Arrowhead Pride
Kansas City’s head coach is universally recognized among the best ever, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing with the Chiefs.
Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs will enter Super Bowl week widely renowned as the NFL’s best current head coach. Should the two-time defending champion Chiefs complete the first-ever “threepeat” at Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans next weekend, he will have a case to be considered the best coach in league history.
Now in his 12th season on the Kansas City sidelines, this will be Reid’s fifth Super Bowl appearance in the last six seasons. However, if the Chiefs were a less patient organization, the unparalleled success might not have happened.
The Chiefs hired Reid in 2013, almost immediately after he was fired from the Philadelphia Eagles after 14 seasons. Dividends were quickly realized as Kansas City went from a 2-14 record in 2012 that netted them the number one overall selection in the 2013 NFL Draft to an 11-5 mark in Reid’s first season, ending with a Wild Card playoff loss.
2014 brought heavy expectations to build on the unexpected quick success, but the Chiefs finished with a middling 9-7 record in what so far has been Reid’s only season in Kansas City without a playoff berth.
A year later, the wheels appeared to be completely falling off. After a season-opening victory over the Houston Texans, the Chiefs stumbled to a five-game losing streak. To make matters worse, superstar running back Jamaal Charles was lost to a torn ACL in Week 5.
Current Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy was the team’s quarterbacks coach during the 2015 season. While speaking to the media on Friday, Nagy discussed that trying season.
“I do remember that time,” he recalled, “and I remember thinking, man, you know, this isn’t it. We came here in 2013, and we started out I think it was either 9-0 or 9-1 that first year that we were here. Then a few years later, here we are, and we’re 1-5. One thing it taught me as a coach — just watching coach Reid go through that — was he relied on his coaching staff.
“He relied on his players on staying true to each other, being real, being honest, but also not panicking, and just kind of riding the peaks and valleys. So, there’s been a lot of good here in the last however many years, but you go back to that stretch, and you think about that. It can take you to places where you start wondering, ‘OK, are we doing the right thing — and do we need to make any changes?’
“What I learned as a coach, just I remember very clearly that Coach Reid stood his ground. He stuck with the guys, he stuck with his coaches, he stuck with the scheme, and we fought through it.”
Reid had a reputation in Philadelphia as a great regular-season head coach, but he was also seen as less capable in the playoffs. The Eagles...
