Reid has three rings? Phooey!
What I am about to write, I openly acknowledge, may be nothing more than the rantings of a bitter old man unwilling to admit defeat. I hated Andy Reid the first time I ever met him, and nothing has changed in the 25 years since then.
In my jaundiced eyes, he is the biggest phony in sports, a coach who failed to win a championship in 14 tries with the Eagles and then found a four-leaf clover named Patrick Mahomes, who proceeded to win three Super Bowls for his historically overrated head coach.
This may come as a shock to many listeners, but I was actually rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 58, for three reasons.
One was the arrogant, blowhard San Francisco 49ers (led by the chronically injured Deebo Samuel) and their annoying fan base. SF has a terrific team right now, but I wouldn’t want to spend a minute with any of these jerks.
Two was the heroic performance of the new GOAT, Patrick Mahomes, who is a more talented version of Tom Brady, fast afoot, strong of arm and – most impressively – instinctively a genius. In 2024, Mahomes is by far the best show in sports.
And three, I bet $100 on the Chiefs to win the game outright. My thinking was pretty basic. I couldn’t imagine Brock Purdy beating Patrick Mahomes. I was right – barely.
For most of my 33 years on the WIP Morning Show, I remember the days after the Super Bowl as exercises in frustration. We did little but complain about the lopsided nature of the game, the overpriced ads and the lousy halftime shows.
None of those laments applied to Super Bowl 58. Hell, I even enjoyed Tony Romo’s breathless analysis in the fourth quarter and overtime, as the fortunes of an entire season rested on one huge play after another. The CBS production was fantastic, including the eight shots of Taylor Swift rooting on her new boyfriend Travis Kelce.
For once, the Super Bowl lived up to its hype.
I shut off the TV right after Mahomes’ game-winning TD toss because I couldn’t bear seeing Andy Reid happy again. (I definitely could have lived without Romo giving so much credit to the coach in his call of the final play. Ugh.)
Am I the only one who watched the daring scrambles, the big throws after avoiding the pass rush, and the extraordinary field leadership of Mahomes? Am I so jaded by 14 years of Andy Reid’s robotic babbling here that I cannot bring myself to give the devil his due?
No longer do I feel qualified to answer those questions. All I can say for sure is that Donovan McNabb was in a similar situation once in Super Bowl 39, and instead of embracing the biggest challenge of his career, he puked. Reid had no answers then. He squandered the precious final minutes, called bad play after bad play and went home a loser.
The Eagles did win a championship six years ago, and my obsession with Reid leads me, time and again, to wonder if there’s any way the future Hall of Fame coach would have been able to accomplish what Pederson did with a backup quarterback and a defense that gave up over 600 yards.
I say no to that, no to the undeniable fact that Reid is somehow more highly regarded in Philadelphia than Pederson and no to the notion that Reid would have three rings if not for the sudden arrival into his life of Mahomes.
A strong argument can be made that the GOAT among coaches, Bill Belichick, was similarly blessed with Brady and that his six championships were far more attributable to his QB’s talents than to his own. Reid is not alone in his luck.
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, so I may be barking up the wrong tree with my relentless disgust for Reid, but it no longer matters how many Super Bowls he wins. Given his age (65), it’s a safe bet that the last QB he ever coaches will be Patrick Mahomes. Reid’s place in NFL history is secure. He will be regarded as one of the best coaches ever.
But to me, he will always be the Eagles head coach who squandered the most chances to win a championship, the coach who had so little respect for the fans that he chose robotic answers to their questions rather than offering an occasional sliver of the truth, and the phony who bamboozled the national media into depicting him as him as a folk hero.
I have always taken a weird kind of pride in sustaining grudges long past their expiration date. I hated Andy Reid when he was coach of the Eagles, I hate him now, and I will despise the man until my last day. To me, his successes in KC in no way make up for his failures in Philadelphia, and they never will.
Still, I acknowledge I may be wrong about all of this. These may truly be the rantings of a bitter old man.
Andy Reid will be attending another big parade this week.
Meanwhile, the highlight of that day for me will be lunch.