Andy Reid’s Chance At History

BY ADAM GREENE

Andy Reid is one of the best head coaches in NFL history and nobody that actually follows the game would argue otherwise. What he’s missing is a Super Bowl championship, something that’s eluded him in his 21 seasons mainly because he’s only made it to the Super Bowl once before this season.

That’s in spite of making it to an AFC or NFC conference championship game seven times.

Lack of success in those championship games has stuck to him. It’s become a slight. “Andy Reid can’t win the big game.”

Let me ask you this, when should he have won it? In what season were those seven teams, five with the Philadelphia Eagles and two with the Kansas City Chiefs the superior squad in their conference?

Let me answer that for you. Once. And it was this season. While everyone went nuts on Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens, I warned you from the opening week that this was the Chiefs’ season and the Ravens wouldn’t make it to the finish line.

The reason was simple; this was the best team Andy Reid has ever coached and the best quarterback he’s had at his disposal, by far, in all of his 21 years. People slept on the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes because he missed a few games with an injury and when he came back, wasn’t 100 percent. He is now. And as the every team the Chiefs faced in the playoffs learned, in spite of trailing by double digits in both games, Mahomes is in a class all by himself.

Looking at those NFC Championship games, the fact that the Eagles were in them at all was all Reid. Losing to the Greatest Show on Turf St. Louis Rams with Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk in 2001-02? That was a foregone conclusion.

The Eagles lost to a superior Tampa Bay Buccaneers team the following season fielding one of the best (and Hall of Famer-filled) defenses in league history. The next season, their third straight trip to the NFC title game, quarterback Donovan McNabb’s ribs were broken so bad he could barely breathe so he got pulled against the Carolina Panthers. Here’s a shocker, his back up Koy Detmer couldn’t pull it out.

Which of those games was Andy Reid supposed to win?

The next year Reid got it done because he had the better team when facing the 2004-05 Atlanta Falcons. Sure, they’d go on to lose the Super Bowl, but, again, did anyone expect them to beat the New England Patriots? Wide receiver Terrell Owens was playing on a broken leg. Donovan McNabb was still Donovan McNabb and spent most of the fourth quarter puking on his own shoes. And, of course, there was SpyGate but none of us knew that then. Even without the cheating help, in what universe does that Belichick-Brady team lose that game?

In 2015 with the Chiefs? Alex Smith vs Tom Brady? Nope.

If you have an argument about last year’s loss to the Patriots in the title game, look at what New England did to the Los Angeles Rams in the Super Bowl. Belichick had that defense dialed in, nefarious tactics or not. That wasn’t a bad loss.

Reid had the better team this year, as he did in 2004-05 and made it to the show. This time, he’s got a QB that won’t spend the game’s final 15 minutes decorating his cleats with Campbell’s Chunky Soup.

It’s his best shot and, as long as Mahomes is healthy, it won’t be his last. But a win here, regardless of what happens in the future, will cement Reid’s career in the annals of NFL history and guarantee that gold jacket that he deserves at the end of it.

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