“Andy has an unparalleled ability to scheme guys open,” says Ray Didinger, who as a sports columnist in Philadelphia and then a producer for N.F.L. Films has followed Reid for a quarter century. “He can do it with great receivers, like he’s had in the past, or he can ride with pretty good receivers, which is all he had last year. I look back on that second half, and I think it was the greatest 30 minutes of his career.”
The N.F.L. playoffs begin this weekend, and the Chiefs, having won their division for a remarkable eighth straight time, are again among the favorites. Going into the final regular-season game, Reid’s team had the fourth-best odds at one major sportsbook to win the Super Bowl — 14 of the 32 teams make the playoffs — and it didn’t look as if the Chiefs would have to face a dominant opponent before the A.F.C. title game. But by their high standards, they have had an up-and-down year, primarily because their receivers drop too many passes (they lead the league in that dubious category) and too often run the wrong routes. If Reid can get this group of not-so-great pass catchers to the Super Bowl, it would be his fourth trip in five years and might be an even greater achievement than that second half last year.
Every Super Bowl-winning season kicks off during the preceding summer. One Sunday last July, Reid rose before dawn on the college campus where his team was gathered to prepare for the season, a dorm at Missouri Western State University: Scanlon Hall, to be exact, a freshman residence with tiny rooms, shared bathrooms and walls made of cinder block. His players — the nearly-$60-million-a-year quarterback Patrick Mahomes, the star tight end (and Taylor Swift boyfriend) Travis Kelce and all the rest of their teammates — were bunked in the same dormitory, though surely still snoozing in their own 11-by-14-foot quarters. In a modest concession to comfort, the team had trucked in king-size beds from a local Rent-a-Center. Jawaan Taylor, a 330-pound offensive lineman, told me that he found the setup tolerable enough. “But you’ve got to make sure you put that mattress pad on.” Reid, whose quarters were on the first floor, does not care much about sleep and gets only about three hours a night, if that. “It’s not something I like to brag on,” he told me. The index cards he always keeps with him spent the nights within easy reach because he never knows when he’ll think of a new play and want to draw it up. I wondered if plays ever come to him in his dreams. “I don’t sleep enough to dream,” he said.
Practice that July morning began at 9:15. After the players stretched and went through some preliminary drills, Reid, who is 65, took his place about 10 yards behind where his offense was running plays against the team’s defense. Hands on hips, he was tilted forward in intense concentration. He recorded the result of every play on a sheet of paper. Whenever the offense advanced, he lumbered forward with the players, taking short steps while his arms and upper body seemed not to move at all. Reid is a large man. The stories about him often tend to be about his prodigious eating. While trying to land his first N.F.L. head-coaching job, in 1999 with the Eagles, the team’s owner, Jeffrey Lurie, took him to a steakhouse for dinner. When the server asked him if he preferred the rib-eye, the New York strip or the filet mignon, Reid ordered all three.
