Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt’s not ready to predict a Super Bowl, but he is clearly excited about the prospects for his team.
And much of that optimism stems from the excitement he sees from coach Andy Reid.
While it would be too easy to retell the burned-out Philadelphia coach comes to placid Kansas City for mental health and football story, Hunt said he does see a new energy from Reid. The new coach is more hands-on in practice, stopping segments to instruct if need be.
“One of the things he mentioned to me during our interview back in January was how excited he was to get back to coaching,” Hunt said, via Adam Teicher of the Kansas City Star. “He had worked his way out of coaching and had become a manager with the Eagles and he wanted to get back on the field and working primarily with the offense.
“It’s been fun to see him do that. Watching him on the field and watching him work with the players, I think that confidence is rubbing off on them.”
Stepping away from the Eagles job has to have been a degree of relief, as the expectations are lower — the Chiefs have been even worse than the Eagles were last year. But Reid’s trying to raise that level as well.
“Andy Reid put a standard on us when he first walked into the meeting room,” longtime linebacker Derrick Johnson said. “It’s to win a championship and it you’re playing for anything else, you’re not doing justice to the game.
“You never look at it as a rebuilding year. That’s college talk. You always reload.”
And Reid, apparently, has reloaded his tanks in the short time it took to get to the Midwest, which can only be good for him personally as well as the team he’s coaching.