What a difference a year — and a ring — can make.
Prior to leading the Kansas City Chiefs to the Super Bowl championship last year, Andy Reid was seen as something of a bumbling also-ran destined to be somewhat forgotten in an era so thoroughly dominated by Bill Belichick.
Now he’s the mastermind of one of the most exciting offenses we’ve ever witnessed, primed to win another Lombardi Trophy with a team that figures to compete for a spot in this game for years and years to come.
He won’t have to deal with Belichick in Super Bowl 55, but there is the matter of preventing Tom Brady from doing Tom Brady things in his tenth(!?) Super Bowl.
But frankly it might not matter how heroic Brady gets in his first appearance in the biggest game with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Because Reid, despite having a supremely talented offense, hasn’t stopped pushing boundaries and trying to find new ways to create space for some of the best playmakers in the game.
Meanwhile his defensive coordinator, Steve Spagnuolo, has his own history with stopping Brady: He was the defensive coordinator for the New York Giants when they took down Brady’s juggernaut 2007 Patriots team, which had entered the game undefeated and as the highest-scoring offense of all time.
Not that anything Spagnuolo does now directly correlates to what he called back then. He’s elevated the Chiefs defense to championship-level with crafty, evolving game plans meant to confuse and/or pressure QBs.
Let’s take a look at the personnel and philosophies that have powered Kansas City’s return to the Super Bowl.
(Data courtesy of Sports Info Solutions’ Datahub)