Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reed is a future Hall of Famer and is considered one of the greatest offensive innovators in the history of the game. So how 100% by book West Coast Attack Coach became the mad scientist of play calls we know today?
Reds roots
Reid got his coaching chops as the tight end/offensive line coach for head coach Mike Holmgren when he was with the Green Bay Packers. Holmgren himself got his start in the NFL as the quarterbacks coach at San Francisco 49ers —Under Crime West Coast Godfather Bill Walsh.
Prior to his time in Green Bay (1983-1985), Reid was the offensive coordinator at San Francisco State University under longtime head coach Vic Rowen. Two years before Reid arrived at San Francisco State, Rowen had another young coach as his OC—you guessed it, Mike Holmgren.
While Walsh gets much of the credit for developing West Coast Offense during his time at Stanford, it was Rowen who gave two of the most influential offensive minds in NFL history their first chance at coaching.
In fact, Phil Ferrigno – one of the former Rowen players who coached at the high school level for 20 years and He was named the 2022 San Francisco 49ers PREP Coach of the Year He went so far as to say that he once heard Bill Walsh say that Rowen was one West Coast Inventors is a crime.
Everyone’s talking about West Coast crime. This is a crime Vic Roen. Bill Walsh said that when there was a testament to the great coaches alive. I was there.”
While Rowen may have been Reed’s first offensive influence, it was his time with the Packers that gave him the experience that helped him become the play-by-play caller he is today.
These Packers and 49ers picked teams easily spaced in the middle of the field – biding their time before tearing your heart out with a deep post as if they were… Wonderful ram In Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
When you watch these teams, one thing stands out – every shot is under center. all. bachelor. One. In my search for this article, I watched every shot powertwenty-fourth and thirty-first.
Super Bowl XXIV
1989 was Holmgren’s first season as offensive coordinator for the 49ers under George Seifert. Prior to 1989, Bill Walsh called plays himself. The game was a blast. The 49ers dominated Denver Broncosrolling to a 55–10 win, earning quarterback Joe Montana’s fourth and final Super Bowl ring.
Holmgren described a very balanced offense this game, as he required 44 passes for 144 yards, and 32 pass attempts for 317 yards. Despite throwing for five touchdowns, the majority of Montana’s passes smashed 10 yards or less in the air, counting on exposing space on the defensive secondary and increasing yards after catches.
This short passing attack, and success in the game on the ground, caused Broncos safety Steve Atwater to cheat near the line of scrimmage, getting burned on three deep play passes that led to touchdowns.
Focusing on YAC is something you can see in Reid’s attack today. Despite leading the league in assists in 2022, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes Rank 23 In the NFL in intended air yards per pass attempt (7.2 yd.) of Mahomes’ 5,250 yards, 2,850 of them came after catches.
Super Bowl XXXI
Seven years after he won a ring as offensive coordinator with San Francisco. Holmgren again returned to the Super Bowl as head coach of the Green Bay Packers – this would mark Reid’s first taste of Super Bowl glory as tight ends and assistant offensive line coach for Green Bay. The Packers easily won the game over Bill Parcells New England Patriots.
This game came back to 1989 again – Holmgren called a balanced game, ran the ball 36 times for 115 yards while passing 26 times for 246 yards and two touchdowns. With Brett Favre under center, West Coast Offense has worked as well in the Midwest as it has in California. On their first offensive play, Holmgren caught Patriots safety attorney Milloy sleeping in a high single and hit him over the top on another deep pattern to (later Kansas City Chiefs) Andre Rison.
Reed gets his shot
Despite not getting a job as an offensive coordinator in the NFL, Andy Reid was given a chance to be the club’s head coach. Philadelphia Eagles In 1999—Reid would attribute this to his preparation—he kept folders full of the things he learned from the coaches he worked with along the way. He used this knowledge to win over Eagles owner Jeffrey Lowery and general manager Tom Modrak.
In his first season as head coach, Reed assembled one of the greatest coaching staffs in history: hiring Leslie Frazier, Brad Childress, Juan Castillo, John Harbaugh, Sean McDermott, Ron Rivera, Pat Shurmur, and Steve Spagnolo—with Doug Pederson and Eric Bienemy also on his team. as players.
Reid took what he learned from Roen and Holmgren and implemented Philadelphia’s West Coast offense while playing to the strengths of rookie quarterback Donovan McNabb.
The Eagles lost 11 games in Reid’s first season with the team, but won their last two, entering the offseason on a high note. McNabb rewarded his coach on his sophomore campaign, helping Reed to an 11-win season in 2000.
Four years later, Reid rode the West Coast Offense to Super Bowl XXXIX to take on Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots. Recently while appearing on the Kelce Brothers New Heights Podcast, Reed said, “When I was at Philly and Green Bay, I went to three Super Bowls, two at Green Bay, one at Philly, and there was no quarterback on our team that I had the chance to do.” To train him, that was in the gun. Today, very few times it’s under center, maybe less than 50 percent. So, it’s evolved that way.”
This statement is not entirely true by Reid, the Eagles did run a few plays from the gun in Super Bowl XXIX – six to be exact.
Reed would go on to say that this game forced him to develop as a play-by-play caller, “When we lost the Super Bowl to the Patriots in Philly, we had to get in the gun with all the double entender things that were going on.”
The double gap attack puts pressure on the quarterback by sending two rushers to the middle between the guards and the center—because McNabb was under center, the distance between him and the pass attackers forced him to get the ball out of his hands before the play could develop. When you play outside the gun against this type of blitz, you have the space and time to hit your hot knocks and take advantage of the free space left by the attacking defenders.
In the next part of this series, we’ll fast forward a few years and see how Reed flipped the script and learned to embrace the shotgun formation.