KANSAS CITY, Mo. — At a superficial glance, anyway, it’s easy to perceive Chiefs coach Andy Reid as bound to ritual and habit.
That’s certainly what Brett Veach figured when he began working with Reid as a Philadelphia Eagles training camp intern in 2004, thinking then of Reid as “an old school, kind of stick to the basics” type. That included being intent on asserting command and control.
Then also serving as general manager of the Eagles, Reid insisted on full control of the operation and relished the days of multiple daily practices during camp. When Veach was working as Reid’s personal assistant, he once called a nearby friend for help late at night from the team hotel in Pittsburgh because he couldn’t find a particular Sharpie pen Reid always used for his play card.
Reid long balked at such matters as letting players attach a “Jr.” to the last name on the back of their jerseys.
Small wonder that to this day Veach still encounters people inclined to say Reid is “stuck in his ways” … even if that’s not true in many key aspects that we’ll come back to.
“He’s not the same guy that he was when I interned in Philly,” said Veach, now the Chiefs’ general manager. “I mean, he is a different guy.”
Now, no doubt a certain immovable element of Reid is at the root of what makes him an irresistible force. That’s why many first cite his predictability and dependability (in addition to the empathy and humanity that help define him) as crucial both to the loyalty he engenders and his winning ways.
Asked if he’s seen Reid change in some ways over the years, offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy initially laughed and dismissed the point.
“I laugh because, and I say this humbly and respectfully … no,” he said. “He’s still the same person that I have always known. He’s very consistent with how he treats people.”
For a snapshot (albeit a deceptively bland one of a man with considerable personality he generally prefers to publicly subdue), consider the uniformity of his news conferences:
Each commences with a semi-sighing “All right” before he turns to an injury report and challenges he looks forward to. Then maybe he’ll convey some other tidbits before he invariably tells the media, “With that, time’s yours.”
‘Completely different’ offense
But the reason this time is his time as never before, with the fifth-most wins in NFL history (252 including playoffs) and at the helm of a perennial Super Bowl contender, isn’t just his dependability and routine.
As he all of a sudden enters his 10th season in Kansas City, it’s another dimension of the 64-year-old Reid that has him well on trajectory to the Pro Football Hall of Fame:
Somehow sprouting out of his bedrock, he bears an ever-imaginative adaptability. Attached is the sophistication to navigate what is best served by that creature of habit within, by change or a fusion thereof.
The contrast might seem at odds with itself. But it co-exists in Reid, somewhat reminiscent of the Walt Whitman line about contradicting himself that Whitman qualified with, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”
So, in fact, does Reid, who perhaps reflects the influence of both his innovative father, Walter, a Hollywood set designer, and his more pragmatic mother, Elizabeth, a radiologist.
That’s why Veach, Bieniemy and plenty of others have the conviction in one sentence to note Reid’s constancy and in the next to point out how dynamic he is.
The duality was nicely summed up by defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, who has known Reid for decades and worked for him in Philadelphia.
“He has evolved in a lot of ways … yet he’s still the rock-solid guy that we all know,” Spagnuolo said. “So in any up or down (situation), he’s always the same. And that’s a great quality.”
Look no further than how his playbook has morphed and mushroomed over the decades, or even just since he came to Kansas City in 2013, for a hint of how he’s adjusted and replenished himself and flourished in broader ways.
In the wake of the Tyreek Hill trade, that figures to be all the more evident this season.
Even if it’s all within “a blueprint,” as Veach put it, you might see plays that draw on anything from Rose Bowls past to the current college game to futuristic stuff you may only be able to do with a superstar quarterback like Patrick Mahomes.
“He’s always coming up with different stuff to kind of fit his team …,” Mahomes said. “I remember when I first got here, the offense was completely different.”
Meanwhile, a coach once known for clinging to the basics encourages players to let their personality show (within reason), advocates for such ideas as defensive end Carlos Dunlap being able to wear No. 8 (which makes Veach marvel) and lets Veach and his staff drive personnel matters.
As star tight end Travis Kelce was speaking of Reid during camp, at one point he said that Reid has “51 percent (of the operation) so he knows how this thing works best.”
