The roots of the coaching tree in the AFC playoff race run straight back to Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid. In fact, each of the three remaining head coaches got their NFL starts under Reid.
In 1998, Baltimore Ravens HC John Harbaugh joined Reid’s coaching staff in Philadelphia as a special teams coordinator. In 2001, Buffalo Bills HC Sean McDermott became Reid’s personal assistant with the Eagles. In the summer of 2005 at Eagles training camp, Cleveland Browns HC Kevin Stefanski was a coaching intern for Reid.
For Reid, how he’s managed to create so many branches of his coaching tree, all goes back to his upbringing through the Green Bay Packers system as an assistant coach.
“I think it’s kind of a neat process as it works out over the years,” Reid said on Wednesday. “I’m part of that process because of Mike Holmgren, so I’ve lived this and it’s kind of a neat deal to be a part of.”
Harbaugh knows as well as anyone that Reid is just as good of a scout for coaches as he is for NFL talent. He became the first of two former assistants in the Reid coaching tree to go on and win a Super Bowl during his career. He also realized just this past week that each of the remaining coaches in the AFC playoff race all got their start under Reid.
“Remarkable. I guess I realized that when it was pointed out to me in practice to me today,” Harbaugh said on a conference call with Buffalo media. “You kind of take a moment and think about it, it’s pretty amazing. I think it speaks really highly of Andy (Reid). The kind of coach that he is. We all learned so much from him.”
But what makes Reid such a success when it comes to finding good coaches? Beyond the football of it all, Reid is just a good judge of people and it starts with that.
“The idea, they’re just good people,” Harbaugh said. “I look back on those years with those guys… just a bunch of great people who are just tremendous friends to this day. I don’t know how to explain it but it’s pretty amazing.”
Even as the Chiefs prepare to face the Browns and HC Kevin Stefanski in the divisional round, both coaches recall Stefanski’s days as a coaching intern. Stefanski would say that it wasn’t exactly a glamorous job, he called it an “anything and everything job.” He would do anything and everything asked of him, be it football tasks or otherwise.
“I knew who he was,” Reid said of Stefanski. “He was a heck of a football player right there at Penn, so I followed Penn, I had a couple of assistants that had been there and coached there, so I knew about it. I was with the head coach there and it’s a neat program. It was right there by our facility, and the tradition is phenomenal. Anyways, all that said, yeah, I knew who he was, and yes, I did see him.”
Not every head coach knows their coaching interns, yet Reid has a way of making all of his assistant coaches feel important. He’s a great delegator, allowing each and every one of them to play a part in the success of a team.
Stefanski certainly learned a lot from that experience and it influenced his path as a coach. Now, what Stefanski admires most about Reid is his offensive genius.
“He’s obviously somebody that I admire a ton,” Stefanski told reporters of Reid on Wednesday. “Just watching how he’s done it over the course of time and just the various ways that he’s structured his offense to the strengths of his team. Then, he’s a great play-caller. I love to watch the great play-callers and how they mix it up, how they call different things situationally as well with Coach Reid.”
At the heart of what Reid does for coaches is to show them to be teachers and mentors. He’s a football empath of sorts, able to relate to players and coaches and put them on the best possible path for success.
“These guys work their tail off and they work all the areas of what you need to be a good football coach,” Reid explained. “It’s not all X’s and O’s. That’s a big part of it, but it’s not all X’s and O’s, it’s how you deal with people and take care of your players and at the same time, try to give them whatever they need to be the best they possibly can be. So, you see guys go through this and you see their players mature, you see them mature, and you go, heck, they sure deserve a job to have an opportunity to run their own building and then teach others how to do the same thing.”
We’re seeing Reid’s development of coaches play out now with the current Chiefs’ coaching roster, just as he says. Assistants like Eric Bieniemy and Mike Kafka both receiving interest for head-coaching positions.
In his 22 years as a head coach in the league, perhaps the greatest testament to Reid’s success has been the coaches that have come through his doors and gone on to succeed elsewhere. That will be Reid’s lasting legacy in the NFL, just as it was with Bill Walsh, Marty Schottenheimer, or Bill Parcells.
Over the weekend when the Chiefs face the Browns and the Bills face the Ravens, his legacy will be on full display for the world to see.
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