By For many years, Andy Reid was synonymous with midnight green, white and black. Now, he is best known for red, white and gold.
Reid was a vastly successful head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles for 14 seasons, leading the team to nine playoff appearances, five NFC championship games and one Super Bowl.
In 2013, he switched Pennsylvania for Missouri to become head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, going onto even greater heights with three Super Bowl victories to his name, including two in the last two seasons.
On February 9, Reid has a chance to etch his name in the history books for the umpteenth time as the Chiefs seek to become the first team to win three titles in a row.
However, like he did two years ago, Reid will be coming up against a familiar foe at Super Bowl LIX – the Eagles.
In 2023, Super Bowl LVII ended in the most dramatic of fashions with a field goal with eight seconds remaining that sealed Kansas City’s victory and Reid’s second career championship ring as a head coach.
This time around, Reid – widely considered one of the best head coaches in NFL history – will be aiming for something similar.
‘You have to hire Andy Reid’
Don Shula, George Halas, Bill Belichick and then Andy Reid. That is the company Reid occupies as he sits fourth in all-time victories as a head coach.
Reid, who got the nickname “Big Red” because of his red hair and mustache in his younger years, has gone from a graduate assistant at BYU to one of the most successful coaches in NFL history and the leader in his field among active coaches.
At Super Bowl Opening Night, Reid spoke about his youth growing up in Los Angeles, California, and how it grounded him moving forward.
“I had a chance to be around everybody, all different kinds of people,” Reid told reporters. “That was the great thing about growing up, I grew up right below Dodgers Stadium. Every ethnic group you could imagine, every religion you could imagine and we all got along.”
But it might never have ever gone that way. Back when he was studying English at BYU, Reid was considering a career to become a doctor or a writer, penning a weekly column for the Provo Daily Herald in Utah as he explored his childhood dream of writing for Sports Illustrated.
It was only when the college’s football head coach at the time, LaVell Edwards, had a conversation with Reid to turn his mind to coaching.
“We’d be out there practicing and working, and there’d be questions coming up on how to pick up a certain blitz,” Edwards said of Reid, who was an offensive lineman on BYU’s team, per the Chiefs website. “I noticed a lot of times (Reid) was helping the guard, the tackle or the center next to him, to make sure they understood what to do if there was some kind of stunt or whatever they did.
“I remember saying at the time that this guy’s got an unusual feel and knowledge of the game.”
Edwards added: “He not only learned and knew what his assignment was, but also the reasons why and the concept of what you’re trying to do. A lot of players didn’t have that concept or ability, but Andy did. He had a feel for it. That’s one of the things I admire most about him, and it made me think the more I was around him, the more I watched him, I realized this guy could be a very good coach.”
As a graduate assistant at BYU, Reid became friends with Mike Holmgren, someone who would dramatically effect his career path.
Their friendship would eventually result in Reid getting his first coaching opportunity in the NFL with the Green Bay Packers – after stints at San Francisco State, Northern Arizona, UTEP and Missouri – when he was hired as the team’s assistant offensive line and tight ends coach.
Holmgren’s staff was full of now-household names – such as Reid, Jon Gruden, Dick Jauron, Ray Rhodes and Steve Mariucci – many of whom went onto be NFL head coaches but at the time were hungry, aspirational coaches. And that atmosphere of determination bred a desire to prove themselves.
“It became a competition between us young guys to see who could come up with the next great play,” Gruden – who was the head coach of the Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders and Tampa Bay Buccaneers – explained, per the Chiefs website. “We wanted to impress Mike Holmgren. We wanted him to trust our research and to put that play in the game plan.”
That environment drove the Packers to extreme heights, with five straight winning seasons and a Super Bowl ring in 1996, the first of Reid’s career.
“In our staff meetings, you could throw out ideas on the table, and if it was a good idea, I’d stick it in the game plan,” Holmgren said, per the Chiefs website, “and so, what I didn’t realize is they kept track of that. They’d go back and give a hard time to each other about that.”
Ahead of Super Bowl LIX, Reid explained the effect Holmgren had on his career and in particular, the evolution of the West Coast offense – where the attack focuses primarily on passing rather than rushing – which has taken the NFL by storm.
“It started with Paul Brown and then Bill Walsh and then Mike Holmgren took it, put his spin on it, along with a few other guys,” the 66-year-old said. “But in Green Bay, he put his stamp on it, went to Seattle and got to a Super Bowl there. And every guy that branches off keeps a foundation and the base principles but they always add something to it. We’ve done that.”
In 1997, Reid looked to be getting the big move he wanted when Mariucci was named head coach of the San Francisco 49ers and wanted Reid to be his offensive coordinator. However, Holmgren stepped in.
