Shaped as he was by Mount Carmel, Chiefs GM Brett Veach found focus through coach Andy Reid
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A ‘Red Tornado’ in Kansas City
At his introductory news conference as general manager of the Chiefs in 2017, Brett Veach alluded to being proud to be a Mount Carmel Red Tornado ... and has been a whirlwind himself ever since.
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Brett Veach’s roots in football-crazed coal country set him on a seemingly predestined path toward becoming the general manager of the Kansas City Chiefs.
But it also took an indulgence of destiny to pave the way.
Because all of what was to come was harnessed through Veach’s fortuitous rendezvous with then-Philadelphia coach Andy Reid, which became a remarkable collaboration that has led to the Chiefs seeking a third straight Super Bowl appearance as they begin this postseason against the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium.
“It’s sure amazing the way it fell into place,” Veach’s father, Bob, said. “I don’t know if it was fate or what, but he was so lucky.”
Here’s how Veach’s journey was made possible by a simple twist of fate in a chance to work with Reid and how his background in Mount Carmel prepared him to seize it.
‘100% grunt work’
They met by happenstance a few years after Veach had finished his career at the University of Delaware, where he had a school-record 1,558 kick-return yards and 1,470 receiving yards on 99 receptions — including a number from Matt Nagy, the future Chiefs offensive coordinator who went on to be the head coach of the Chicago Bears.
In 2004, Veach was a graduate assistant at Delaware when assistant football coach Kirk Ciarrocca was catching up on the phone with his friend James Urban, with whom Ciarrocca happened to have worked at the University of Pennsylvania. Urban had become Reid’s personal assistant and mentioned he was trying to find interns.
As Veach’s father recalls it, Ciarrocca told Urban he had “the perfect guy” for duties that included setting up beds in the dorms, stocking refrigerators, making sure copiers were running and TVs functioning, setting footballs at the line of scrimmage, laminating practice scripts and carting coaches to and from the fields.
“It was 100% grunt work,” Brett Veach said. “But on the flip side, you’d get to sit in meetings and just listen and observe and learn and see how everything works.”
During the two summers Veach did that for a few weeks, he had little direct contact with Reid beyond a casual greeting or two. But he’d made an indelible impression on Urban.
So when Urban was being promoted to offensive quality control coach, he pushed for Veach as his replacement. And Reid embraced the idea so strongly that he called Veach to offer him the job without a formal interview.
‘Security to lane one’
Never mind that the decidedly unglamorous job in many ways also was a grind, Reid will tell you. You’re essentially expected to be at Reid’s disposal for anything and everything. It may technically be called “assistant to the head coach,” Veach said with a laugh, because that looks better on a business card.
But the job was all about being Reid’s personal assistant, which at times involved, say, picking his wife up at the airport but more often was about Reid cultivating a path for others. The role has been a potential portal to wonderland for the properly inspired, who under Reid in Philadelphia included Veach; Urban, now the Ravens quarterbacks coach; current Buffalo coach Sean McDermott; and current Chiefs assistant line coach Corey Matthaei.
Porter Ellett was in that role for the Chiefs before being promoted to offensive quality control coach. He was eventually succeeded by current personal assistant Dan Williams.
The ideal candidate, in fact, has great responsibility and “just kind of calms the storm” when “the best of my red hairs get to me,” as Reid put it in speaking of Ellett.
He also might be well-served to be a sponge with a deep love of the game, as is Veach, who seized and squeezed and wrung everything he could out of the chance.
Whether it was doing gofer chores or watching tape with Reid for hours and hours and hours, often just the two of them, he carried out every task with the zeal reminiscent of a player who runs to the end zone with the ball every play in practice.
Longtime friend Pete Cheddar remembers being in Pittsburgh when the Eagles had a preseason game there in 2007 and getting a late-night call from Veach that went something like the following.
“‘Listen, I need a favor: Coach Reid uses a special Sharpie (pen) on his play card, and I can’t get out of the hotel. You’ve got to get to, like, a Kinko’s and get this Sharpie.’”
So Cheddar did and hustled it over to the team hotel, where Veach came down to the lobby, took the pen, thanked him profusely — and said he had to hurry back upstairs.
