A few weeks ago, I claimed that Andy Reid wasn’t a Hall of Famer by the time he left the Eagles. The reaction caught me off guard. Arguing about Hall of Fame credentials is one of the oldest conversations in sports, but that’s not what happened. Instead, Eagles fans thought I was slandering Reid and wouldn’t have it (Chiefs fans just fictionalized his entire pre-Mahomes history). I honestly thought the majority of Eagles fans were anti-Andy at this point. Nobody I know likes him at all. No judgment, but I truly want to know where Eagles fans fall on the legacy of Andrew Walter Reid. Is he loved, hated, or just someone who used to coach the Eagles?
Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, MO
Eagles Andy
Andy Reid was plucked out of relative obscurity when he landed the Eagles head coaching job. It’s easy to point at the Mike Holmgren coaching tree and assume Andy was next in line, but his experience to that point was 8 years of college offensive line coaching, followed by 7 years of offensive line and QB coaching with the Packers. He hadn’t even been an offensive coordinator at any level when he was hired.
With the Eagles, he found almost immediate success married to #2 overall pick QB Donovan McNabb. Andy and McNabb finished 11-5 in Year 2 then made it to the NFC Championship game against the Rams in Year 3, putting up a valiant effort against the Greatest Show on Turf. Year 4 though, that was when everything gelled. At 12-4, the Eagles had the best record in the league and home field advantage throughout the playoffs. With the 4th ranked offense, 2nd ranked defense, and the top point differential, this was finally OUR year, and we would do it in the last ever game at the Vet. We handled the Falcons and Michael Vick in Round 2 and were given the Buccaneers in the NFC Championship, a team that had literally never won in cold weather before. It was all coming together…and then it didn’t. For 59 minutes, the Eagles played the most depressing game I have ever seen in my life, losing 27-10.1
The next year we made it back to the NFC Championship Game. This time it was a loss to Jake Delhomme and the Panthers, 14-3, in another all-time depressing loss at home.2 That’s 3 consecutive NFC Championship Game losses at this point. Truth be told though, Andy and Donovan didn’t have any real receiver weapons and it was a legitimate excuse. Enter Terrell Owens and life was good. The team dominated all season and even with Owens hurt, we finally found a way to get over the hump and to the Super Bowl. Owens came back, but it wasn’t enough. Then everything fell apart.
Things were lean for a few years but Andy and Donovan had one more solid run in them, nearly making it back to the Super Bowl in 2008. Everything bottomed out though in 2012. A year after the whole Dream Team fiasco, the team was 4-12. It was worse than that though. Reid had made his former offensive line coach Juan Castillo the defensive coordinator in a move that never made any sense and stunk of a desperate coach. There was no debate, it was time for him to leave. Everyone knew it, probably even Reid.
In 14 seasons with the Eagles, he finished 130-93-1 with 1 Super Bowl Appearance and a 1-4 record in NFC Championship games. He was considered an offensive genius, but we always lost the same way in the playoffs, with the offense fizzling out.
Chiefs Andy Without Mahomes
Just like the stories of Andy Reid and Donovan McNabb were intertwined in Philadelphia, so too are Andy and Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City…except that’s not really true. There was a good 5 years where the Chiefs had a different QB under center (Alex Smith) before Mahomes entered the picture. In those 5 years, Andy Reid did Andy things like score a ton of points, win a lot of games, and not have playoff success.
Those Chiefs teams were 1-4 in the playoffs, and it was BRUTAL! In 2013, the Chiefs were up 38-10 early in the 3rd quarter but lost 44-45 in one of the biggest playoff collapses of all time. After missing the playoffs in 2014, the Chiefs lost to the Patriots by 1 score (it wasn’t that close) in the Divisional Round in 2015. In 2016, the 2nd seeded Chiefs lost to the Steelers on, get this, 6 field goals!!! The final score was 18-16 in another no-show Andy playoff offense. The Chiefs drafted Mahomes in 2017, but he only saw action in 1 game. Instead, the Chiefs continued on with Smith who oversaw a 10-6 record and a 21-3 halftime lead over the Titans in the Wild Card round. The Chiefs lost 21-22.
The Pre-Mahomes Chiefs were 53-27 but I can’t imagine anyone was particularly happy with the Andy Reid experience at that point considering all of the devastating playoff collapses. He always found a way to lose.
