Kansas City head coach Andy Reid has built quite the coaching tree over the years. One of Reid’s most prominent pupils is current Washington head coach Ron Rivera.
After a standout NFL playing career, Rivera left the game for a few years before breaking into coaching with the Chicago Bears in 1997 as a quality-control coach.
After two years in that role, Reid, the new head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, gave Rivera his first full-time NFL coaching job as linebackers coach. It’s a time Rivera remembered fondly this week.
“I thought he was positive,” Reid said, per John Dillon of Chiefs Wire. “He had a great relationship with his players. He had a great relationship with Jim Johnson. He trusted him, and that was kind of Jim’s position that he was coaching; Jim’s position of choice was that linebacker’s spot.”
Rivera is referring to the legendary Jim Johnson, his former defensive coordinator for 10 seasons with the Eagles.
“I think Jim was a great teacher to him, but also, Jim had a lot of respect for him. You had a feeling he was going to be a good coordinator, and you had a feeling if he got a chance to be a head coach, he’d be a good head coach.”
Rivera did get his chance to be a head coach in 2011 with the Carolina Panthers, where he spent nine seasons, leading Carolina to one Super Bowl appearance. Rivera was fired late in the 2019 season, and it didn’t take long for Washington to hire him as its next head coach.
Reid and Rivera have faced off before, but this is the first meeting since Rivera came to Washington.
Reid discussed Washington’s team:
Well, they kind of know what you’re going to do and you kind of know what they’re going to do, Reid explained. “So, you try to have a couple of creative things for him, but most of all, it’s going to come down to fundamental technique and so on as you go through it. Ron’s got a good football team, so we’ve got to make sure we have a good week of preparation as we get ready for them.
The Chiefs shouldn’t have a problem defeating Washington on Sunday. Washington’s defense has been the “get-right” game for a few quarterbacks this season, and Patrick Mahomes may be the latest quarterback to have a massive game against the WFT defense.