Andy Reid has a good shot at winning NFL’s Coach of the Year

A panel of 13 voters believes that Andy Reid is the Coach of the Year for the job he’s done leading the Kansas City Chiefs to the AFC’s No. 1 seed.

A vote of 13 panelists over at Sports Illustrated and Monday Morning Quarterback has given way to a nice rundown of this season’s award winners—from assistant coach of the year to comeback player of the year and all of the obvious titles.

There’s been a lot of awards talk these days in Chiefs Kingdom and it’s all been centered on one figure: Patrick Mahomes. Given his entry into the rare 50/5,000 club (touchdowns and yards) as a passer, it seems like a foregone conclusion that Mahomes would earn the NFL’s Most Valuable Player Award in 2018. Then again, a nostalgic pull toward Drew Brees is clouding some minds.

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But what about another award entirely? Chris Jones deserves consideration for Defensive Player of the Year, but even he would likely admit Aaron Donald is still in his own class—at least for this season. The idea of Eric Berry as Comeback candidate sounds good and has been done before, but a player actually has to, y’know, come back for that one.

For Coach of the Year, most of the national talk has been about Matt Nagy of the Chicago Bears, Frank Reich of the Indianapolis Colts, Sean McVay of the L.A. Rams or Sean Payton of the New Orleans Saints. Each has done a remarkable job this year, but each is also listed behind Andy Reid of the Kansas City Chiefs in SI’s new panel.

The sight of Reid atop the coaching ranks came as a big surprise, at least to me, given that Reid’s name has been missing entirely from any real conversation around the award. Yet here it seems like Reid receiving the honor isn’t such a far-fetched idea considering he outpaced every other coach in the voting. Reid received five first-place awards among the 13 voters and the rest were scattered (Nagy had 3, Pete Carroll had 2 and several had 1).

Reid has done an incredible job installing Mahomes into a complicated offense and the transition has been seamless from “gunslinging” rookie to franchise face. Much of that credit belongs to the quarterback himself, but Reid has certainly done his part to ensure Mahomes’s success with his creative schemes and playcalling.

Sixteen years have passed since Reid won Coach of the Year from the Associated Press and it would go well with his