Chiefs Andy with Mahomes
Despite the previous 19 years, this is the Andy Reid everyone extrapolates over his entire career. With Mahomes, Andy was finally able to destroy his playoff demons. He is currently 90-27 over the last 8 years (including last week) with 5 Super Bowl appearances, 3 championships, and hasn’t missed the playoffs. As Bills fans will tell you, this Andy Reid Chiefs team always seems to find a way to win.
I’m not saying Andy Reid is a bad coach by any means, but there is a clear dividing line separating his career into 2 categories, there’s Before Mahomes and After. The former always found a way to lose when it mattered by either blowing a big comfortable lead or not showing up at all. The latter is never dead and always just one throw away from ripping the other team’s heart out. Is that all on Andy? No way! It is just as much on Donovan McNabb and Alex Smith as it is the coach. Sometimes that’s the difference though. If a coach is intertwined with the QB, their losses are his losses and vice versa. So, yes, Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid are a great combination together that has had undeniable success, but let’s not act like Andy was only a small upgrade at QB away for 20 years. Patrick Mahomes is already a Top-5 QB of all time. He pretty clearly took Andy on his back and made up for all his shortcomings when games either got tight or the lead needed protecting.
Legacy
I watched Super Bowl 54 proudly as Andy Reid finally won his ring. I was truly happy for Big Red. Things in Philly didn’t end great, but there was no animosity either. How could there be? After all, we had finally one our elusive Super Bowl two years earlier. No hard feelings, he was still our guy, one of us. Then the stakes got bigger.
Super Bowl 57 pitted the coach against his old team. It was Andy vs the Eagles. As we all know, it came down to the end and Andy won in seemingly all the ways he used to lose as an Eagle. There was a comeback, the offense didn’t stall, good clock management, and obviously a huge break at the end. That kind of stuff NEVER happened for us with Andy Reid.
That’s when it ended for me. Was I jealous? Absolutely. Why should I have any ties with him after that? He beat our team. That was closer to indifference than hate though. Things didn’t turn completely negative for me though until the end of Super Bowl 59. We obviously had our redemption in the best way possible by blowing his fucking doors off, 40-6. Except the final score was 40-22. WTF, Andy? Despite the game being completely in hand and the Gatorade already streaming down Nick Sirianni’s back, Reid kept dialing up passing plays, going for 2-point conversions, and trying onside kicks instead of ending the game respectfully. The first TD drive, fine, there was still 7 minutes to go when it started. The second one though, a 50-yard bomb to Xavier Worthy with less than 2 minutes left after the Eagles just gave him the ball on 4 nothing plays, was the final straw. That’s how people get hurt. Take your whooping Andy, we know you aren’t a stranger to it.
Do You Still Like Andy?
As someone who was part of the entire Andy Reid experience, I struggle to understand why anyone defends him at this point. I guess a lot of people must look back fondly on those playoff failures for some reason. I just don’t see how that’s possible, especially the ones against the Bucs and Panthers. Andy and Donovan had no answers in those death marches.
There’s a lot of revisionist history on the internet surrounding both the end of his Eagles tenure and the beginning of his time in KC. Andy’s firing was not controversial. It honestly seemed like he had lost his mind by the end, especially with the Castillo hiring. After 14 years in Philly, he had lost his fastball. Nothing about his first 5 years with the Chiefs disproved that either. Time comes for us all. Had he retired before the arrival of Mahomes having never won a Super Bowl, a Hall of Fame bid certainly was not a sure thing. Maybe it would have sparked debate, but it certainly would not have been controversial had he ultimately fallen short. After all, no one is clamoring for the inductions of Donovan McNabb or Alex Smith. This isn’t pre- and post- steroids Barry Bonds we are talking about. More like David Ortiz.3
So where do you stand with Andy Reid? Do you like him? Do you hate him? Or do you think of him like an ex- who you wish well but ultimately don’t care about anymore?
- In some ways this game was closer than the score indicates, but it also wasn’t either. It was tied 10-10 at halftime and the game was in the balance until a late Ronde Barber pick 6 sealed it. At the same time, we scored in the opening minute and didn’t do anything else on offense the rest of the way. This game is a seminal moment in my fandom. ↩︎
- I don’t know if I will ever write up the worst losses of my lifetime, but these two games along with Ryan Howard rupturing his Achillies to end 2011 and the Sixers blowing Game 6 against the Celtics in 2023 are certainly all in the Top 5. ↩︎
- Everyone completely ignored the PED connections of David Ortiz because his big smile is likeable as hell, much like Andy’s chubby dufus persona gives him a pass ↩︎
All stats and depressing game recaps courtesy of Pro Football Reference.
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