Andy Reid Just Might Be The Greatest Coach Of All Time
The Kansas City Chiefs have clearly established themselves as the power house team of the last decade; the next great dynasty in football. A lot of credit is bestowed upon transcendent quarterback Patrick Mahomes and rightly so. But there is one man who has engineered this team into one of the great powers in league history. That man is Andy Reid and while Reid is highly respected among the coaching ranks he is criminally underrated as an all-time coach. That ends today as I break down Andy Reid and his historical greatness.
To understand how great Andy Reid has been we have to remember just how bad the Chiefs were prior to his arrival. In the six years prior to reach showing up in Kansas City in 2013 the chiefs were 29 and 67, a 30.2 winning percentage with only one winning season and four seasons with 12 losses or more. In his first 10 years with the Chiefs Andy Reid didn't have a single losing season, going 117 and 45 with 12 playoff wins three Super Bowl appearances and two Super Bowl titles. Good coaches take bad teams and make them respectable. Great coaches take bad teams and make them solid. The all-time great coaches take bad teams and turn them elite. From Vince Lombardi to Bill Walsh to Bill Belichick and now Andy Reid.
But what Reid has done is even more impressive than what those all-time greats accomplished. Let's take a look. The Green Bay Packers already had Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr on the roster when Lombardi took over the Pack. Joe Montana joined the 49ers as part of Bill Walsh's first draft and we all know the Bill Belichick/Tom Brady story. Andy Reid has his own Hall of Fame quarterback in Patrick Mahomes of course but Mahomes didn't become the full-time starter until 2018. That means for the first five years of his tenure with the Chiefs Andy Reid was not starting an all-time great quarterback.
To really find a solid comparison between the four great head coaches let's see how Reid stacks up against Bill Walsh without Joe Montana in San Francisco, Bill Belichick without Tom Brady in New England, and finally let's see how Andy Reid did without Patrick Mahomes in Kansas City.
Bill Walsh went 17-23-1 without Montana. That's a winning percentage of .427. Bill Belichick went 43-44 without Brady that's a winning percentage of .494. Andy Reid without Patrick Mahomes went 53-29 that's an impressive winning percentage of .646.
To put it another way Bill Walsh was a mediocre coach without Montana. Bill Belichick is a solid coach without Tom Brady. Andy Reid on the Chiefs without Patrick Mahomes would have the 13th highest winning percentage of any coach all time.
I really think we should emphasize that even further. Andy Reid without Patrick Mahomes his all-time great quarterback is a Hall of Fame coach in his own right. Virtually every other all-time great coach without their all-time great quarterback is average to below average. We brought up Bill Belichick of course. We brought up Bill Walsh. Even Vince Lombardi has one season when he was the head coach of the Washington Redskins. when he was away from the Packers and Bart Starr they only won seven games. A little bit above average a little bit above .500 that year but nothing spectacular. Again, just like Belichick, right on average. How about Chuck Knoll with the Pittsburgh Steelers? He won four Super Bowls but without Terry Bradshaw it was a lot of average. How about Don Shula? Right now the winningest head coach in NFL history. Without Marino, without Griese, without Johnny Unitas if you look at Shula's time with the Colts, it’s a lot of average.
What we're seeing from Andy Reid hasn't been done before. This is uncharted territory. What Reid is able to do in terms of his schemes and the creative offensive strategies he comes up with and how he leads his men by putting them in positions to be successful has generated success outside of anything we've seen before without an all-time great quarterback. Andy Reid just might be the greatest coach of all time.