On cusp of 7th Super Bowl ring, Chiefs’ Brendan Daly recalls shaky start to journey

During Brendan Daly’s five seasons as an assistant defensive coach with the New England Patriots, he typically sat across the aisle from Tom Brady on “bus three” as they traveled.

Among other ways they connected, they had children about the same age. They shared plenty over the years as they developed a cordial ongoing friendship.

Just the same, Daly reckons Brady likely isn’t aware of another prospective point in common.

One that only they would share.

If the Chiefs can complete the Super Bowl three-peat quest on Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles, Daly will join Brady as the only two men to have earned seven Super Bowl rings.

“He may not be privy to that,” Daly, a Chiefs defensive assistant since 2019, said with a laugh Monday at Super Bowl LIX Opening Night.

It’s been a staggering run for Daly, now the Chiefs linebackers coach. Bestriding two dynasties, he’s coached in 11 straight AFC Championship Games and gone to the Super Bowl nine times.

“Lord of the rings,” someone called him the other night, and Daly laughed.

He laughed, too, when I asked where he keeps them all:

“In a bank in Switzerland.”

And he still gets a kick out of remembering his three young children assuming the Super Bowl was etched into the annual family calendar.

“They’ve gotten old enough,” he said, “to where they realize that this is a very unique situation.”

A shaky path (and concrete limit)

One to be savored, for sure.

But as much or more for the journey itself, one laden with ebbs and pitfalls and doubts before taking what might seem an enchanted turn.

Nice as it might have been to have always won and been on an ascending arc …

“I would say it probably wouldn’t have had the same effect, right?” he said, smiling.

Before this remarkable phase of his career, Daly changed coaching addresses 10 times in 16 years and many times wondered if his career ever would take hold.

He was on Steve Spagnuolo’s fired staff with the St. Louis Rams, during which they had 1-15 and 2-14 seasons, and took five jobs in five different states in his first years in the business.

As a restricted earnings coach at Villanova, he lived inside the stadium on the top of a bunk bed where his first concern every morning was whether he’d hit his head on the concrete just above.

Before the sky became the limit ...

“The stands were the ceiling,” he said smiling and adding, “There was no commute, so that was sweet.”

Even from the get-go, there was little to suggest how this would play out for him.

Except for how he handled what he was dealt and alchemized it all through attitude and sheer force of will.

Winless in his first season

Daly was drawn to the profession by high school coaches back in Springfield, Illinois, where he was a self-described “knucklehead” who may have gone “down a very different path” if not for their guidance.

But much as he wanted to coach and teach when he graduated from Drake in 1997, he couldn’t immediately land a job in his chosen field. Per the Des Moines Register, he spent weeks bartending and cleaning carpets in the area before he finally landed a job at Ridgewood High in Florida with former Drake assistant Mike Looney.

Alas, Ridgewood went 0-10 and was outscored 450-145 amid what would become a 35-game losing streak.

“Lot of good high school football in the state of Florida,” deadpanned Daly, who was coaching both sides of the line. “Ridgewood in New Port Richey was not among them that year.”

Funny, though: Even when he was so young that he figures he didn’t know what he didn’t know, Daly still calls that year a “great experience” and one through which he “grew as a human being exponentially.”

Both in the sense of learning to stay upbeat despite the anguish on the field and by what he learned away from the field through another aspect of the move that hadn’t gone as anticipated.

Daly majored in history at Drake and had hoped to teach that at Ridgewood. But after he was turned down for that role, the school called back and offered him a job teaching special education — for which he could get certified as he taught.

That proved an enormous challenge, he said, especially later in the year when he was working with children with behavioral disorders.

“You couldn’t have possibly anticipated how challenging that was going to be, to be quite honest,” he said.

Or how rewarding … and instructive in coaching now.

“They all come with their own personalities and their own situations and their own baggage and, you know, stuff,” he said. “And you’ve got to figure out how to navigate through, around and into all of that and reach them. And you’ve got to figure out what makes them tick.

“And I think as a teacher, you’ve got to do the same thing. And that’s certainly what I had to do in that room: A lot of people were dealing with a lot of issues that were outside of their own control. But you’ve got to balance that fine line of holding them accountable (while) also being sensitive to their needs, their situation and their circumstances. And then also understanding that it can’t be all about one individual.

“Like, we’ve all got to figure out a way to function as a unit here, to some degree. There’s a lot of coaching involved in that.”

Conversely, there’s a lot of that involved in his coaching.

‘Wins and losses are simply letters’

Beyond that Spagnuolo calls him as “meticulous and detailed as anybody” and that he’s as high energy as it gets, and then some, he’s also deeply invested in his players.

“He understands people,” defensive backs coach Dave Merritt said. “And he knows that more so than the X’s and O’s, it’s all about the relationships.”

Including the ones he’s had with two of the four winningest coaches in NFL history: Andy Reid with the Chiefs and Bill Belichick in New England.

In his view, the duo has an enormous amount in common in terms of their influence on winning culture, even if their personal styles are as different as the fact that Reid is known for his offensive genius and Belichick his defensive wizardry.

Reid has “the ability to put a positive spin on even the most negative situation,” he said. “But Belichick was much more about telling you the (blunt) truth no matter what the truth may be, whether you wanted to hear it or not.”

Seeing each be genuine and true to themselves is yet another major influence on the 49-year-old Daly’s career.

But whether or not he matches Brady on Sunday, Daly is more likely to reflect on the path to this point than the arrival.

He’ll think about going winless in his first year in the profession. Being a decade into it before he became a lead position coach in the NFL in 2009. And then being fired in St. Louis in 2011, uncertain if he “had enough equity in this thing” to get another job in the league.

“I remind people about it all the time,” he said.

Because he appreciates every moment, from the “short journey of the season” to the “long journey of our football life.”

And, sure, the rings and all.

But as he looks back now, that’s more incidental than fundamental to what this has all meant to him.

What he’s learned and the relationships, he said, “are things that last a lifetime. The wins and losses are simply letters that are written down in some book, you know?”

This story was originally published February 5, 2025 at 5:30 AM.

Vahe Gregorian

The Kansas City Star

816-234-4868

Vahe Gregorian has been a sports columnist for The Kansas City Star since 2013 after 25 years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He has covered a wide spectrum of sports, including 10 Olympics. Vahe was an English major at the University of Pennsylvania and earned his master’s degree at Mizzou.