Andy Reid never would have won three Super Bowls with the Eagles

Andy Reid just won his second straight Super Bowl and his third in five years. He is the best coach in the NFL, and he’s one of the best coaches in NFL history.

But the assumption that Andy Reid would be the best coach in the NFL had he remained in Philadelphia is flawed, foolish, and naive.

That’s partly because the main reason Andy Reid currently is considered the best coach in the NFL is that Patrick Mahomes is the best quarterback in NFL history. The assumption that Patrick Mahomes would be a Philadelphia Eagle and be the best quarterback in NFL history is flawed, foolish, and naive.

I’ve spent a lot of time with Andy Reid since I met him and his family 25 years ago. I’ve shared a hairdresser and an Italian restaurant and a barbecue joint with him. I’ve also spent a lot of time with the Chiefs over Reid’s 11 years as Kansas City’s head coach. He’s a very different person today than when he left more than a decade ago. He’s a very different person because he left over a decade ago.

He has matured as a coach. He has surrendered both play-calling and his ego. I’m happy for him, and for his staff, and I think that what he’s accomplished is good for the sport. Dynasties drive interest.

But over the past 11 years I have been told several times by several people who are so close to Reid that they can hear his knees creak that his move to Kansas City in 2013 saved not only his career, it might have saved his life.

Asked whether Reid would have won one Super Bowl in Philly, much less three, one staff member who was with Reid in both Philadelphia and Kansas City replied:

“My opinion? Probably not. He’s a lot different now. A lot better.”

A lot better in a lot of ways.

» READ MORE: Super Bowl LVIII showed again that Andy Reid is an all-time great coach. How much better can he get?

Reid buried his eldest son, Garrett, during training camp in 2012. Garrett died of a heroin overdose. He died in a rented dorm room at Lehigh University. He was in the team’s quarters because he was employed by the team as an assistant strength coach. He was an assistant strength coach who had steroids in his dorm room.

There should have been some sort of league discipline. This was the cloud under which Reid coached the Eagles to a 4-12 record in 2012.

There were other factors that led to the Eagles losing 75% of their games. Chief among them was the absence of future Hall of Fame left tackle Jason Peters. Reid also made the bizarre decision to promote longtime offensive line coach Juan Castillo to defensive coordinator. These were happenstance and tactics. The real issues lay deeper.

» READ MORE: Garrett Reid’s death at training camp at Lehigh forever altered the Eagles

Garrett Reid’s death further destabilized an already unstable home life. Garrett and his younger brother Britt had been to jail. The younger children suffered for that. As the losses mounted and the stresses increased, Andy Reid’s already unhealthy lifestyle was eroding his health.

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie last year told the Washington Post:

“I just think the best thing for Andy at the time — and I think his family probably thought the best thing for Andy at the time — was to have a different environment for his family.”

More pragmatically, Reid’s rock-solid relationship with owner Lurie was beginning to teeter. Reid had assumed power over personnel and, after a series of draft mistakes, Lurie considered Howie Roseman, the protégé of former president Joe Banner, ready to handle general manager duties.

Reid’s time in Philly had expired. Everyone needed to move on. Moving to the Midwest, to a city that has no basketball or hockey and whose baseball team hasn’t seen a winning record in nine years — this was the perfect elixir. In the heartland, football reigns, Reid is king, and the Hunt ownership family has patience. They needed it.

Had Reid stayed in Philly, he would have continued to lose. His replacement, Chip Kelly, lucked into a withered NFC East that in 2013 produced one team with a winning record — the Eagles, led by DeSean Jackson, LeSean McCoy, an elite offensive line, and prime Fletcher Cox — but that team went 6-9 two years later and Kelly never won a playoff game. There’s no reason to think Reid would have won any, either; he hadn’t won any for the previous three seasons. If you think Lurie would have endured Reid for seven seasons with zero playoff wins, then you’re either foolish, naive, or both.

Don’t forget that Reid needed time to succeed in K.C. In his first year the team raced to a 9-0 start but lost six of its next eight games, including a first-round playoff exit. In fact, Reid won just one playoff game in his first five seasons in Kansas City. That included a home wild-card loss to the Titans after the 2017 season, as his former quarterback, Doug Pederson, led the Eagles to the NFC’s No. 1 seed and beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

He’d left a legacy of clock mismanagement in his wake. Poor late-game decisions and strategies helped the Chiefs lose in the postseason after 2015 and 2016, and such decisions are the lasting memory of the Eagles’ Super Bowl loss after the 2004 season. Things got so bad that the Chiefs fired general manager John Dorsey in the summer of 2017 and replaced him with Brett Veach, Reid’s former personal assistant.

» READ MORE: Is Jalen Hurts the next Patrick Mahomes or the next Lamar Jackson for the Eagles?

But help was on the way. The loss to the Titans was the last playoff game the Chiefs would play without Patrick Mahomes.

The Chiefs lost to Tennessee on Jan. 6, 2018. Twenty-four days later, they agreed to trade two-time Pro Bowl quarterback Alex Smith to Washington. Smith, then 33, led the NFL in passer rating in 2017. It was his best season.

Reid knew he had a still better horse in the stable. He’d traded up in 2017 to draft Mahomes, a gunslinger out of Texas Tech with unique talents and superb bloodlines but an unpolished game. Reid polished him.

There has never been a flavor of NFL player quite like the Mahomes blend: He’s big enough to see everything, strong enough to shed tacklers, fast enough to outrun tacklers, smart enough to diagnose defenses, innovative in his delivery of the ball, resolute in the face of defeat, the owner of one of the stronger arms in the league, supremely confident, and willing to risk a loss to earn a win.

And he never would have been an Eagle.

Assuming events unfolded under Reid similarly as they unfolded under Kelly — moving from quarterback Michael Vick to Nick Foles to Sam Bradford — the Eagles almost assuredly would have needed a quarterback of the future in 2016. Reid almost assuredly would have drafted Carson Wentz. That’s because Wentz possesses nearly all of the physical traits Mahomes has.

As such, with Ginger Jesus already leading the Philly flock, surely someone besides Andy Reid would have drafted Mahomes.

And, just as surely, someone besides Andy Reid would be considered the best coach in the NFL.