Andy Reid: I Drifted Away From The Thing I Love Doing Most

Andy Reid has talked several times to Kansas City media about what went wrong in the last few years in Philadelphia. Yesterday, the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Zach Berman published an article with quotes from Reid talking about the end in Philadelphia.

Here are a handful of the quotes he gave to Berman, who was with Reid at the NFL’s Career Development Symposium at Penn’s Wharton School.

"“It also allowed me to . . . try to keep my personality in the room and do what I like doing,” Reid said. “I learned a lesson. I thought I stepped out for the right reasons. It probably wasn’t the right thing to do.”"

There is a repeating theme in Reid’s quotes to both the Kansas City and Philadelphia media: He wanted to get back to coaching. There is sometimes pressure – right or wrong – for coaches to live up to this standard set by Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells of being both a coach and general manager.

Sometimes it is about taking advantage of your strengths and knowing yourself as a person and coach. Reid touches on this a little later, but I think Reid lost sight of what made him so successful early in Philadelphia.

"“I took [myself] completely out, dealt more with personnel . . . stopped calling the plays, all those things,” Reid said.…“About a year ago, I found out what I wasn’t good at because [I was] out the door,” said Reid, now the Kansas City Chiefs coach. “I went back, and I looked at it, and . . . I drifted away from the thing I love doing most, and that was coaching.”"

It’s hard to coach when you’re not there to coach. And if you’re not extremely talented at roster building, well then…

"“I’m not saying [it was] the wrong way to go; we had a lot of success in Philadelphia,” Reid said. “But where I was in my career, this is what I want to do. And it worked out where I could actually do that.”"

Kansas City caught a break with Reid coming available at the same time they were in a front office transition. We talk a lot about how unfortunate the Chiefs were for missing out on an Andrew Luck or Jadeveon Clowney the year they end up with the number one overall pick, but maybe we should talk a little more about how fortunate the Chiefs were to have Reid and John Dorsey available to them in one offseason.