LAKE LAS VEGAS – At his final media obligation until post-Super Bowl LVIII, Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid repeated denials that he is on the verge of retirement, win or lose to the San Francisco 49ers.
“Yeah, I haven’t gone there,” Reid, 65, said on Feb 8 at the team hotel. “I don’t think about that. I’m tied up in the game and trying to take care of that.
“I’m sure somewhere, I’ll know when that time is. It’s not today and it won’t be Sunday.”
If Reid does ride off into the sunset with a third Super Bowl win, Chiefs chairman and chief executive officer Clark Hunt and quarterback Patrick Mahomes would be caught off guard.
“I’m highly doubtful (Reid would retire),” Mahomes said. “It’d be very surprising to me.”
Hunt said the team have “no sense he is ready to hang it up” when discussing Reid’s future.
Mahomes, 28, believes having a team in their prime and perennially among contenders for the league’s most coveted trophies will be enough to keep Reid and others in the picture for longer than some expect.
Mahomes said earlier this week he could definitely envision playing into “(Tom) Brady range” or around 15 more seasons, which will put him into his 40s.
The draw for Mahomes is what he described again on Feb 8 as a brotherhood and like-mindedness among leaders that includes Reid.
“(Travis Kelce) wants to take every single rep at practice. He wants to be out there for every single play. When you see that mindset, this is a Hall of Fame tight end and he wants to be the guy working the hardest, it raises everybody’s standard,” Mahomes said.
Meanwhile, after seeing his teams snatch defeat from the jaws of victory on his two previous visits to the Super Bowl, Kyle Shanahan is hoping to strike it third time lucky in Las Vegas.
The 49ers head coach is back in the National Football League’s championship game once more, hoping to banish the ghosts of his previous agonising near-misses when his team take on the Chiefs on Feb 11.
In 2017, he was the offensive coordinator when the Atlanta Falcons blew a 28-3 lead to be reeled in by Brady and the New England Patriots, the biggest collapse in Super Bowl history.
Three years later, Shanahan came up short once more when his 49ers team squandered a double-digit advantage and conceded 21 unanswered fourth-quarter points in a 31-20 loss to Mahomes and Kansas City.
“I’ve been able to coach in two Super Bowls and both of them are heartbreaking,” Shanahan admitted.
“Those things last a while. But it’s all about getting back there again, and that’s what I’m excited for today.”
Shanahan, though, is well versed in disappointment. As a boy growing up in the 1980s, he saw his father Mike Shanahan, a coach with the Denver Broncos, lose in three Super Bowls.
Fortunately, his father’s coaching career ended in redemption.
He would go on to win two Super Bowls as head coach with the Broncos in 1998 and 1999, after winning his first ring as an assistant coach with the 49ers in 1995.
Shanahan hopes this weekend will see him following in his father’s footsteps for the right reasons. REUTERS, AFP
