KANSAS CITY, Mo. — When it comes to his coaching persona, anyway, Chiefs coach Andy Reid customarily traffics only in comments curated to provide zero competitive advantage. Typically, there’s also some self-deprecating stuff and maybe a morsel of word-play humor.
On rare occasion, maybe a handful of times in nearly a decade since he arrived in Kansas City, he’ll flash some exasperation or even bristle.
But one thing he has seldom, if ever, displayed: anything remotely asserting a point of pride.
Which is what made a singular moment with a few media members last month in his dorm room at St. Joseph feel remarkable.
So much so that it still reverberates as the Chiefs prepare to take on the Los Angeles Chargers and budding superstar Justin Herbert on Thursday night at Arrowhead Stadium
No doubt primed by months of a popular national narrative about how the AFC West was vastly improved as the Chiefs regressed, Reid came as close as I can remember in the 30-plus years I’ve known him to saying something bordering “scoreboard” or “bring it.”
In a very relative sense, to be sure. Conveyed without a trace of arrogance, we should particularly note, as the Chiefs and Chargers tangle in what figures to be one of the most revealing matchups of the early season and a potential swing game for each in the big picture.
Still, Reid’s words last month made a distinct point about a team that has won a stupefying six straight AFC West titles (by an average margin of 2.3 games) and 36 of its last 41 division games.
Oh, and that’s also 21-3 vs. those foes with Patrick Mahomes at the helm.
As a man of true humility, not to mention a strategic thinker, Reid would never be so explicit or tactless as to lay it out like that.
Still, at some level he just needed to say … uh, we’re still right here.
So following one of several questions about how division rivals Denver, Las Vegas and the Chargers had dramatically ramped up for the team that under Reid has become their collective nemesis, Reid understatedly demurred.
“You can take it as a badge of honor (and) crawl under the desk and be afraid,” he said. “My thing is, listen, let’s go. … We’re not chopped liver out there. We have some pretty good players. So let’s play.”
Now, there was a playful undertone to how he said it. But coming from Reid, “we’re not chopped liver” (deftly defined by Merriam-Webster as “one that is insignificant or not worth considering”) was a subtle yet sharp reminder of the recent past forged by their divisional supremacy.
The Chiefs have played host to four straight AFC Championship games, appeared in two of the last three Super Bowls and are just two years removed from winning it all for the first time in 50 years.
As for the “let’s play?” That was a nuanced way of saying … if you want it, come and get it.
Not that there is any shortage of respect for the Chargers or the rest of the West.
No sooner had the Chiefs reduced the Arizona Cardinals to pylons in a 44-21 win on Sunday in Glendale than Mahomes was pointing to losing at home to the Chargers last year and the need “to learn from that and find a way to claw out a win.”
In fact, part of the key to Reid’s success against the West is entirely to the contrary of disregard.
As he did with his teams in Philadelphia, Reid has the Chiefs dedicate a full day apiece during OTAs to the study of each divisional team and opening opponent.
When I asked him Tuesday about why he does that, Reid said, “It kind of breaks it up and gives the guys something to look at,” he said. “Plus it’s a good fear for you. Makes coaches think, makes the players think about who they’re playing.”
When I asked him to elaborate on what they do in that time, Reid added, “You don’t have as many plays that you’re putting in, but you’re going to go in and you’re going to study it like you’re playing them. You’re going to detail that up, and then you’ll have a few select plays that you work with.”
As it happens, rather a select team to work with, too.
Which helps explain such success against their most familiar opponents that the Raiders thought it worthwhile to take a victory bus lap around Arrowhead two years ago after a rare recent victory there.
In turn, that’s why after the Chiefs last year demolished them 41-14 in Las Vegas, then-Kansas City safety Armani Watts took to Twitter to offer up an act-like-you’ve-been-there-before jab:
“We don’t need no victory lap on to the next,” he wrote, reinforced with a flexed-biceps emoji.
None of which is to say past performance is any guarantee of future results. The Chargers most of all appear to be a credible challenger to the Chiefs, not just in the West but in the AFC overall.
Just the same, the rewired and revitalized Chiefs have plenty to demonstrate themselves.
The top of their goal pyramid surely is a return to the Super Bowl and redemption — both for the debacle against Tampa Bay in Super Bowl LV and the second-half implosion against the Bengals in the AFC Championship Game last season.
But the foundation and the map remains first things first: win the West.
Again.
And the preseason narrative notwithstanding, the burden of proof isn’t as much on the Chiefs to demonstrate they’re still on top of the division so much as it’s on the rest to dislodge them.
Or as Reid might say: We’re not chopped liver; so let’s play.
