Everybody’s happy to see Jim Reid back in the Super Bowl.
Everybody’s happy to see Andy Reid return to the Super Bowl
KANSAS CITY – Two days before Travis Kelce stood under the falling confetti and so uncomfortably shouted the postgame pronouncement in the face of Jim Nantz that “you’ve got to fight, for your right, to paaaarty,” the Chiefs tight-end wrapped up his time on the podium with a more sombre, 18word, drop-the-mic moment.
When he was asked what it would mean to him to get Andy Reid back to the Super Bowl, Kelce squinted slightly and hesitated for a moment.
“Just getting him there isn’t the goal,” he finally said, rather dramatically. “Winning this thing for him is.
“I’ll leave it at that.”
Now only the San Francisco 49ers stand in the way of getting it done.
The 50-year drought between trips to the Super Bowl for the Chiefs wasn’t so much the focus after their 35-24 AFC Championship game victory over the Tennessee Titans on Sunday. The 15 seasons since Reid has been to the game was a much more popular subject.
There are a number of reasons why the 61-year old head coach of the Chiefs is so wellliked and respected. There are the compassionate feelings for the devout Mormon who tragically lost one of his five children, Garrett, to an accidental heroin overdose in 2012.
There’s the very demeanour of “Big Red,” a large man with a thick moustache who sometimes mumbles incoherently but always ends the opening statement of his daily media address with the same line. “With that, time’s yours.”
Reid also draws an “awww, how nice” sentiment. During the presentation of the Lamar Hunt
Trophy after Sunday’s victory, he mentioned that he held his wife Tammy’s hand the whole time. The next morning, he was asked how he later celebrated the occasion.
“I went home,” Reid said with the start of a smile under the covered lip, “had a cheeseburger and went to bed.”
Reid is recognized as owning one of the game’s most innovative minds, and teams that regularly rank high in offensive categories.
His “coaching tree” is also impressive.
Former assistants hired by Reid include current head coaches John Harbaugh (Baltimore), Sean McDermott (Buffalo), Matt Nagy (Chicago), Doug Pederson (Philadelphia) and Ron Rivera (Washington).
But while Harbaugh and Pederson have won Super Bowls, Reid has only coached in the championship game once before – at the end of the 2004 season, when his Philadelphia Eagles lost 24-21 to Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots.
He trails only one other man on the list of most seasons between Super Bowl appearances by a head coach and that’s Dick Vermeil, who was on the losing end of the game when he was the Eagles sideline boss in 1981, and then hoisted the Vince Lombardi Trophy as coach of the St. Louis Rams on 1999.
“It’s everything,” Chiefs GM Brett Veach said when asked what it meant to him to get Reid back to the Super Bowl. “He’s given, not just me but so many people an opportunity in this league.
“When I first started out he believed in me and it motivates me to bust my tail every day and emulate his work ethic. It means the world. That’s why we know we are not done yet. We have one more game to go.”