Andy Reid finally got the Super Bowl win he deserved

Time’s yours, Andy.

In the end — this end, at least, the one everyone will remember now — Andy Reid didn’t have to make a decision about when to call time out. His quarterback didn’t vomit or not vomit in the huddle. Nothing came apart.

Reid kept the same mildly bewildered, mildly perturbed look on the mustachioed face he scrunches in between his hat brim and coat collar, even as his Kansas City Chiefs pulled away for a 31-20 win in Super Bowl LIV. He clutched that play card, the way he always does. Nothing about him said anything. Like usual. It had been this way for most of 22 seasons as an NFL head coach.

It looked all the same as it always had, just the way Andy Reid would want it, right up until the moment the orange gatorade hit him and he turned and shouted, releasing years of pent-up frustration, vanquishing the doubts caused by losing Super Bowl XXXIX, putting to rest any already ridiculous notion that he isn’t one of the better coaches in NFL history.

“Big Red” had trouble finding words to describe his feelings as the confetti showered him and his team. He appeared to not hear the question a Fox reported asked him, then replied with a brief cliche and let Patrick Mahomes step in.

It’s not like football coaches, on the whole, are very knowable. They strive to never say much. They’re often stern and serious, sometimes comically so (looking at you, Bill Belichick press conferences.) All of which is probably the product of having to lead 50-some elite athletes playing a brutal, exacting sport.

But Reid has been more of an enigma than most. The average NFL fan may have come into Sunday thinking he was a good but not great coach who was large and wore Hawaiian shirts and happened to appear in two sort-of-funny videos:

Reid was so consistently successful (except in the big games) that he sort of faded into the background of a league where young geniuses tend to make headlines. When he crossed over into the national conversation, it was too often because he’d long ago become the avatar for poor clock management (and that was overblown, as things tend to be.)

Before joining the Chiefs, Reid coached in Philadelphia for 14 seasons, endearing himself to fans by orchestrating a turn around in his second year and then leading the team to four-straight NFC East first-place finishes, losing in three NFC championship games before reaching the Super Bowl and losing to the Patriots. The Eagles then sandwiched fourth-placed finishes around another division title, and Philly fans, craving something more than an effective and steady coach, began tiring of Reid. He wasn’t retained after the 2012 season — the Eagles had just failed to make the playoffs in consecutive years for the first time in Reid’s tenure — and the city exhaled.

Reid was then, and remains now, often drab. His players and friends say he jokes around off the field, and has myriad interests, but he rarely showed it. Nor was he liable to shout or snarl. He’d mumble through injury updates and then he’d drop what became his signature line when it was time for reporters to ask questions: “Time’s yours.”

That was Reid: efficient and uninterested in ostentation. Which can be grating when the team isn’t winning.

The Eagles, though, sent this perfect tweet after the game:

Players appear to adore Reid. By most accounts he’s an extremely hard worker who is honest with them. Which is what players want. He’s considered a players coach — he wants them to show their personalities, there’s no overriding Eagles or Chiefs way — who  gets his message across when he needs to.

Reid’s life has hardly gone without tragedy; his oldest son Garrett, died of an overdose at Eagles training camp in 2012. Garrett and another brother, Britt, had previously served time in prison on drug charges. Britt is now a coach on the Chiefs staff. I’m looking forward to reading the story of those two finally getting a quiet moment in the next few days to reflect on all they’ve been through .

There was some question in Philadelphia last week about whether Eagles fans should delight in Reid winning a Super Bowl. There was only ever one serious answer to that question. Reid deserved to win a Lombardi Trophy as much as anyone can, and football is so often a sport where that doesn’t actually matter.

Which is probably why Reid, at his moment of triumph, did not suddenly find his words. There were no epic speeches or proclamations. What he seemed most interested in, what the cameras caught here and there, and reporters on the scene described, was giving bear hugs. Because with those, the message could not be more clear.

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