Greatness can be a strange thing. The higher you climb, the easier it is to believe you’ve gone far enough. But the moment the hunger disappears, progress turns into stagnation. And Andy Reid knows that trap all too well! For the Kansas City Chiefs head coach, there is always another mountain to climb, and another detail to fix. That relentless mindset, however, was shaped long before football entered the picture.

His football mind and resilience were gifts he received from his parents: his mother, a doctor with an analytical mind, and his father, an artist. Reid carried both influences into football, blending science with creativity, and demanding toughness without favoritism. Star power earned no special treatment. Who Patrick Mahomes? Who Travis Kelce? The coach reiterated the same in a recent podcast episode.

“At times I’m gonna go after (players),” Reid said about his coaching philosophy on Coach2Coach with Jason Garrett. “I’ll go after Pat Mahomes, the best quarterback in football. ‘You have to be able to do this. I know you can. And I’ve seen you do it’, and that’s an example to the other guys.

“Chris Jones, as great as you are, Travis Kelce, as great as you are, there’s always room to be better. And to be great as a team, we’ve got to be able to do these things. And if you can do them, surely these other guys can who are trying to become as great as you.”

While the coach has always been that way, his desire to push his players further makes all the more sense after the way last season ended. After a 6-11 season, whispers, not the good kind, went on around the league.

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It made Reid fall back on the coaching philosophies he developed over the years, including his time with the Philadelphia Eagles. “Don’t Judge,” was one of his core values, though ironically, a coach is required to judge the skills of his players, which guy is good at what, and so on.

But Reid read between the lines and, through decades of experience with young men, tried to understand WHY a player would struggle with something. That’s partly the reason he was able to get through a young, hot-headed Travis Kelce.

The Kelce we know today was once a tight end who ran the wrong way, lined up incorrectly, and ignored instructions just because. He’d be late to meetings, too, conveniently dismissing the 8:30 a.m. instructions by Reid.

It goes without saying that Reid would snap at Kelce way too often back then. Years later, the player sees those moments differently. The lessons stuck, his career flourished, and by his own admission, he owes much of what he has become to coach Reid.

“He’s one of the best leaders of men I’ve ever seen in my life,” Kelce once said. “I owe my entire career to that guy and being able to kind of control how emotional I get. I just love him, man.”

Let us also talk about Patrick Mahomes for a moment. After all, his early career was much different than that of Kelce’s.

Mahomes was… unconventional, and Reid liked what he saw.

He was already bending the rules of conventional quarterbacking as a rookie. On the Chiefs’ practice field, he began experimenting with the no-look passes that would later become his identity.

His teammates still remember those early throws, and it even caught Reid off guard after Mahomes showed off his first no-look pass at training camp. The veteran coach could only stop and take in what he had witnessed.

And so, Reid has been an important figure in Mahomes’ life.

“I think if I’d have gone to some other places, I would’ve had to learn how to play the quarterback position a different way, and he just lets me play the quarterback position the way that I want to play it,” Mahomes said in 2023. “I think that’s what’s made me such a different type of quarterback in this league.”

Andy Reid wants his players to be the best!

For the Chiefs head coach, it isn’t about him putting his players down or opting for the hairdryer treatment, but rather it’s more about tapping into players and getting them to be better. And Reid believes that if he can make his star players give it their all, the rest of the team follows. 

Reid also spoke on how important it is to be able to push players in the right manner towards a common goal. 

“I think it’s important,” said Reid on ‘Coach2Coach with Jason Garrett’. “But I’m not a belittler. I’m a coach; I’m gonna try to give them things that help them become greater than they are.

“So, it’s not belittling because I think they’re trying to be great. They’re not doing things not to be great, but just a reminder: you’re as great as you are because you did this.”

While he is constantly pushing players to get better, the beauty of what coach Reid does is knowing when to put pressure on. Currently, all the talk surrounds Mahomes’ return from his ACL and LCL injury. 

It will be Reid and the team’s call when he returns to the gridiron. But the way things are currently looking, the star quarterback looks ready to return by Week 1.

Reid may push Mahomes when he needs to make him feel like he can get even better, but the ability to keep him game-hungry and yet protected is exactly why the Reid-Mahomes dynamic works so well.