KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The only thing that matters is that 5-year-old child. That's all. Nothing else. Not the famous head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, or his son with a deep history of drug and alcohol abuse, the now-grown man who admitted to cops that he'd been drinking before he drove his truck into another family's worst nightmare.
Five years old, in the back seat of a car on a late-night emergency run to save a family member who'd run out of gas. Then in a blink, everything changes.
Five years old. What an age. They're fully away from the toddler stuff, but not all the way into the big-kid stuff, no matter how hard they try. They give glimpses of what they'll be in their 20s, and flashes of what they were in diapers. What an age.
That's what this story is. That's all that matters, and all that sticks in the mind.
A 5-year-old child is fighting for life.
This isn't about an unthinkable pre-Super Bowl news drop. This isn't about litigating Andy Reid's family, with one son, Garrett, who died of a heroin overdose in 2012, and now another — Britt, an assistant on the Chiefs' defensive staff — who made a stupid mistake and perhaps committed a criminal act.
That's the way this story is being consumed, of course: about Reid.
The worst parts of Andy Reid's family story have been told. He and his wife, Tammy, raised five children, and by all accounts they had an idyllic family life for years.
Britt's and Garrett's struggles became public on one outrageously bad day in 2007. While high on heroin, Garrett ran a red light and crashed into another vehicle, seriously injuring its driver. On the same day, across town, Britt pulled a gun during a road rage incident.
At their sentencing hearing in Pennsylvania, their home at the time, Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O'Neill called the Reid home "a drug emporium," and questioned Britt's claims that Andy and Tammy Reid did not know about their sons' drug use.
Addiction remains one of our society's most misunderstood tragedies. Doctors and researchers will tell you it is a sickness that cannot be cured, only treated and best addressed with the understanding that the fight is never over. Addiction can happen to any of us, and to any of our children.
This is where the Chiefs can come in. Where Reid needs to come in.
The team and man need to be fully transparent and honest. Britt admitted, according to a search warrant application cited by Kansas City TV station KSHB, to having "two or three drinks." Any cop will tell you that is usually code for "way too many drinks." Britt was close to the Chiefs' practice facility, and driving away, when the crash occurred. Did he sneak alcohol into the Chiefs' offices? Did anyone suspect anything?
This part should be fairly easy. NFL facilities have security and camera systems that rival those in banks.
The next part is a little more difficult, and where the team's transparency and honesty are required. Had Britt been experiencing particular struggles recently? If so, did his father or anyone else with the team know? Was Britt in treatment? A regular at meetings?
This is the important stuff. The hard stuff. More important than Sunday's Super Bowl, and harder than beating Tom Brady.
But it's only important because of that 5-year-old child and a family that must now be feeling unimaginable pain, among other emotions. All that matters right now is a small child, fighting for life.
The Reids' part of this can wait. Football is irrelevant here.
