It’s been a unique postseason for Andy Reid and his Kansas City Chiefs, and not just because of Taylor Swift’s presence.
Fresh off winning his fourth AFC championship, Reid, the Chiefs head coach and a BYU alum, called in to the “BMitch & Finlay” radio show on 106.7 The Fan in Washington, D.C., Monday afternoon to talk about how he’s feeling.
Reid shared that despite now having reached seven Super Bowls in his career, his excitement for football’s biggest stage hasn’t diminished at all.
“We’re going to the Big Dance here, and if you can’t be excited about that, you probably need to get out,” Reid told program hosts JP Finlay and Brian Mitchell. “We’re going into game 21 now, and that’s a lot of football, but obviously very exciting football.”
Mitchell — who spent 14 seasons in the NFL as an All-Pro return specialist — played under Reid during his Philadelphia Eagles tenure, which explains why “Big Red” appears on the show once or twice per year.
Reid acknowledged the challenge his team faced in playing on the road over the past few weeks, a first for Kansas City in the Patrick Mahomes era.
“It’s been a new experience that way, it was a little bit surreal for us yesterday,” Reid said of playing the AFC championship game on the road. “(We) didn’t have the stadium full of our fans. ... It was a lot of purple around. It allowed (us) to focus on our football team and the people that really worked their tail off to get us in that position.”
While the No. 3-seeded Chiefs were tasked with playing in both Buffalo and Baltimore — two of the NFL’s most hostile environments for visitors — Reid found that the “foreign territory” ultimately proved beneficial for his players, especially now heading into another Super Bowl.
“Buffalo is a tough place to play ... but it brings you together,” Reid said. “Then you go on to Baltimore and it’s the same thing. ... For us to pull that out, I think it brings (us) together even more as a football team.”
With Sunday’s win over the Ravens, Reid moved to 6-0 all time against his former assistants in the playoffs, as Baltimore head coach John Harbaugh had been on his Eagles staff for 10 seasons.
“It’s like fighting your brother,” Reid said of facing his past staffers. “You’re gonna battle like crazy, it’s do or die, but afterwards you’re gonna love them up. ... It’s so hard to win in this league, but to have a couple of your guys just kicking butt with good programs, I’m really happy for them.”
Just before Reid’s appearance was set to end, Finlay jokingly pressed the defending Super Bowl champion about trading Mahomes to the quarterback-starved Commanders this offseason, as Reid had famously traded both Donovan McNabb and Alex Smith to Washington in the past.
Reid got a good laugh out of the request, but ultimately chose to hold onto his future Hall of Fame passer.
“He can come visit,” he chuckled.