; rather the mind of the composer should become the performer’s own, and blend with the individual traits of his talent, with his own artistic aspirations.
“The performer gains strength and courage in this unity, which is necessary for the concrete realization in sound of the ideas and images contained in the work.”
It’s easy to see how that might be applied to this observation Reid made of Mahomes the morning after the Super Bowl last year.
“He sees the field, which I appreciate … You say, ‘Well, all quarterbacks see (the field).’ No, they don’t, not like he does,” Reid said, later adding, “After a bit, you’re (thinking) this guy’s unbelievable. He can take it all in. He challenges you as a coach to give him more, so his aptitude is ridiculous.
“And so as a coach, you love that. You’re able to feed him new plays, and he gobbles those things up and makes them look even better than they did on paper.”
Moreover, Mahomes has said that Reid knows “the right time to kind of rein me in but at the same time lets me be who I am,” which helps explain his crucial adaptive ad-libbing.
“It happens sometimes that a composer is unable to take into account all the technical, colorific and expressive possibilities of a master instrumentalist,” the essay continued. “Sometimes a composer trusts the performer to introduce some changes into the text …
“Such a friendly collaboration may help the author find a path to the most grateful exposition.”
The path of the author, Reid, was foundational to the chemistry between them enlivened by Mahomes’ innate talent, nimble mind and remarkable sense of awareness.
Bear in mind first that Reid is infused with the imaginative mind of an artist, perhaps in the image of his father, Walter, a Hollywood set designer. Consider, too, that he played football at Brigham Young. Although he was a lineman, he said something telling the other day when asked about his tendency to pass on fourth down more than ever.
“I went to BYU, so every down is a throwing down,” Reid said, smiling. “I was educated that way by LaVell Edwards to throw any time, any place, and I’ve tried to keep a little bit of that with me as I’ve gone forward. I think if you have confidence in it, then it’s really no different than the run.”
The confidence in it, of course, would emerge more than ever with Mahomes, but the framework kept building through the years. You can trace it through the arc of Reid’s career, including as part of “Air Stull” under Bob Stull at Texas El-Paso and Missouri, and from the time Mike Holmgren added him to his Green Bay staff in 1992.
Reid ultimately became quarterbacks coach to Brett Favre as the Packers won one Super Bowl and fell short a year later.
And this is where analyst extraordinaire Kevin Harlan seized the topic when I spoke with him a few months ago about Reid’s time in Harlan’s hometown of Green Bay.
To achieve what Reid has, Harlan said, “You’ve got to have quarterbacks who have kind of an outside-the-box talent. So what does he have in Green Bay? He has Brett Favre to work with. And then who does he have in Philadelphia, for the most part? Donovan McNabb, an incredible athlete who can think outside the box.”
Soon after he arrived in Kansas City in 2013, Harlan added, the Chiefs acquired Alex Smith, “a sharp, smart, sponge who gets all of what Andy talks about and he evolves. And then, the gift upon gifts: He gets this kid Mahomes, this generational talent, who learns under Smith how to be a pro, how to construct his work day … how to watch tape, what to demand of my players in the huddle, on the sideline, in the classroom and in practice.
“And then the genie is out of the bottle, because Mahomes always wants more. He wants more, he wants more, he wants more.”
He added, “You can have all these great recipes, but if you don’t have the right ingredients, you can’t make it as tasty as you want, as delicious, as flavorful, as you want to make that meal.”
All these active ingredients, with a healthy ladling of dazzling supporting talents, such as Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, catalyzed something between them in ways that might never have been fully realized otherwise.
So we see before us the irresistible alchemy between a brilliant coach waiting all his life for just the right pupil to fulfill his inspiration and a transcendent talent blessed with the psychological assurance to know he carries the key if he can just find the lock.
Now they’ve turned the launch keys simultaneously — with the added appeal of the obvious warmth and admiration between them. You can hear it in how they speak of each other, see in Mahomes’ swooning gaze in the photo that goes with this column or even in those moments sitting together on the sideline.
