Since winning his first Super Bowl four years ago, Andy Reid has had to field questions about his eventual retirement. He’s batted away those questions this week in Las Vegas ahead of Super Bowl LVIII.
But what if, instead of a retirement after the game, the longtime head coach gets an extension?
Sources tell CBS Sports an extension is more likely than retirement heading into Reid’s fifth Super Bowl appearance. Reid, one of the winningest coaches of all time, is in line to get a raise almost no matter the outcome of Sunday night’s game. He signed a six-year extension after his first Super Bowl victory four years ago, and he has two years left on his current deal.
Multiple sources have noted how underpaid Reid is. He makes close to $12 million per year, which ranks him around 10th in the league among all head coaches. A win Sunday would give him his third Lombardi when the other 31 active head coaches have a combined six.
And with the recent additions of Sean Payton and Jim Harbaugh to the AFC West, Reid is now the third-highest-paid coach in his own division, more than $5 million per year less than those two.
“He’s not retiring,” one source said. “He’s not paid what he should be getting paid. Problem with the whole organization. Pay has not been what it should be all the way top to bottom.”
The Chiefs are, in a way, a victim of their own success. Because they are able to win like no other franchise in the league today, there’s a thought that what they have is enough.
(Super Bowl LVIII will be broadcast on CBS and Nickelodeon and you can stream it on Paramount+; here’s how to watch)
In reality, Kansas City has some of the smallest analytics and sports sciences departments in the entire league. An NFL Players Association survey among players last year ranked the Chiefs 29th out of 32 when it came to categories like weight room, training room and team travel.
The Chiefs couldn’t watch the Bills-Dolphins game while in the air in Week 18 because the plane didn’t get the channel. Kansas City wound up playing Miami a week later in the playoffs. In a hot summer practice last year, the Chiefs couldn’t even use their indoor facility because there was no air conditioning.
When the Chiefs got to the Raiders facility for practice this week, everyone on the staff saw the difference in the teams’ facilities. Reid couldn’t help himself from complimenting his divisional rival — and perhaps send his own message to the bosses.
“They did this the right way,” Reid said of the Raiders’ facilities in Wednesday’s pool report. “It’s roomy. They’re not going to outgrow it in a year or two.
“I never thought I’d be practicing here. I’m not sure that they’re the happiest about it. We’re trying to take as good a care of it as we possibly can. We respect what they’ve got here. This is beautiful.”
It has been difficult to retain staff as well. Running backs coach Greg Lewis had been there from 2017 through the 2022 season, but the Ravens offered him a deal the Chiefs couldn’t match and he went to Baltimore as their wide receivers coach. Brandt Tilis, a key member of the team’s front office staff, multiplied his pay many times over to go to Carolina this offseason, sources say.
“This is what bothers Andy,” a source said. “You get worn out. You’re fighting for nickels and dimes to hold it all together.”
Reid hasn’t officially said he will return in 2024, but all signs and indications are that he will. Chiefs sources say there have been no discussions about succession planning. One source recalled surprise nearly two months ago throughout the organization when there was a report Reid could retire at the end of the year.
“The thought of Andy retiring is discussed often internally. With [Nick] Saban [retiring] and [Bill] Belichick it’s natural to think about,” one source said. “He hasn’t expressed that to anyone. Not on the radar.”
Reid will be 66 in March. He’s the oldest coach in the league with Belichick and Pete Carroll out. Ravens coach John Harbaugh is the second-oldest coach in the league at 61. Reid is one of six coaches who is at least 60 years old.
He has the second-most playoff wins of all time behind only Belichick. A combined record of 283-160-1, he’s fourth all time in total wins behind Don Shula, Belichick and George Halas.
He’s never had a losing season with Kansas City, and he’s gone to the playoffs in all but one season with the Chiefs.
In 2017 coming off a postseason appearance with Alex Smith as his quarterback, Reid decided to move up to No. 10 in the NFL Draft to take Patrick Mahomes. Smith would start that season and set career highs in passing yards and passing touchdowns, but the Chiefs moved on from Smith in the offseason to hand the team over to Mahomes.
They’ve advanced to the final four of the NFL’s postseason in every year since.
Reid finally got the Lombardi in the 2019 season, winning Super Bowl LIV in South Florida with a fourth-quarter rally to beat the 49ers 31-20. That cemented his place in Canton, and another Lombardi last year proved to be icing.
Before Reid arrived in Kansas City, the Chiefs had an all-time playoff record of 8-14. It’s now at 23-21.
The Hunt family founded the Chiefs in 1959, and today Clark Hunt serves as the team’s CEO. Like most family-owned NFL teams, most of Hunt’s money is tied up in the team and not liquid. One thing the NFL league office is considering is allowing institutional money to buy pieces of teams to give owners like Hunt an infusion of cash when needed.
The Chiefs are valued at $4.3 billion, according to Forbes, which is more than double the 2018 valuation of $2.1 billion. But Hunt can’t tap into that. Still the Chiefs would have gotten $610 million in national revenue in 2022, which doesn’t account for what the organization would have brought in locally, minus all expenses.
As many sources have noted, as long as Reid still wants to coach, why would he leave? Mahomes, 28, is under contract there through his age-36 season and isn’t going anywhere.
There’s no contract for life in the NFL, and we just saw that play out in New England. But conversations should take place this offseason between Reid and the Chiefs about how much longer — and for how much — he wants to keep coaching.
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Author: Jonathan Jones
February 11, 2024 | 1:15 pm
