LAS VEGAS — Pause there, at midfield of Allegiant Stadium late Sunday night after Super Bowl LVIII, in the middle of a spangled city of glitz and risk built in the middle of a desert, as Andy Reid lowered himself on top of Chiefs defensive end Chris Jones as Jones lay on the field, the two large men belly to belly and screaming in joy over Kansas City’s 25-22 overtime victory over the 49ers.

Pause there, and consider Andy Reid: winner of three Super Bowls in five years, the only NFL coach to have at least 100 wins with two teams, the best coach in the NFL right now, one of the five best coaches the league has ever seen.

Pause there, and get past whatever bitterness you might still harbor over his 14 seasons with the Eagles and the Super Bowl he never won there, and remind yourself that Reid is 65 years old. That he is six years younger than Bill Belichick and seven years younger than Pete Carroll, both of whom were head coaches this season and, given their preference, would still be head coaches. That he has Patrick Mahomes, who takes the theory behind Reid’s offensive designs and play-calling strategy and brings it to life in a way no quarterback Reid has ever coached before could and no quarterback in the league now can. That Mahomes is just 28, that Reid and the Chiefs targeted him in the 2017 draft and traded up to get him and changed the NFL — and the narrative about Reid’s career — when they did.

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“I believe he’s the best coach of all time,” Mahomes said. “I know he didn’t have the trophies yet, and I have a lot of respect for some of those great coaches, but the way he’s able to navigate every single team he has, continue to have success no matter where he’s at …

“He brings out the best of me because he lets me be me. I think that’s important. He doesn’t try to make me anyone else. I don’t think I’d be the quarterback that I am if I didn’t have Coach Reid being my head coach.”

That’s the aspect of all this — of Reid’s evolution from a coach who couldn’t win the big one to a coach who now seems at his best in January and February, when the games matter most — that is so difficult for so many to understand and accept.

It’s easy to credit Mahomes completely for Reid’s success in Kansas City. It’s so easy to dismiss Reid as a guy who was a generally good coach with the Eagles but choked in the highest-pressure moments, who now has a quarterback wondrous enough to bail him out. Except Mahomes himself and the track records of a few other immortals put the lie to that notion.

Don Shula had Dan Marino for 13 years. The two of them never won a Super Bowl; hell, they made it to only one. Does that mean Shula wasn’t great? Belichick has six championships with Tom Brady and a losing record without him. Did Brady’s presence somehow make Belichick a dumber defensive mind?

Isn’t it possible that Mahomes is better for Reid than he would have been had he ended up in any other organization, playing under any other coach? And isn’t it possible that Reid is a better coach now than he was with the Eagles — that he can handle a situation like Sunday’s, his team down by a touchdown at halftime to an opponent with more talent up and down its roster than his team’s, better than he once did?

“We were right there,” Reid said. “When you’re in the Super Bowl and down by seven points, it feels like 20. You’ve got to just kind of calm it down. ‘We’re right there. We’re getting the ball to start the second half. Everybody just hang with each other, and good things can happen.’ ”

The best of things happened to Reid and the Chiefs on Sunday night, and the rest of the NFL ought to be worried and wondering how anyone is going to stop them from extending this run of dominance. Kansas City was 9-6 with two games left in the regular season and pretty much presumed dead. Mahomes’ receivers couldn’t catch his passes, and Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen were playing like MVP candidates, and the Chiefs already had burped up games to lousy teams, losing to the Broncos and the Raiders, allowing Nick Sirianni to taunt their fans after the Eagles pulled off a now-inexplicable victory at Arrowhead Stadium in mid-November.

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If there was ever a year that a team would bounce the Chiefs out of the playoffs, this seemed like the year. Yet they beat, in succession, the Dolphins, the Bills (on the road), the Ravens (on the road), and the 49ers (who were favored). The time to stop them from becoming what they clearly are — a dynasty — was now, and no one could do it.

“I got asked so many times about a ‘dynasty,’ ” Reid said. “I don’t know what a dynasty is. You have the thesaurus. You can figure it out. It’s a great win because I know how hard it is to do, and I know how hard the season was, the ups and downs.”

Sounds like he’ll be back for more next season, too. And the season after that, at least. Rumors that he might retire have swirled for a while, but Reid has two years left on his contract. “Why would he retire when he’s having so much fun, right?” his wife, Tammy, said. And when asked point-blank whether he’ll return, he said: “Yeah, sure. I’m mad at Belichick and Pete because now I get asked all of those questions.”

Pause there, and consider how much longer Andy Reid — with 258 regular-season victories, with three Super Bowl rings and a .620 winning percentage in the postseason, with Patrick Mahomes — might keep doing this. He’s already an all-timer now. How much better can his career be?