That’s a long way from the semi-autocratic way Reid started with the Eagles in 1999.
So is the fact that Reid allowed Mahomes to conduct a camp of his own with receivers in Texas this offseason, routinely engages Mahomes in play design and welcomes him to lead parts of film sessions.
Where once Reid’s mindset was resistant to that kind of collaboration and input from players, Veach said, now it’s part of how he operates — particularly when it comes to Mahomes, the player Reid seems born to have coached.
Evolve or die out
That’s because of a wider truth about Reid, one that Bieniemy acknowledged immediately after a followup question when he initially said Reid had not changed.
He thought back to Philadelphia in 1999 — his last season playing in the NFL and Reid’s first as head coach of the Eagles. He’ll never forget what Reid said one day as he made a tacit point about him:
“‘You either evolve or you die out like a dinosaur,’” Bieniemy recalled. “So you have to remain flexible in what you do in this profession, because we all have to grow and we just can’t get stuck on ideas thinking that that’s the best idea. We’ve got to always work to improve.”
From the basement of his Kansas City home early in the pandemic, Reid was on a media Zoom call when he was asked about contending with the chaos and uncertainty it presented and how he was seemingly seamlessly adjusting. He immediately referred back to his first full-time coaching job, back in the mid-1980s as an assistant at San Francisco State — a Division II non-scholarship program.
“Everything wasn’t easy there,” he said. “I mean, to film practice we had to have a guy climb up on a ladder … We had to have the players pick up rocks on the dirt field so we could actually practice.
“So those experiences help me at times like this … when everything’s not quite perfect, to make it work.”
For that matter, Reid’s very journey to the NFL was a result of a flexible approach. When he left the University of Missouri for Green Bay following the 1991 season after old friend Mike Holmgren beckoned, Reid’s vision simply was to keep coaching in the trenches.
“I just wanted to be a line coach,” he said. “Best line coach I could be, wherever it was.”
But Reid ascended through the ranks in Green Bay, ultimately becoming assistant head coach and quarterbacks coach before the Eagles hired him after the 1998 season. Then 40, Reid was the second-youngest head coach in the NFL.
That was a long time ago, Reid says now, smiling as he recalled the red hair he remains known for even as it’s thinned out now.
It was a different time in so many ways, including that he inherited a situation he called “a little bit messy” and a team that had gone 3-13 the year before.
Reflecting on the prevailing ways of training camps of the era, special teams coordinator Dave Toub (who worked with Reid in Philadelphia) smiled and said, “It was like murder … If you could make it through that, you could make it through anything.”
That’s changed now, driven by rules changes that initially bugged Reid but that he later accepted and even ultimately embraced.
“Once he works through it,” Veach said, “he adapts and starts to understand as time goes on that the way the game is played and the way you have to coach, everything to a certain extent becomes a little bit different than it was 5-10 years ago.”
‘That’s how he rolls’
Into his 10th season here now, Reid now seems not only to contend with change but to drive it. Asked about his own sense of how he’s evolved, Reid put it subtly.
“I know where you have to go,” he said. “I’ve seen enough to where I kind of know, or I think I know, where we need to be at the end of it.”
Along that way, Veach and Spagnuolo have noticed how much more Reid has come to solicit input from all angles, including players and younger coaches.
Reid’s always been a great listener, Spagnuolo said.
But maybe it stands out more against this canvas because of a different form of self-assurance he’s gained since coming to Kansas City.
There perhaps are many reasons for that, from accrued wisdom over the years to having at last won a Super Bowl. But Veach figures this as much as anything:
“He knows that there’s always room for improvement but … maybe for the first time in his long career (he) knows that the foundation is good, knows the relationship that we have is good, the relationship with the owner he has is good,” Veach said. “And so the little things that are so fundamentally important to get these things rolling, I don’t think he worries about any more.
“Because he knows he has the people that he trusts in place and that now it’s really (only) football and fine tuning things.”
Thus liberated, Reid shows “no signs of slowing down,” Veach said.
And every sign of continuing to evolve.
“That’s how he rolls,” Mahomes said. “I think if he ever isn’t doing that, he’ll know it’s his time to kind of go.”
