It’s not a remotely original thought to imagine that one day Andy Reid may actually be considered the greatest coach of all time when his career is finished. He has four fewer Super Bowl championships than Bill Belichick and 48 fewer wins, but the pair are separated by seven years and Reid is just now rounding into the athletic prime of Patrick Mahomes. Should Reid have seven or eight good seasons out of Mahomes’s age 28-38 years (a notion that is not impossible, but we have to be realistic about injuries and wear; only Tom Brady has truly escaped the ravages of time on the body), he would comfortably pass Don Shula, who has 347 wins to Reid’s 273.
Reid has taken Alex Smith to the divisional round of the playoffs, Jeff Garcia to the divisional round of the playoffs, Donovan McNabb to the Super Bowl, and Mahomes to five AFC championship games and three Super Bowls. This is the critical factoid that makes this a Good Sports Argument given that, outside of a combination of Vinny Testaverde and Mark Rypien and Mac Jones, Belichick has never even appeared in a playoff game without Tom Brady. The slowing down of the Patriots in 2023, and the acceleration of what you might call the Chiefs’ dynasty now that Kansas City is off to a comfortable 5–1 start after their 19–8 win over the Broncos on Thursday Night Football, places this thought back on our plates.
It’s an entry point into what we believe actually qualifies one to be a good coach. It’s also how we weigh a few factors such as how much we value a coach with Belichick’s emotional intelligence to keep a singular marriage to one quarterback lasting two decades; how much we value a coach with Reid’s flexibility in raising the games of multiple quarterbacks; whether that same coach, much like other coaches who have been branded quarterback whisperers, was simply fortunate to have bumped into several greats along the way (think Bruce Arians, who worked with Peyton Manning, Ben Roethlisberger, Andrew Luck, Carson Palmer and Tom Brady; is Reid a whisperer, or was McNabb, Michael Vick, Smith and Mahomes pretty damn good on their own?).
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On Thursday night, we watched how Reid’s Chiefs easily dispensed of a divisional opponent. The art was in the perceived effortlessness. We now talk about the Chiefs the way we used to talk about the Patriots, curious if something is wrong merely at the sight of a margin of victory that is less satisfying than our Las Vegas friends would lead us to believe. After Thursday night’s game, we should take this as a kind of a cue: It’s not just a thought that Reid could eventually usurp Belichick, but a very real possibility.
There is, obviously, a long way for Reid to go. But, the mundane nature in which the Chiefs swatted away another professional football team Thursday night, winning this one with strong situational defense (especially in short-yardage situations), shows again that Reid understands the need to constantly micro-evolve around the once-in-a-lifetime quarterback just like Belichick did. Perhaps, even better than Belichick did. This is an important factor to weigh when comparing the two coaches. To me, it's really the main factor.
From the moment Mahomes started to stun the football world with his own brand of football Cirque Du Soleil, Reid was already eyeing the pinnacle of Mahomes’s singular talents and the limitations of its powers (the kind of strung out Mahomes we saw in the Super Bowl loss to Tampa Bay). He was already looking at someone such as Clyde Edwards-Helaire. He was already leaning into the idea of a more powerful, complementary football team. Now, through a few years of experimentation, he’s found it. The defense is stout, twice holding opponents to fewer than 10 points, two more times than they did in all of 2022). The complementary run game, led by Isiah Pacheco, is almost to the point where it can alter the parameters of a football game on its own.
Toward the end of the Belichick–Brady dynasty, the issue felt like it was a perceived lack of support. Brady had the aptitude to carry a team on its back, and so he was expected to. That is what ultimately makes leaving somewhere like New England to go to Tampa Bay with Mike Evans and Chris Godwin so attractive.
As we enter the next phase of the Mahomes–Reid dynasty, the sense is that the less Mahomes has to carry the better. There will be games when every ounce of his powers are called upon. In the playoffs, he will be drained and drained again, such as a broadway lead performer pulling four shows a weekend. But until that moment, what’s the point, especially if Mahomes doesn’t have to?
This is a long way of saying that Reid’s understanding of Mahomes, and how to keep building around Mahomes, will be the main reason why he can or cannot catch Belichick. This is a way of saying, on a random Thursday night when Mahomes wasn’t necessarily spectacular by his own standards, that it looks like Reid has a pretty good grasp on what it takes.