Veach’s older brother, Bob Jr., remembers Brett being “almost OCD-ish, he was so meticulous,” with a report he typed up for Reid. He proudly handed it to Reid, only for Reid to hand it back and tease him about it being ruined by a price tag on the back of the binder.
While his brother believes that left a lasting image about attention to detail, it’s also true that Reid has a mischievous sense of humor and perhaps figured the earnest Veach maybe could calm down a bit.
One year around Thanksgiving, Reid summoned Veach and gave him a coupon to redeem on Reid’s behalf for a free turkey at a local store, likely what was the A&P on Oregon Avenue in South Philly.
When Veach got to the store and tried to check out with the ticket, the manager told him it was fraudulent. Next thing you know, as Veach recalled, it’s “security to lane one, security to lane one” and Veach believing he’s being arrested while getting all the more agitated about Reid not being able to get his turkey.
As it happened, there was no turkey to be had: It was a prank evidently orchestrated by Reid, who was known to do a similar routine with rookies.
“They got me so good,” said Veach, who also was captured on hidden camera for the merriment of the team and laughed repeatedly as he told the story. “That was a good one, which reminds me we need to do that here one year with these guys.”
More seriously, though, Reid appreciated Veach’s intensity from the start and sensed that Veach belonged more on a scouting and front-office track than a coaching one.
Pounding the table
Having also served as the team’s general manager for his first seven seasons and retaining personnel authority even after surrendering the dual role after the 2005 season, Reid was astute in each element of the operation and promptly recognized Veach’s aptitude.
So within months of Veach becoming his assistant, Reid assigned him to study wide receivers to potentially select in the draft. Veach came to have great conviction about the undersized DeSean Jackson of the Cal Bears, and he had no qualms about being insistent despite his place in the hierarchy.
Friends say Veach literally pounded the table for Jackson, whom the Eagles made the 49th overall selection and who went on to accumulate 379 catches for 6,512 yards and score 38 touchdowns in six seasons with the Eagles.
The selection lives on in the Veach home in Mount Carmel, where the family cocker spaniel is named Jackson.
A year later, still in his capacity as Reid’s personal assistant, Veach was assigned to cross-check draft-eligible running backs and pushed for LeSean McCoy with similar zeal and results: McCoy, also a second-round pick, rushed for 6,792 yards and scored 54 touchdowns in six seasons in Philadelphia.
No wonder only a year later Reid promoted Veach to a pro and college scout who continued to earn Reid’s trust. And when Reid was fired in Philadelphia and came to Kansas City in 2013, he brought Veach.
The pursuit of Mahomes
By 2015, Veach became co-director of player personnel with Mike Borgonzi and was making a major impact. But maybe nothing illustrates what ultimately made him the man for the GM job like his role in bringing the transformational Patrick Mahomes to Kansas City when the Chiefs traded up to draft the Texas Tech product 10th overall in 2017.
Just like he demonstrated growing up in Mount Carmel, when he wants something, he goes and gets it.
In this case, Veach recalled last year, he was watching video in his office in the spring of 2016 when Reid wandered by and asked, “What are you doing?” Half-joking, by Veach’s reckoning, he told Reid, “I’m watching the next quarterback of the Chiefs, Coach.”
However intrigued Reid was or wasn’t at that point, Veach was becoming enthralled. Securing Mahomes became a quest as the Chiefs looked to the future beyond Alex Smith. In January 2017, Veach struck up a relationship with Chris Cabott, a co-representative of Mahomes’. Or as Cabott put it to former Star reporter Terez Paylor for a story in Yahoo Sports, “For, like, 94 straight days, we literally communicated in some way, shape or form.”
That funneled into “When Andy Met Patrick,” the pre-draft meeting that triggered the first currents of the mind-meld between them.
And that set in motion the selection of Mahomes — engineered by then-GM John Dorsey but instigated by Veach.
Only months later, Veach would replace Dorsey and embark in earnest on the future that was budding in Mount Carmel.
But it’s a future also brought to fruition by a certain element of chance — albeit chance that he influenced by making the most of his opportunity with Reid.
This story was originally published December 26, 2021 at 5:00 AM.