National Football League

Chiefs HC Andy Reid says reaction to Super Bowl incident with Travis Kelce 'overblown'

Published Mar. 7, 2024 8:13 p.m. ET

Andy Reid does have one regret about the Chiefs' rollercoaster 2023 season that ended in Kansas City, becoming the first team to repeat as Super Bowl champions in nearly 20 years.

Reid told Colin Cowherd on Thursday's edition of "The Herd" that when Travis Kelce infamously bumped him in a sideline confrontation during the Chiefs' 25-22 overtime win over the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl, he should have swung at the star tight end.

Did the media overanalyze the Kelce sideline squabble with Reid?

"I didn't see him coming, or I would have forearm ripped him," Reid said. "But he got me."

Reid was, of course, joking. He has repeatedly insisted that his and Kelce's altercation did no long-term damage to their relationship even as a remorseful Kelce has publicly taken responsibility for the incident. Reid doubled down on that stance Thursday, agreeing with Cowherd's opinion that the outside reaction to his and Kelce's dustup was "overblown."

"I love his passion," Reid said. "He's always telling me, ‘Fire me up!’ and so I'm hard on him. He's like one of my kids. I try to stay on top of him and make sure that he's right, because he's the personality of our team. As great a leader as Patrick [Mahomes] is, everybody follows Kelc'. When he's fired up, everybody follows along in that. Listen, do things get a little crazy? Yeah, they get a little crazy. But that's why the job's so great. His job's great. My job's great. We're not getting put in the back of a police car for arguing with each other. That's not what's happening."

Thanks in large part to Mahomes and Kelce, Reid is now a three-time Super Bowl champion, cementing his status as one of the greatest head coaches — especially offensive-minded head coaches — in football history. Reid is notorious for coming up with new play designs from everywhere, from a replay of a mid-20th-century college football game to the Pop Warner youth football level.

"If it looks good, we'll try it," Reid said. "I've got great coaches and creative guys. I've got these young guys that have great minds. And so they put things together, they know they've got the full form to draw from. ‘Let’s try it. Who says it's impossible?' And then Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and these guys on the offensive side, they'll donate a play here and there, they've got great minds. So all in all, everybody gets a little piece of the pie and feels pretty good about it, and we try to go out and execute it at Mach speed."

Mahomes and Kelce were also two of the biggest reasons why Reid said he never wavered in his belief the Chiefs could repeat as Super Bowl champions even when Kansas City's usually-powerful offense sputtered several times during the 2023 regular season. Reid even took a moment to troll two analysts who doubted the Chiefs during the season — Cowherd and his co-host Jason McIntyre.

"You're letting Jason influence you, man," Reid told Cowherd. "After this conversation, he's gonna put some red on and jump on the bandwagon. … [When] you're a quarterback, that sweet zone for you is inside those numbers, and we've got one of the best that's ever done it when it counts with Kelce. Kelce has always had a ‘Sundance’ next to him, right? So with the Butch Cassidy-Sundance analogy here, he's always had that guy to work with, and that's so important for working inside those numbers. It's a happy zone for quarterbacks. And then you've got to get two guys that can play outside those numbers. … People were going, ‘Kelce’s over the hill.' No, we just needed Rashee [Rice] to keep growing, and he was so willing to do that, and Patrick was so willing to work with him and never got frustrated with him or anyone else, and it worked out.

"We all had hope, we just needed to keep growing. And we saw it the year before with our defense, our secondary was a bunch of young guys, and they just kept getting better and better and by the time we got to the playoffs, we were rolling."

The Chiefs have plenty of well-earned confidence heading into 2024, so much so that several players have already publicly talked about the idea of a three-peat. Reid is not leaning into that discourse, however.

"That's not where I'm at," Reid said. "Our guys might think about it, or whoever [else], that's not how I think. I think about it very simply of, ‘Make sure that you’re ready to go.' When we get to training camp, nothing's going to change there. We're gonna go through a process. It's not necessarily easy, but it'll build a foundation. And then let's work after that to get ourselves ready for the games. … Let's take [our players'] talents and maximize them, and we'll work on those things that maybe they're not quite as good at and try to get them better there, and let's roll. Let's see what we can do."

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