After learning from Andy Reid, Matt Nagy gets to ‘cherish’ Super Bowl

PHOENIX — As a former head coach, Matt Nagy paid attention to Andy Reid, his Chiefs boss, in the two weeks leading up to the team’s 38-35 Super Bowl victory against the Eagles. He knows how hard it is to be in charge — Nagy coached the Bears from 2018 to ’21 — and wanted to see how Reid handled the biggest game in football.

“I was able for the last two weeks to watch coach Reid and how he dealt with the day-to-day process of Super Bowl preparation,” the Chiefs’ quarterbacks coach said about an hour after the game. “Sometimes you want to do too much. You can stress out. But we just kept it kind of right here the whole time.”

He held his hand flat.

“I looked at it from the head-coaching perspective all week long,” he said. “Every meeting, every practice, what we did. And now we get to just cherish it.”

Maybe someday, Nagy will get a chance to be a head coach again. Maybe it will be with the Chiefs. Reid, though, said Monday he has no interest in retiring.

“I’m enjoying what I’m doing, and I’ve got this guy over here who’s a pretty good player,” he said, pointing to quarterback Patrick Mahomes.

Mahomes, who won the MVP and Super Bowl MVP, joked Monday that he’ll “keep the big guy around a couple more years.”

“If Andy Reid’s coaching us, we’re always going to have a chance,” Mahomes said.

Nagy still could be up for a promotion. Offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy’s contract expired after the game. With only the Cardinals undecided on their next head coach, he’s expected to interview for coordinator jobs elsewhere.

If he moves on, Nagy likely would become the favorite to take over the coordinator job.

“Eric Bieniemy’s been tremendous for us, and I thinks he’s tremendous for the National Football League,” Reid said. “I’m hoping he has an opportunity to go somewhere and do his thing, where he can run the show and be Eric Bieniemy.”

When the game ended, Nagy took a moment for himself — “I just stared at the sky,” he said — before celebrating.

“We felt like we were getting to that point [of reaching the Super Bowl], and then I left to go to Chicago,” he said. “We tried to build that culture back up and get winning in that program over [in Chicago].”

It didn’t work out. Nagy’s return to the Chiefs did.

This and that

Mahomes said his right high ankle sprain will be fine by offseason training activities, though he joked it would hurt his golf game the most because it needs rest.

• In detailing his offseason, Mahomes promoted a big late-April weekend for his home city: “The draft is in Kansas City,” he said. The Bears have the first pick.

• State Farm Stadium’s slippery turf, which took two years to grow, is Tahoma 31 Bermuda grass, which is the same variety that Soldier Field switched to for the 2022 season.

“It was the worst field that I’ve ever played on,” Eagles edge rusher Haason Reddick said.