Andy Reid is a three-time Super Bowl champion, potentially looking to add some more hardware to the mantle to conclude this season. Reid has been a head coach in the NFL for a quarter century now. While he has won three Lombardi Trophies as the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, he went to his first Super Bowl when he was leading the Philadelphia Eagles back in the day. He needed to adapt.
While speaking to Sterling Holmes and Patrick Allen of FanSided on The Stacking the Box Podcast, one of Reid's former Philadelphia stars in Pro Football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins explained that while he always knew Reid was going to eventually win a Super Bowl, he also recognized that he needed to grow into a champion. His response to Holmes' question was both thorough and insightful.
Here is what Dawkins told Holmes about Reid's eventual run to greatness on the behalf of Boehringer & Eli Lilly.
"I did. ... There is no way in the world you can sit there and tell me that Andy Reid has not grown. He has. Because we all do. Like, if you go on to have any type of success in your life, there's going to be failures, there's going to be setbacks, and you're going to learn from those things. You are going to apply things differently going forward. We grow through things, we don't just go through them."
Dawkins' best example is how Reid changed his overall philosophy when it came to drafting receivers.
"Because of all those experiences in Philadelphia, and the other experiences from when he first got to Kansas City, he began to do things differently. His personnel even that he drafts is different at receiver. When he was at Philadelphia, who did we have at receiver? Again, I do not want to sound like I am putting down those guys but I'm just telling you that they weren't the Tyreek Hills, they weren't the Xavier Worthys."
Dawkins finished by saying that he knew Reid would win at least one Super Bowl, but nothing like this.
"So he has changed the way he drafts skill-position guys. And so the offense has changed. If a team is going to have him run the football, he will run the football down their throat. There are certain aspects of Andy that has changed. I can't tell you that I saw what he is doing at Kansas City coming, but I saw him winning at least one."
What else besides drafting different receivers led to Reid finally getting over the hump in February?
Brian Dawkins explains that Andy Reid had to grow to win a Super Bowl
Given that Reid has been an NFL head coach every season since 1999, we can only hope that he has grown multiple times over. His exodus from Philadelphia after the 2012 NFL season was a bit controversial. The Eagles were not any good, but it was really only the first down year under Reid's watch. Still, Eagles fans were less than thrilled that Reid could never seem to win the big one for them.
Reid went to Kansas City in 2013 and quickly turned the Chiefs from a perennial pretender into a consistent title contender in the AFC overnight. Of course, this was only magnified by the drafting and development of Patrick Mahomes. This team went to an even higher level during his first season as the starter in 2018. Along with receivers, Reid finally got the quarterback he needed to win with.
As far as other ways where Reid has adapted over the years, I feel like he has done a great job of handling coaching attrition. Many of his disciples have gone on to lead NFL teams in their own right, including Jim Harbaugh, Ron Rivera, Doug Pederson, Sean McDermott, Matt Nagy and others. Reid went from a poor game clock manager to one of the coolest cucumbers on any sideline anywhere.
If I wanted to tie a bow on Dawkins' response to Holmes' question about Reid's growth as a coach, I would say that the game really slowed down for him in Kansas City. Drafting more explosive offensive weapons like Hill and Worthy certainly helped in that regard, but I always felt Reid was a step ahead in Kansas City, rather than one behind in Philadelphia. He took it upon himself to improve from within.
Reid's innovativeness and adaptability are why he has finally emerged as an all-time NFL head coach.
Brian Dawkins spoke to FanSided on behalf of Boehringer & Eli Lilly to raise awareness and encourage people to get tested for kidney disease.