Andy Reid is the NFL’s best coach — and wont win coach of the year honors – elcajon newson Elcajon News only

When evaluating an NFL head coach’s season, it takes guesswork.

So, please bear with me. I admit to some uncertainty, even as I assert that no NFL head coach had a better 2024 season than Andy Reid.

It’s an outlier opinion, to say the least.

The commander of the Chiefs, whose team went 15-1 and earned the AFC’s top seed, will not win the coach of the year award. He won’t land among the top three vote-getters. Big Red has no shot.

I guess that’s the price of having Patrick Mahomes as your quarterback. And that’s a price every NFL coach would be happy to pay.

But Mahomes’ greatness, by itself, isn’t leading voters miles away from Reid. Rather, in contrast to the been-there, done-that Chiefs, other coaches presided over sparkling seasons that produced fresh stories. Kevin O’Connell heads the list.

Who knew quarterback Sam Darnold could play so well for so long, as he has this year in leading the Vikings toward the playoffs?

A chunk of the credit has to go to O’Connell, the former San Diego State quarterback who’s in his third season as a head coach and offensive playcaller. He’d be a deserving coach of the year, for sure.

I suggest Reid’s performance is being overlooked. When it comes to the coaches who are supposed to win and do win, they become an afterthought, even though a coach has a big say in almost every aspect of the operation, if not always directly through the coaches he hires and the players he retains.

In a league engineered to create competitive parity, it’s incredibly hard to maintain a winning edge. The Chiefs pulled it off in 15 of 16 games.

A Super Bowl run shortens recovery time for a whole franchise. Every opponent targets the defending champs – in the Chiefs’ case, a franchise coming off its second Super Bowl win in a row.

The parity-driven NFL punishes winningest teams — via the draft, the schedule and the salary cap.

In March, the Chiefs lost their best outside cornerback to the salary cap. They never found a comparable replacement. In April, they operated late in the draft order once again. Come May, we learned that NFL schedule makers stuck the Chiefs with an early bye week, which all coaches regard as the worst of the three options.

Injuries in August and September hammered the Chiefs’ offense, deleting the top two receivers and the top running back.

The season opener came against the Ravens, a rival for the AFC’s top seed. Lacking two offensive stars, forced to go with an overmatched rookie at left tackle, the Chiefs eked out the win.

AFC West games exposed the Chiefs to emerging threats: the Chargers had hired a great head coach in Jim Harbaugh; the Broncos were rising under Sean Payton, a Super Bowl-winning coach whose first Denver team whipped the Chiefs in 2023.

The Chiefs would squeeze out a 3-0 record in those games, beginning with the September contest in the Kroenke Dome.

In an October rematch of last winter’s Super Bowl, the NFL sent the Chiefs on the road opposite Kyle Shanahan’s 49ers.

The Chiefs won as a 1 1/2-point underdog. Postscript: you won’t see the Niners in the NFC playoffs, much less the Super Bowl.

Good luck benefited the Chiefs, no doubt. The Raiders fumbled away a chance at a winning kick. A referee’s failure to whistle defensive pass interference lifted the Chiefs in Atlanta.

But when it came to fumble recovery rate, which analytics experts say reflects considerable randomness, the Chiefs’ luck was mostly bad. They stand 30th, more than 20 percentage points behind the front-running Bills and Chargers.

The Chiefs could look inept or flat far more often than their 15-1 record suggests, but they also adapted within games better than their opponents. They developed a knack for complementary football. Reid calls the offense’s plays and has a big say in the game plan. Becoming one of the NFL’s leaders at ball control, the offense assistedSteve Spagnuolo’s defense, which went on to lead the NFL in fewest points allowed through the 16 games. Three Chiefs kickers booted a game-winner. The field-goal-defense team blocked the Broncos’ potential game-winning kick, via attention to detail lauded by Bill Belichick.

The biggest prize of the regular season is the conference’s top playoff seed, because it brings the only first-round playoff bye.

Sean McDermott’s Bills pushed the Chiefs hard for the top spot, beating Reid’s team and going 12-3. John Harbaugh’s Ravens came on late, after Mike Tomlin’s Steelers started out 10-3.

But by winning their past three games over a span of just 11 days, Reid’s Chiefs earned the bye. It was a big step toward challenging for an NFL-record third-consecutive Super Bowl victory.

All told, it was a terrific coaching performance, even as it hid in plain sight.