ANDY REID IS A COACHING TREASURE AND SHOULD CARRY ON, FOR THE NUGGIES
It’s a time for Belichick, Carroll and Saban to leave, but in the middle of a possible dynasty with Mahomes, Reid leaves us laughing at 65 as he steals cheeseburgers and moves from his personal hell
Try the 20s. If we’re watching a new epoch of kid NFL coaches, why not send a stubbled, post-frat-party crowd to do heaven’s work on the sidelines? Already, Sean McVay was hired by the Los Angeles Rams at 30, then won a Super Bowl and saw his disciples appointed. Kyle Shanahan is 44 and still trying to match. The coach who replaced Bill Belichick, 71, is Jerod Mayo, who is 37. The coach who replaced Pete Carroll, 72, is Mike Macdonald, who is 36.
So why, at a time when professional greats and Nick Saban are leaving football, would anyone want Andy Reid to retire as well? The man is at the top of his game, trying to win his third Super Bowl of the decade, and there are people in Las Vegas who want him to abandon Patrick Mahomes just when he says he knew Taylor Swift long before Travis Kelce.
“She told him, ‘I know your coach,’ ’’ said Reid, chuckling as only he can, such as when he stole Mahomes’ cheeseburger in a State Farm commercial. You didn’t hear his line after that gig? “I don’t want to stand up here and sound like a movie star because I’m not good at that,” he said, “but I appreciate people enjoying nuggies.”
He should rein atop the presiding clan at 65, too creative as a a scheme master with so many possibilities ahead. Why go now when Mahomes, at 28, could win any number of championships with Reid as the one who manufactured him? Who knows when another trick play is coming? Another title ties him for third all-time, behind only Belichick and Chuck Noll. He is nearing 300 career victories and, as we speak, stands 54 behind Don Shula’s record. “Andy is as good as there is, especially on offense,” said Shanahan, the son of a coaching father, Mike, who fell to Reid.
It’s absurd to suggest he not remain with the Kansas City Chiefs as long as he so desires. Each morning, Reid tells another media crowd why the prime of a possible dynasty is an odd time to leave. Everyone around him, from Mahomes to owner Clark Hunt, thinks he’ll be around next season and beyond. His health is good, despite his nuggies diet. He just overcame a tough season, an AFC title after losing five of eight games. He loves an organization on the verge of a global happening, with Swift and celebrities everywhere from a small town in America’s epicenter. Sometimes, who knows if a man with a trio of trophies still needs more? Reid should want more.
“My mom and dad told me this when they were working. They said, 'You'll know when it's time and I'm ready to go right now.’ That's what they would tell me when I was young,” Reid said. “I was an inquisitive kid and so that's the way I look (at it). Somewhere, you're going to know when it's time. Today is not the day.”
It was Hunt who hired Reid, almost immediately, after he was dismissed by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2012. Both parties needed each other, and with Reid, the Chiefs have replaced the New England Patriots as the league’s shining light. “I look forward to having Andy as our head coach for many more years,” Hunt said. “I do know he's really engaged and enjoying it, and I have no sense that he's going to be ready to retire in the near future. Certainly, I hope it's a long time in the future.”
“Other than spending time with his grandkids,” said Mahomes, “he's all about football and cheeseburgers.”
What would he do if he stopped coaching? He doesn’t golf. He doesn’t hunt. “Some people read novels. I look at plays,” Reid said. “I don’t go fishing and all that stuff. So it’s either family or football or church.” Last summer, he and his wife traveled through Italy, and he said, “Good eating. I ate my way from the north to the south.” He did notice how Mahomes was greeted by European fans. It reminded him of what he has accomplished after a life of cruel, unconscionable periods.
When he walks into the stadium with his wife, hand in hand, Reid is aware of their frightful experiences. Remember the Pennsylvania judge who declared their home as a “drug emporium” in 2007, when his two sons were arrested the same day? Garrett collided with a vehicle when police found heroin in his SUV. In another episode, Britt pointed a handgun at a driver. Five years later, out of prison and helping his father at Eagles camp, Garrett was found dead of an accidental heroin overdose. In 2021, Britt was legally intoxicated when his pickup truck hit a vehicle near the Chiefs’ facility at 83 miles per hour, leaving 5-year-old Ariel Young in a coma for 11 days. She continues to struggle with injuries after Britt was sentenced to three years in prison. Reid and his wife plunged into faith, but he kept coaching football.
His experiences with the Chiefs have saved him. His coaching has saved them.
“You’re not going to dog it with Pat Mahomes going full speed, Kelce going full speed,” Reid said. “They’re not going to allow you to do that first of all. Then you watch them, and you watch how they practice, you know it’s not a fit if they can’t do that. I think (losing) gave our guys a nice little … wakeup call that, ‘Listen we need to step things up here. Things won’t just going to fall in our lap.’ We’re taking everyone’s best shot, here’s a team that went through some adversity, and they stepped up and were able to present themselves like they did. We were able to learn from it and move on. I felt all along though (that) we had the ability to do that, like I said, we need a little kick in the tail there.”
Said Kelce, who dealt with his own media experiences dating Swift: “Coach Reid just challenging every single person in this building to up the ante just one more step and just keep taking it up a notch every week from here on out. That’s why we love the big guy. You never fall astray from that kind of mentality no matter how many losses you have, no matter how close the games are and you’re just not finishing them. Coach Reid does a great job of re-channeling that mindset every single week and presenting a challenge against the defense or the offense or just the team we’re going against in the near future. This week, no better time to challenge everybody in that building. He’s got everyone fired up.”
It’s a fascinating mix, Reid with Mahomes and Kelce. They are the stars of this rodeo, from different backgrounds, meshing perfectly. “He loves football so much,” Mahomes said. “Even in the offseason, he'll text me, ask me questions, do I like this play or do I like that play? He loves being around the game and being able to enjoy it. We're having so much fun. It's not so much the winning. We legit have so much fun at the building that I think it would be hard for him to walk away.”
He won’t. And if the Chiefs win again, whose nuggie will he steal next?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.