Another man who made the trek from Philadelphia to Kansas City said he had a simple piece of advice for Andy Reid, when he was still thinking about the Chiefs job.
“Go,” former Eagles and Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil said, via Randy Covitz of the Kansas City Star.
Vermeil said, prior to Reid agreeing to the deal earlier today, that he spoke with Reid regularly, and had nothing but positive things to say about his old town.
“He’s coached at the University of Missouri,” Vermeil said of Reid’s three-year stint as an assistant from 1989-91, “he’s been in middle America before and knows what the people are like. He knows how I feel about it. He’s been in that stadium. He kicked my rear . . . when we were ahead 18-0 . . . and he knows how the fans are there, and how that Arrowhead Stadium is when it’s full.
“And he knows the great respect and admiration people in the NFL have for the Hunt family, so why not go? There are no negatives.”
Well, there are some negatives.
They did just go 2-14, and they don’t have a quarterback. But to the eternally positive Vermeil, that is but a speed bump.
“You can’t have everything,” Vermeil said. “I’d rather have a great owner and no quarterback than a quarterback and not a great owner. They have a couple of quarterbacks [Matt Cassel and Brady Quinn] who have played well before, and maybe they’ll play well again. Sometimes schemes fit quarterbacks better than other schemes.
“This year took a guy out of college, for criminy sakes, [Nick Foles], a third-round draft choice, and he plays pretty darn well.”
Of course, Reid probably has words stronger than “criminy” when he thought about the Chiefs depth chart at the most important position.
And even if he doesn’t use the first pick in the draft on a quarterback, it’s the first thing he has to fix.