LAS VEGAS — Even after joking last month that he’s old but not old enough to retire, Chiefs head coach Andy Reid was short, sweet and direct to the point Monday morning when asked if he will return as the team’s head coach for the 2024 season.
“Yep, yep,” Reid said in the light of day following his team’s electrifying 25-22 victory over San Francisco in Sunday’s Super Bowl LVIII, giving the coach and his club their third championship in five seasons.
Reid explained, yet again, he hasn’t even started considering retirement yet.
“You know, I honestly haven’t even thought about it,” Reidd said. “But I get asked it. I’m still kind of in awe of the game and what went on there. So I really haven’t thought why or what or anything else.”
So why does Reid keep getting questions about his future? It’s a long story involving rampant speculation, a joke that backfired, Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll, a lack of clarity, and a football blogger.
Speculation and a Joke
During the week leading up to Super Bowl LVII in Phoenix last February, Reid was dogged during media sessions on how much longer he planned to coach. By Saturday, a rumor spread like wildfire throughout Phoenix. If the Chiefs knocked off the Philadelphia Eagles, the then 64-year-old Reid was prepared to walk into the sunset with his second ring on his hand as a head coach and start polishing his Hall of Fame acceptance speech.
There wasn’t any real basis for the speculation other than it made a great story. The beloved father-figure head coach gets his second Super Bowl title and walks away on top of the world. That’s the fairytale ending for NFL head coaches. It’s a script perfect for the Disney version of Reid’s biopic.
Respected NFL journalist Jay Glazer of Fox Sports heard the rumor and cut through the noise, reaching out to ask Reid about the scuttlebutt.
“I said, ‘Jay, you’re like the 60th person that’s asked me that.’ I said, ‘Maybe I need to look in the mirror.’ Jokingly I said,” Reid explained while meeting with reporters during training camp. “Next thing, boom, it came out.”
Indeed, the joke backfired. After the Chiefs knocked off the Eagles 38-35, Reid faced the question yet again about his future as the head coach in Kansas City.
“If they’ll have me, I’ll stick around,” Reid said after the win, quelling the subject, for the moment.
Belichick, Carroll Step Down
On Jan. 10, the NFL world was stunned by the news that 72-year-old Pete Carroll had mutually agreed with the Seattle Seahawks to step down as their head coach. Later that day, 71-year-old Alabama head coach Nick Saban announced his retirement. Less than 24 hours later, Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots announced that the 71-year-old head coach mutually agreed to part ways.
It didn’t matter that each of those coaches was more than five years older than Reid, who turns 66 in March. He is now the dean of NFL head coaches, the oldest at age 65, the longest-tenured with 25 years under his belt, and the third-longest stint with his current team.
Naturally, when Reid stepped to the podium for his press conference on Jan. 11 ahead of the team’s Wild Card game against Miami, he already knew the question that was coming about the R-word.
“I haven’t even thought about that,” Reid said. “I’m thinking about one thing. I figured that would come up when you guys were asking these questions – because I’m old, but not that old.”
Why Popping Up Again?
Unfortunately, most media around the country either didn’t listen to Reid’s answer in January or didn’t care. It also didn’t help matters that Reid’s folksy, charming answer to the question didn’t include the word “no” or “yes.” Reid reiterating that he hadn’t thought about retirement was seen in some circles as merely a delay — once he did think about retirement, surely retirement couldn’t be far behind.
For the second year in a row, Reid was bombarded during the everlasting week of Super Bowl media appearances with questions about retirement, and he gave familiar if confusing answers.
“Am I retiring? Listen, my mom and dad told me this when they were working,” Reid said on opening night. “They said you’ll know when it’s time, and I’m ready to go right now. Let’s go.”
While he delivered an ambiguous answer — Reid was referencing that he was ready to coach a game, not retire — others around him were more direct. Club chairman CEO Clark Hunt and president Mark Donovan gave relatively clear answers throughout the week about the head coach’s future.
“I don’t have a sense for what he’s thinking,” Hunt said. “I do know he’s really engaged and enjoying it, and I have no sense that he’s going to be ready to retire in the near future. … Certainly I hope it’s a long time in the future but we’ll just have to see as we go.”
Yet on Sunday, a national blogger put his capital-B blogging hat on and delivered two postings related to Reid’s future. The first post aggregated a CBS Sports report that Reid was in line for an extension and a raise after taking the Chiefs to their fourth Super Bowl in five seasons — while inserting the specter that Reid could choose retirement instead. The CBS report asserted that Reid has two years remaining on his contract for $12 million per season.
The other post focused on speculation that former offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy could return to the Chiefs in some role, even hypothesizing that Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce would “likely make a strong pitch” for Bieniemy if Reid retired after the Super Bowl.
The word “if” did a lot of heavy lifting.
So after a week of at times humorous and coy answers, Reid again faced the music after Sunday night’s win: Would he be back on the Kansas City sideline in 2024? The last verse was the same as the first.
“But people keep asking me,” Reid said at his Monday morning press conference. “And I keep saying, ‘Why didn’t (Bill) Belichick and Pete (Carroll) retire?’ You know? Those guys, they ask those old guys the question, but I’m the old guy now. So I guess I’m gonna be asked that. I really haven’t gone there. I haven’t really thought about it.”
It remains to be seen if people will listen to Reid this time.
