Kansas City Coach Andy Reid is almost certainly destined for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
He is fifth in career coaching wins (268) and second in playoff victories (21), behind only Bill Belichick (31). Reid is the only coach in N.F.L. history with at least 10 playoff victories for multiple teams — for Kansas City and for his old team, the Philadelphia Eagles, whom he faces on Sunday.
This is his fourth Super Bowl — he went once with the Eagles and twice with the Chiefs, winning in the 2019 season and losing in the 2020 season.
But his success in both cities has been accompanied by profound tragedy, for his family and for others.
Two of his sons, Britt and Garrett, became involved in drugs while in their early 20s and living with Reid and his wife, Tammy, in the Philadelphia area. On a single day in 2007, both were arrested on felony charges — Britt for pointing a handgun at a motorist, Garrett after he ran a red light while high on heroin and crashed his S.U.V. into a car, injuring a woman.
In 2012, Garrett Reid was found dead after a heroin overdose at the Eagles’ training camp at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa., where he was working with the team’s strength and conditioning staff. At the end of a lackluster 4-12 season, Andy Reid was fired by the Eagles.
Kansas City hired Andy Reid days later, and Britt Reid later joined his staff, rising ultimately to being the team’s linebackers coach.
But in November 2020, Britt Reid was involved in another road rage episode, though no charges were filed. Then, a few months later — just days before Kansas City was to face Tom Brady and Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl, Britt Reid was involved in a car crash.
Britt Reid had been drinking at the team’s facility, and as he drove on a highway’s on-ramp, his pickup truck rammed into two stopped cars and seriously injured a 5-year-old girl. The truck had reached 83.9 miles per hour shortly before the crash.
The effects were catastrophic: The girl sustained a traumatic brain injury.
In November, Reid was sentenced to three years in prison for one felony count of driving while intoxicated. His sentence was less than allowed by law, angering the family of the injured girl.
“My prayers and thoughts go out to everybody involved,” Andy Reid said in a news conference two months after the crash.
The team’s chief executive, Clark Hunt, said an investigation into Britt Reid’s consumption of alcohol “showed that there was no gathering of employees either at the practice facility or the stadium where alcohol was consumed.”
