Andy Reid’s Redemption: Chiefs’ Coach Seeks Three-Peat Against Team That Fired Him
As the Kansas City Chiefs prepare for their third straight Super Bowl, they are facing a familiar foe. The Philadelphia Eagles are the same team that the Chiefs beat just two years ago when they started their attempt for a three-peat (of course, they didn’t know then).
Last month when I ranked potential Super Bowl rematches for the Chiefs, the Eagles were number one. My criteria then was based on how likely I thought the Chiefs were to beat specific opponents in a rematch. And I was right. The Eagles probably are the most difficult matchup and that’s why they find themselves in the Super Bowl once again.
That level of difficulty is what will make victory that much sweeter. But the opponents themselves, if defeated, could form something of a gridiron poem for one man in particular: Andy Reid.
What do I mean by this? Most people know that Reid was the head coach of the Eagles before becoming the head coach of the Chiefs. In fact, he is the only coach in NFL history to be the winningest coach for two different franchises. That’s how good Reid was with the Eagles, and yet they fired him.
This was a storyline two years ago, too. It seemed like justice that Andy was able to get revenge on his former team while hoisting a second Lombardi. But now we’ve come to a greater opportunity.
Andy Reid and the Chiefs could make history by becoming the first team in NFL history to win three straight Super Bowls. The team that would be on the beginning and end of that three-peat? The Philadelphia Eagles. The symmetry is unmistakable. The team Andy started with was beaten by the team he finished with, both beginning history and ending it.
How embarrassing would that be for Philly? Of course, they’ll say they won a Super Bowl after Reid left, and that is true. But in the grand scheme of things, would anyone really say that between the Eagles and Chiefs, the Eagles came out on the better end of things? Absolutely not.
And so that’s what makes victory in this particular game, against this particular opponent, in this particular series of events, all the more symbolic and all the more poetic.
