It seems shortsighted now, but only a dozen years ago Philadelphia Eagles fans were chanting for the team to fire coach Andy Reid. They got their way at the end of the season and Reid became coach of the Kansas City Chiefs. It was a friendly parting — owner Jeffrey Lurie gave the coach a game ball and employees gave him a standing ovation as he left the team building for the last time. Reid was equally gracious. “Sometimes change is good,” he told them.
And so it was. The Eagles have been to the Super Bowl three times since then, and the Chiefs five times, including this week’s showdown in New Orleans.
If the best revenge is living (and coaching) well, Reid has gotten his revenge and then some, although he probably never thought in those terms. Reid and his Chiefs are just the fourth team to reach the Super Bowl three consecutive years, (Dolphins, 1972-74; Bills, 1991-94; Patriots, 2017-19 were the others). The Chiefs are pursuing their third straight Super Bowl victory — the first one was a 38-35 win over the Eagles in another ironic twist.
Americans — or the American media — relish GOAT discussions (Greatest of All Time), and now Reid finds himself in the middle of another one. He is building a strong case.
Free agency, salary caps, the CBA and the rookie pay scale make it more difficult than ever to build a championship team with any staying power. The NFL has created a system designed to create parity, not dynasties. There’s an urgency, for instance, to win on a quarterback’s rookie contract, before he becomes eligible for an exorbitant salary that diminishes a team’s ability to build the rest of the team. There also are more teams and more games than ever, increasing the competition and the challenges.
It’s almost impossible to build a dynasty like the one the Packers forged in the ‘60s and the Patriots 40 years later, and yet Reid has done it. The Chiefs are the only team to win consecutive Super Bowls in the last 20 years (for that matter, teams won consecutive Super Bowls only nine times in the 58-year history of the game.) The coach has taken the Chiefs to the Super Bowl five times in six years.
Reid, the former BYU offensive lineman who was convinced to pursue a coaching career by his college coach, LaVell Edwards, has built an impressive resume. He is the fourth-winningest coach in NFL history, with 301 victories. He’s tied for third with most Super Bowl wins, at three. He can tie the Steelers’ Chuck Noll for second with a fourth win Sunday (Bill Belichick has six). Reid is the only coach to win 100 games with different teams. He is one of seven coaches to lead two different teams to the Super Bowl — once with the Eagles, five times with the Chiefs. He is tied with Belichick for most playoff games (44) and ranks second in playoff victories (28, compared to Belichick’s 33).
“It’s astonishing what he’s done,” former head coach Jon Gruden told NBC.
Mike Holmgren, another Super Bowl-winning coach who once coached at BYU, told NBC, “It doesn’t matter how smart you are; what matters is how you can convey the information to get the player to perform. And all those quarterbacks, all the players I ever had, I don’t think two of them are exactly the same, and how they listen, how they learn, how you get them to do the right stuff. I think that’s a gift. And Andy, he’s gifted that way.”
Reid compares well with the most respected coaches in NFL history.
Vince Lombardi won five NFL championships in seven years — 1961, 1962, 1965, 1966, 1967. He won the first two Super Bowls, at the end of the ′66 and ′67 seasons; if the Super Bowl had been created five years earlier, he very likely would have won five Super Bowls, including three in a row.
Belichick took his Patriots to the Super Bowl an astounding nine times in 18 years and won six of them.
Like Lombardi, Bill Walsh’s body of work is relatively short, but he guided the 49ers to the Super Bowl three times in 10 years and won all of them.
Chuck Noll led the Steelers to the Super Bowl four times in six years during the ‘70s.
Don Shula is the winningest coach in NFL history and was the first head coach to take his team to six Super Bowls. Like Reid, he led two teams to Super Bowls — five with the Dolphins, one with the Colts. He won two of them.
Tom Landry was the head coach of the Dallas Cowboys for a whopping 29 years and produced a remarkable 20 consecutive winning seasons, taking them to the Super Bowl five times and winning two. Under Landry the Cowboys played in the conference championship game 12 times. He had the misfortune of coaching during the great Packer dynasty or he might have won more Super Bowls.
Joe Gibbs guided Washington to four Super Bowls in 16 seasons, winning three of them. Curly Lambeau and George Halas won six NFL championships each in the pre-Super Bowl era.
As for Reid, he has proven to be a dramatic difference maker with two down-and-out teams. In the two years before Reid was hired as the Eagles’ head coach, the team had won-lost records of 6-9-1 and 3-13. Three years later Reid took them to the Super Bowl. He would take them to the conference championship game five times in eight years; he lost four of them, and there was the rub. He created different expectations for fans and they weren’t having it. By Reid’s 14th season with the Eagles, the fans were booing and calling for him to be fired.
As soon as Reid left the Eagles, the Chiefs intercepted him at the Philadelphia airport, where the coach was en route to a meeting with the Arizona Cardinals that never happened. The Chiefs, who were coming off a 2-14 season, hired him immediately. In the 12 years since then, the Chiefs have advanced to the playoffs 11 times. They have played for the conference championship eight straight years.
Reid is not only the team’s head coach, but he also runs the offense and calls the plays. Gruden praises Reid’s play-calling ability and creativity. “I don’t know if he’ll tell you this, but I think one of the things that really turns (Reid) on and fires him up is when he comes up with a crazy play that no one’s ever seen or practiced against and he runs it and it works,” Gruden told NBC. “I really think he loves and relishes being on the cutting edge of offensive football. I think he’s nuts that way, and I would be like that, but not to the extreme levels he is.”
Reid was the difference in the conference championship game against the Bills two weeks ago. The Bills turned conservative on several huge short-yardage situations — how many times were they going to run their quarterback up the middle before it became apparent it wasn’t going to work? — while Reid called a bold and creative game, oblivious to the pressure.
Let Lurie, the man who reluctantly fired Reid a dozen years ago, have the last word:
“I always thought he’d be highly successful wherever he went,” Lurie told the Washington Post. “I credit the Chiefs for immediately realizing their opportunity. And they got a first-ballot Hall of Fame coach, in my opinion.”
