Andy Reid: What makes him so lethal and why is he the ultimate threat to Eagles’ Super Bowl hopes

As the Kansas City Chiefs prepare to take on the Philadelphia Eagles, most of the discourse surrounding Super Bowl LIX is what Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Chris Jones and the defense etc. will do. In all those discussions, head coach Andy Reid seldom comes up.

That could be because most fans are enamored by the superstars on the field who do most of the work. The Chiefs can only win their third straight Super Bowl if the likes of Mahomes, Kelce, Jones, and the others do their job to the best of their abilities.

But what fans tend to forget at times is that all of this might not have come together unless Chiefs owners, the Hunt family, would not have bought into the vision Andy Reid proposed to them. He was coming off his 14 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles as their head coach.

Despite coming close to winning a Super Bowl, the Hunt family wanted to take a chance on that vision. Reid would go on to build a team based on principals he learned from the great Mike Holmgren. Those principals are also what makes him the ultimate threat to the Eagles’ chances of winning their second ring.

Andy Reid as a team builder

Prior to becoming the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, Andy Reid was the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles for 14 seasons. He earned that job after helping turn Brett Favre from an outcast to one of the league’s best ever quarterbacks.

With the Eagles, he tried to do the same with Donovan McNabb, Terrell Owens and others, but they came up short against Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. Armed with that knowledge, he came to the Chiefs focused on learning from his mistakes and turning their fortunes around.

He did that soon enough and has never had a losing season with them. However, it was the pieces he kept adding that led up to their stellar run of three Super Bowls in five seasons. He drafted Travis Kelce, Tyreek Hill, Marcus Peters, and eventually Patrick Mahomes.

Along with them, he also brought in talent that other teams were not too high on. But his ability to coach them up to play better ensured the Chiefs were never breaking the bank on any one of them. When a situation developed where they had to, they shipped those players out, prime examples being Tyreek Hill, L’Jarius Sneed.

However, he did pay those who he felt were important to the culture and the way his team plays. Signing Mahomes to a then massive contract was a no brainer. But keeping Kelce and then eventually paying Chris Jones showed how he wants his team to play.

Building a team around core players

When Hill left, everyone thought Reid had lost the plot. Every quarterback needs an elite receiver, but for the head coach, it was Travis Kelce and not the combustible speedster. After winning one Super Bowl with ‘the Cheetah’, Reid’s philosophy has seen them win two more and are on the verge of a third.

That philosophy is signing and drafting hungry young players who want a Super Bowl ring on their fingers. Other teams go and sign elite veterans, paying them top dollar. But Reid has seldom done that, and that philosophy has helped them in adding players as and when necessary.

Else how could the Chiefs think of bringing in the likes of DeAndre Hopkins, despite signing other players to their roster? That philosophy of building around their three core players also saw them enter this season with a young and unproven defense.

But Chris Jones is a bona fide leader, and his leadership along with Steve Spagnuolo‘s coaching has made them one of the best of this season. There is a reason why the Kansas City Chiefs are favorites to return as Super Bowl favorites every year.

Andy Reid’s creativity is a problem for Eagles

The likes of Bill Belichick, Mike Tomlin, John Harbaugh and other great coaches have built solid coaching staffs around them. Therefore, they focus on setting the standard and hoping their coaches will follow and focus on their jobs.

But Andy Reid has not completely given up his offensive play calling. His creativity and knowledge of the game has seen him device schemes that have left opposition players off guard. He has faced his fair share of standout defenses, therefore, the vaunted Philadelphia Eagles unit is not immune.

Considering his experience learning from the greats and then coaching some, the 66-year-old cheeseburger eating grandfather knows how to scheme against anyone. The odd situation when he does lose a game, he is the first to go back to the drawing board to understand how he could tweak his gameplan.

The Philadelphia Eagles have stud players across the board. They could wreak havoc in many different ways the Chiefs might not have experienced in their past Bowl games. However, trust Andy Reid and his creativity to come out with something that helps them be the first team in NFL history to win three-straight Super Bowls.

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