“I said no,” Holmgren noted. “I blocked it and said: ‘Look, I need you. I can’t let you go.’ Andy was upset about it and I don’t blame him.”
In a move to appease Reid, Holmgren moved him to be quarterbacks coach, meaning Reid was directly coaching Brett Favre, one of the greatest to ever play the game.
After the 1998 season, Holmgren moved on to be the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks. He had initially scheduled to also interview for the vacant Philadelphia Eagles head coaching role but when he called owner Jeffrey Lurie to inform him he was taking the Seahawks job, he put in a special word for Reid.
“I phoned Jeffery Lurie and said listen: ‘I’m scheduled for the interview, but I’m staying in Seattle, I’m sorry, thank you for everything. But here’s who you have to hire – you have to hire Andy Reid.’”
And that’s how a friendship Reid made 15 years prior resulted in him becoming one of the NFL’s 32 head coaches.
Reid’s announcement as the Eagles’ new head coach on January 11, 1999, made him the second-youngest head coach in the league and the first to move from a position coach straight to head coach.
But despite the pressure resting on his shoulders, he immediately set about making changes. The team drafted quarterback Donovan McNabb with the second overall pick of the 1999 draft. Reid chose to instead start Doug Pederson – who had been Favre’s backup in Green Bay and who would later coach under Reid in Philly – until Week 9 when McNabb took the starting role.
The Eagles finished with a 5-11 record, an improvement on their 3-13 prior season but Reid was just getting started. Pederson – who would go onto win the Eagles’ first ever Super Bowl title as head coach in 2018 – remembers how organized Reid was and how it impacted his own coaching style.
“He always kept those spiral notebooks,” Pederson said. “It’s something I learned to do, document your history. He just had volumes of that stuff going back to his early days in coaching. If it’s a scheduling issue, like around Thanksgiving or Christmas, he’ll look back at what they did three or four years ago in a similar situation and know what to do.”
Philadelphia improved to 11-5 in his second season in charge, with McNabb being named to the Pro Bowl and Reid being named the NFL’s coach of the year.
Under Reid, the Eagles became one of the regular season juggernauts of the NFC and a mainstay in the playoffs. Although they never were able to claim a Super Bowl ring, he perennially changed the outlook of the franchise.
But after 14 years in Pennsylvania, Reid was eventually fired by the Eagles and two days later, the Chiefs sat down with him to discuss their own vacant head coach spot.
“Not only did (Chiefs owner) Clark (Hunt) come, but he brought everybody with him,” Reid recalled of that interview. “It was like the whole front office of the Kansas City Chiefs parked in this private plane area meeting room they had set up. So I got to meet everybody.”
Hunt himself remembers the Reid’s “energy and passion for coaching.”
“I could tell in the interview that he had a clear vision for how he liked to operate, and I think that comes from experience, obviously, but I also think that’s just his personality. He communicates very well, is highly intelligent and an excellent teacher.”
On January 4, 2013, Reid was announced as the organizations new head coach. In the 12 years since, the Chiefs have never had a losing season with Reid in charge.
He helped turn a perpetual playoff loser into a title-contender – largely thanks to the selection of Patrick Mahomes with the 10th pick in the 2017 draft – winning Super Bowl titles in the 2019, 2022 and 2023 seasons.
To seemingly highlight Reid’s success, in 2021 he became the first head coach in NFL history to have 100 wins with two different teams.
Before Mahomes arrived in Missouri, the Chiefs had never hosted an AFC championship game or had a league MVP. Now, they have hosted six of the last seven AFC title games and Mahomes has been named NFL MVP twice.
Mahomes, who has developed into arguably the greatest quarterback of his time under Reid’s stewardship, said that Reid has “meant the world” to him and his development.
“He’s just the best,” Mahomes told Rob Maaddi on the AP Pro Football Podcast. “He’s the best coach, obviously, one of the best coaches of all time, but he’s just one of the best people of all time. He’s learned how to get the most out of me every day. He doesn’t let me be satisfied with where I’m at. He teaches me a ton.
“Not only the quarterback position, but how to be a leader and how to be a great dad and how to be a great husband. He lets me be who I am every single day. I think if I’d have went to some other places, I would’ve had to learn how to play the quarterback position a different way, and he just lets me play the quarterback position the way that I want to play it. I think that’s what’s made me such a different type of quarterback in this league.”
The Chiefs’ victory over the Buffalo Bills in this season’s AFC championship game was the 28th postseason victory of Reid’s career, second all-time behind Bill Belichick’s 31. Reid will also tie Don Shula for the second-most Super Bowl appearances when he steps onto the sideline in New Orleans, the sixth time he’s done so; only Belichick has more with nine.
Like two years ago, his former team stands between Reid and a journey back to Kansas City with a Lombardi Trophy.
