KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Andy Reid rarely digs into his own past, preferring to stay in the moment or focus squarely on the future. It’s an approach that has served him well during a coaching career that might someday land him in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Yet when his Kansas City Chiefs faced a seemingly insurmountable hole in the divisional round of the playoffs last weekend, Reid caught himself thinking back almost four decades to his final game as an offensive lineman at BYU. It was the Holiday Bowl and SMU had taken a 45-25 lead in the fourth quarter.
Just about everybody in San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium that night thought it was over – only to watch, stunned, as the Cougars scored three late touchdowns to win the game.
“That kind of stuck in there. You had that hope,” Reid said this past week when asked what gave him confidence Kansas City could rally to a 51-31 win over the Houston Texans for a spot in the AFC championship game. “You had that hope. Then it’s the feel of your team. You’re on the sideline, you’ve been down there long enough, you can sense what they’re thinking, where their mind is at. These guys weren’t flinching. Let’s get it right.”
The Chiefs (13-4) got everything right the rest of the way. And the comeback from a 24-0 deficit propelled them into a 3:05 p.m. EST matchup Sunday with the Tennessee Titans (11-7), who merely knocked off the New England Patriots – last season’s NFL champions – and the top-seeded Baltimore Ravens – both on the road, no less – to reach the precipice of the Super Bowl.