In contrast to what came to be somewhere between a mechanical and transactional relationship between Bill Belichick and Tom Brady with the Patriots before Brady joined the Buccaneers after last season, the harmony between Reid and Mahomes is almost tangible.
It also seems to reflect shared personal traits that make this seem like something quite more than a business relationship.
When Reid first met Mahomes shortly before the 2017 NFL Draft, one of Mahomes’ representatives, Leigh Steinberg, once told me, he must have understood that Mahomes was humble “with a sense of care for other people’s feelings (that are) rare in an era of self-absorption.”
That attitude no doubt also informed his willingness to spend a season apprenticing under Smith, to whom Mahomes is eternally grateful.
Anyone who knows Reid knows why all that would resonate with him on multiple levels. Like Mahomes, he is amiable, decent and confident without being cocky. Like Mahomes, he is dedicated to summoning the best from all around him … including, naturally, Mahomes.
So no wonder game recognized game in that fateful first meeting that helped compel the Chiefs to trade up to draft Mahomes’ No. 10 overall. Much of what has happened since seemed to start bubbling from their instant compatibility.
Driven by zealous matchmaker general manager Brett Veach, then the Chiefs’ co-director of player personnel, the inaugural session that Mahomes later called “a blessing” that became “kind of the building block for the relationship that we have now” hardly could have been more energizing and seamless.
“They had to be temperamentally suited … That consanguinity of interests, that meeting of the minds, that portent of the future, and what those meetings would be like between the two of them (going forward), there had to be a click that went off in Andy’s mind: ‘This is our guy,’” Steinberg, who co-represents Mahomes with Chris Cabott, told me in 2019. “(Reid) could have come out of that meeting turned off, disbelieving, doubtful, ambivalent. But he didn’t.”
To the contrary. At one point, a witness suggested Reid practically was glowing as they went through nearly eight hours of technical aspects of the game. Reid also got a sense of Mahomes’ “person,” to use one of then-GM John Dorsey’s favorite terms.
Which would have included similarly simpatico characteristics, such as personability and poise and a feel for his work ethic, attention span, stamina and sheer enthusiasm to be coached, Cabott said in 2019.
“I think if there was an extensive series of boxes to check off, one by one they got checked off,” Steinberg said then, adding that from there, “All the stars aligned perfectly.”
And so the extra-celestial convergence thrives on.
In his first full season as a starter, Mahomes was the NFL MVP and led the Chiefs to the verge of the Super Bowl in the form of a 37-31 overtime loss to New England in the AFC Championship Game.
Last season, the Chiefs won their first Super Bowl in half a century with Mahomes as the MVP of the game. Now they have a chance to become just the ninth team to win back-to-back Super Bowls.
Reid has long been one of the best coaches in the game, but he also labored with the stigma of being the so-called best never to win it all. Until Mahomes became his starter, Reid was 11-13 in postseason games. Moreover, the Chiefs had been 4-16 in the postseason in the first 48 years after winning Super Bowl IV.
Now, they are 6-1 in the last two-plus playoffs featuring the distinctive stylings of Reid and Mahomes.
To be sure, there are many other reasons why the Chiefs have become who they are: From front office commitment to the relentless imagination of Veach to continuity in personnel and coaching staff; from a superstar cast around Mahomes including Hill and Kelce to a defense reshaped in the image of Steve Spagnuolo and brought to life by the likes of Tyrann Mathieu, Frank Clark and Chris Jones. And much more.
But the crux of it all is the relationship between Reid and Mahomes, who have only become more entwined since Reid told me this story last year: One day walking off the field together, he started to talk about something unrelated to football.
Suddenly, Mahomes used the very words for which Reid was reaching.
“Exactly the same,” said Reid, re-enacting the moment with a playful recoil and turn of the head. “I go, ‘Wait a minute.’ ”
For something many waited a lifetime to see: the manifestation of one of the most creative minds in NFL history and a supreme player whose wondrous arm at times obscures the other traits that enable him to excel. Not the least of which is being the “creative interpreter” of a composition decades in the making.
This story was originally published February 7, 2021 at 5:00 AM.