Andy Reid draws the line

As he rises in the coaching pantheon, the Chiefs' coach maintains his boundaries.

You know him by his costume. In fact, it’s unlikely you’d recognize him without his tomato shirt and his ballcap, or without his Tommy Bahama shirt. He is a fixture on January weekends and, as of Sunday night, five of the past six Super Bowls. Yet, even as he moves into the NFL statue gallery, Andy Reid is often viewed but seldom seen.

A victory over Philadelphia would give Reid his fourth Super Bowl championship. Only Bill Belichick has won more. He also is second to Belichick in playoff wins and fourth in regular-season wins, with 273. Fifty-five more of those, and the 66-year-old Reid will tie Don Shula, the leader. That’s an average of 11 wins in the next five seasons, within Reid’s range if the creeks don’t rise and if Patrick Mahomes remains himself.

The personality Reid allows us to see is an endearing one, the jovial, burger-loving big man. He’s always been oversized, all the way back to age 11, when he was a gargantuan Punt, Pass & Kick contestant in Los Angeles and had to wear the uniform of the Rams’ Les Josephson to compete. Once in Green Bay, where he was an assistant, he got entangled with a member of the chain gang and told him to “get out of the way, fat-ass.” When the fellow suggested that Reid consult a mirror, Reid said, “Well, that’s fair.”

This is a coach who has won the past two Super Bowls on a play he calls “Corndog,” and when Leo Chenal blocked a Denver field goal to save a win, Reid gave him the ultimate present, a cheeseburger. Back in 2019, when Mahomes opened the season with a 4-touchdown blitz of the Chargers, Reid’s favorite play was a 26-yard scoring catch by 5-foot-11, 242-pound tight end Anthony Sherman. “He’s like a sausage, except he’s got hands,” Reid said gleefully. “A big ol’ sausage with hands.”

All this light-heartedness is left in the clubhouse when Reid conducts what is acknowledged as the NFL’s toughest training camp. He still takes the team to a remote college, Missouri Western, and puts them in dorms. He doesn’t break up the monotony with prolonged scrimmages against rivals. He packs as many plays in as little time as possible, and he was also known as the “meetingest coach I’ve ever seen,” according to the Packers’ Brett Favre, when Reid was coaching Green Bay’s tight ends and quarterbacks. They emerged glassy-eyed from their position rooms, while everybody else was heading for the car. That, along with Mahomes’ fourth-quarter resourcefulness, might be why the Chiefs have won 17 consecutive one-score games.

Beyond all that, Reid pulls down the curtains. Belichick tries to project a top-secret world, but he has subjected himself to a David Halberstam biography and left his personal book fairly open. There never has been a meaningful book about Reid even though he has coached 26 years in two overheated NFL cities, Philadelphia and K.C. He shows that if you really cherish your privacy, you can actually do so.

And there are questions he doesn’t answer. Garrett Reid died at 29 as he was serving as his dad’s weight coach in Philadelphia. He suffered an accidental heroin overdose. He had served time after an auto accident while he was under the influence, and cops found 200 pills in the car. He was a dealer who said he enjoyed selling in the most dangerous areas of town.

Britt Reid was also on his dad’s staff. He was in jail on drug charges at the same time Garrett was, and he was cited for a road rage incident in Kansas City when he pulled a gun. A few days before the Chiefs’ Super Bowl loss to Tampa Bay four years ago, Britt’s car plowed into a vehicle and severely injured a 3-year-old girl. The Chiefs offered to cover her medical expenses, and Britt’s blood-alcohol level was 0.111. He was sentenced to three years, but Missouri Gov. Mike Parson commuted that.

How Andy Reid and his wife Tammy dealt with all this is largely unknown, a decision that should be respected. It also can’t be second-guessed. Should Reid have left coaching, or would that have even worked? What’s notable is Reid’s disinterest in public therapy, and the sympathy that would have followed. No tearful interviews here. Let the audience think what it wants.

Reid’s football obsession is well-known. Food is one of his few hobbies. He went on and on about the menu when the Chiefs visited the White House, particularly a French toast, grilled cheese and ham sandwich “with some powdered sugar. It was phenomenal.” He keeps a pad and pen by his bedside, even on vacation, in case some previously unknown X and O possibilities visit his dreams.

He was at Glendale Community College near L.A. when Brigham Young came recruiting. LaVell Edwards was interested in Randy Tidwell. Reid came along for the ride. He never became a full-time starter, and quarterback Jim McMahon once accused him of “decapitation” when he let a Hawaii pass-rusher get through. Reid also annoyed his coaches with a stream of questions, but when they realized he knew more about protection schemes than anyone else, they let him teach his peers. Reid then became a grad assistant, learning from legendary offensive experts Doug Scovil and Norm Chow. The road began there.

Eventually Mike Holmgren brought Reid to the Packers, where Jon Gruden and Steve Mariucci already were. The Eagles made Reid their head coach even though he hadn’t been a coordinator, and he got them in the postseason in his second year. They went to five NFC Championship Games with Reid, but won only one, and lost that Super Bowl to New England, and eventually the two sides divorced. While Reid and the Eagles drew up the papers, three NFL teams had airplanes on the tarmac , ready to take him for interviews.

Reid’s Kansas City teams have won 73 percent of their games. This is their 10th playoff appearance in his 11 seasons. Alex Smith was a perfectly good quarterback, but Reid and general manager John Dorsey knew they had to get something out of the 2017 QB class. Mahomes was derided as a product of the Air Raid system at Texas Tech, but Dorsey told the Chiefs’ coaches to rate all the quarterbacks on the basis of their aptitude. Since Mahomes had called most of his own plays in college, he came out on top, and the Chiefs traded from the No. 27 spot to Buffalo’s No. 10 to get him, two picks before Houston took DeShaun Watson. Mahomes is 17-3 in postseason.

The Eagles have a better roster than the Chiefs, just as they did two years ago, just as San Francisco did last year. The game may be determined by how often the Eagles’ savage defensive line gets to Mahomes, and whether the Chiefs can limit wide receivers A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith. Saquan Barkley already has three touchdowns of 60 yards or more. He’s the leading deep threat on the field, even though he lines up behind Jalen Hurts.

Either way, you know what Andy Reid will be wearing and where he’ll be. If it’s February, he’s on the sideline, fully expecting to take a trophy home with him, with a stop at the drive-thru built in, his offenses and defenses intact.