Steve Young in awe of Andy Reid’s evolution toward another Super Bowl

PEBBLE BEACH – Steve Young still thinks pretty highly of his junior varsity coach back at BYU in 1980, when Young arrived as the Cougars’ eighth-string quarterback.

Actually, Young is more impressed by the year – and by each Super Bowl – as he watches that coach, Andy Reid, bedevil the Kansas City Chiefs’ opponents.

“As much as we talk about (Patrick) Mahomes – who is amazing, no question — I think we’ve got to equally talk about Andy,” Young said in an exclusive interview with this news organization ar the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. “(Reid) always comes up with something unique and different. And he keeps his players always on their toes, because he’s coming up with stuff all the time.”

Reid came away with his first Super Bowl ring five years ago when the Chiefs rallied past the 49ers, and now he can become the first coach in NFL history to win three straight Super Bowls, if the Chiefs prevail in New Orleans next Sunday against the Philadelphia Eagles, the franchise Reid held his first NFL head coaching job from 1999-2012.

Reid’s Chiefs beat the Eagles for the Lombardi Trophy two years ago. Last year’s title defense came with an overtime triumph over the 49ers, who gave up the decisive touchdown when Reid dialed up the “corndog” motion play he summoned for two touchdowns in that previous Super Bowl against the Eagles.

What makes the Chiefs so hard to beat, Young said, is “a combination” of factors, such as Reid and Mahomes in clutch situations, as well as an aggressive scheme by defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo that mirrors Reid’s offensive approach.

“The most remarkable thing, I’ve always known that Andy Reid reinvents himself every week,” Young, 63, said of his 66-year-old ex-BYU teammate. “When you do that, he is vulnerable, open to new ideas, and never stands pat. Have you ever noticed with the Chiefs, whatever they need a play in the pocket, something unique comes out?”

The Chiefs became the first back-to-back champion to, well, get back to the Super Bowl once they edged the Buffalo Bills 32-29 last Sunday. They did so with the help of one of Reid’s typically daring play calls in a big game: Samaje Perine clinched the win with a 17-yard catch-and-run out of the backfield in the final two minutes.

“They checked the play to Samaje. He hadn’t touched the ball the whole game and he seals it. That’s Andy,” said Alex Smith, Reid’s 2013-17 bridge to Mahomes as the Chiefs quarterback.

Young marvels at Reid’s humility to, at the peak of his coaching prowess, keep altering his approach. That aspect really dawned this past month on Young, a Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback who won the 49ers’ most recent Super Bowl 30 years ago,

Young is admittingly biased due to his 45-year relationship with Reid dating back to BYU.

Reid was a reserve tackle from 1978-80, and, in that final year, he helped coach Young’s dual-threat ability as a freshman on the Cougars’ junior varsity team. As Young worked his way up into the starting lineup in 1982, Reid officially made his coaching foray on LaVell Edwards’ staff as a graduate assistant.

Reid ended up at BYU when a knee injury in his Glendale Community College finale derailed his path to a Stanford scholarship. Reid eventually made it to the Bay Area, landing his first full-time job as San Francisco State’s offensive line coach for three seasons.

Now Reid is the fourth-winningest coach in NFL history, with 273 regular-season wins that trail only Don Shula (328), George Halas (318) and Bill Belichick (302).

Reid’s 28 postseason wins are the second-most behind Belichick’s 31. Reid racked up 10 playoff wins with the Eagles, whom he took to one Super Bowl (2004). Upon joining the Chiefs in 2013, he went 1-4 in the playoffs with Smith at quarterback, and 17-3 since then with Mahomes (who has one more playoff win than Joe Montana and trails only Tom Brady’s 35 playoff wins).

“It’s not just Pat. It’s the two of them in the fourth quarter, in key moments,” Young insisted. “Go back and watch those plays where they had to have it.

“… (Other coaches) get tighter and tighter and less innovative, and Andy’s innovative in the biggest games of the biggest moments. That’s the interesting thing,” Young added. “Most guys are not innovative. They get less innovative in the bigger moments. They tend not to get more innovative. He leans into that.”

Reid, appearing Wednesday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show,” said designing plays is the “fun part” of the job even this late in the season. He’s also been known to exhume historic calls, whether it’s from a decades-old Rose Bowl or, as was the case last Sunday, a running play that’s known in Chiefs’ lore as “65 Toss Power Trap.”

Reid didn’t take all the credit for the Chiefs’ offensive ingenuity.

“I’ve got these coaches here that have creative minds. They love doing it, and we get the players involved, too,” Reid told McAffed. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a lineman or a quarterback. If they’ve got something good, let’s put it out on the table and see what you’ve got. I’ve got 51 percent of the vote, but I’m still open-minded with it.”

Young’s leaning into the Chiefs winning a third straight Super Bowl, barring another playoff outburst from Eagles running back Saquon Barkley.

“The Eagles have a chance, obviously, if he runs for 250 yards,” Young said. “But other than that, I don’t know how you end up (winning). If you hang with the Chiefs, you get beat.

“You’ve got to do what the Commanders did to Detroit: You have to run them out of the building, right? And no one runs (the Chiefs) out of the building,” Young added. “No one’s innovative enough to run them out of the building. They hang, they hang, they hang.”

Conversely, the Chiefs aren’t prone to blowing out opponents. They won the past two Super Bowls with 3-point cushions; their 2019 team overcame a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to roll past the 49ers 31-20.

“They just hang and hang,” Young said, “and because they hang in those key moments, Andy has something and Pat has something together, you know.”