Super Bowl will be played under a shroud Chiefs must pull back in weeks to come
Raucous Chiefs fans connecting from Kansas City animated a flight arriving here from Nashville on Friday evening. At Tampa International Airport, dozens of volunteers formed a human tunnel to cheer them in. Pandemic notwithstanding, their road into town was snarled as if this were any other Super Bowl — reinforced by a military flyover rehearsal across the glowing Raymond James Stadium.
So the pomp is crackling here … even as the circumstances have changed drastically in the last two days.
Now, there’s a profoundly sad shadow looming over all this. Or maybe it’s more like a shroud. Really, it’s enough to make you weep if you are sentient enough to avert your eyes from all these bright lights.
Because the playing of this game is entwined now with the harrowing image of a girl fighting for her life since Thursday night.
As described in a GoFundMe page with the headline “5 year old Ariel critically injured in DUI crash,” she is suffering with swelling and bleeding in the brain and has not awakened since a car crash near the Chiefs’ practice facility.
Kansas City TV station KHSB reported the truck was driven by Britt Reid, a son of Chiefs coach Andy Reid and the team’s outside linebackers coach.
According to KSHB, a police officer said they could smell “a moderate odor of alcoholic beverages” and observed that the 35-year-old Reid’s eyes were “bloodshot and red.” Reid allegedly told police he’d consumed “two to three drinks,” KSHB reported, citing a search warrant application.
Britt Reid was hospitalized and with undisclosed injuries is expected to remain so for several days, according to ESPN. And on Saturday, Kansas City Police spokesman Capt. Dave Jackson said the crash investigation could take weeks to complete.
Indeed, so much is undisclosed, so much will take weeks to gather, that it’s premature to draw broader conclusions invariably based on ghosts of the past and the remaining fog of the moment.
All we really know is that a little girl is in dire condition, a family is devastated and anyone with sensitivity is anguished or outraged on the eve of what should simply be compelling and uncomplicated theater.
And that the man behind the wheel allegedly has said he was drinking and has had a troubling history of drug and alcohol abuse.
Some will insinuate that this must have some causal link to the most painful times in the lives of Andy and Tammy Reid — such as that wretched day in 2007 when Britt and brother Garrett were arrested in separate incidents, or the unspeakable day five years later when Garrett died of a heroin overdose.
Or they’ll take the hot-take, click-bait shortcut and purport to know exactly what has unfolded and how we got here despite all that yet remains so unclear.
Our headlights don’t shine that deep or far.
Maybe in time they will be more illuminating.
But more to the point, it’s absolutely incumbent in the very near future for Andy Reid and the Chiefs to provide illumination to the point of full transparency on this.
In general, it’s become against the Chiefs’ nature to provide much behind-the-scenes information. And, naturally, that tends to be all the more so when it’s under controversial and delicate circumstances.
But an organization that frequently stresses how it values the community and its fans needs to demonstrate that with how it treats this.
So far, it has said only the minimum in a statement released Friday:
“The organization has been made aware of a multi-vehicle accident involving Outside Linebackers Coach, Britt Reid. We are in the process of gathering information, and we will have no further comment at this time. Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone involved.”
Perhaps that’s about all that could be expected with much still to be clarified, at least publicly.
But this isn’t about the instant reaction so much as a substantial response as called for when more is sufficiently clear.
And it’s about showing true compassion for a family in deep distress and credibility with a constituency that deserves real answers and meaningful actions appropriate to what is learned.
Most of all in the moment, it’s about remembering that the life of a 5-year-old is in the balance … and that the rest of this scene to come tomorrow now feels like just a sideshow.
This story was originally published February 6, 2021 at 7:38 PM.