KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ The marriage is something like a football fairytale.
Mustachioed old line coach becomes preeminent quarterback master, proving his chops over two decades by building playoff teams with quarterbacks as different as Donovan McNabb, Jeff Garcia, Michael Vick and Alex Smith.
The old coach finds true love with a curly haired former baseball player, who throws behind his back in warmups and left-handed when he needs to and 50 yards downfield off-balance so regularly that it's hard to keep them straight.
A match made, quite literally, in Chiefs fans' dreams.
There is no question that each side is benefiting from the other. Andy Reid spent two decades working toward an offense like this. One that could score this many points, and alternate so viciously between intricate screens and unapologetic shots downfield. Nineteen years he spent racing with cars varying from Accords to Corvettes. Now he has a Lambo.
Patrick Mahomes is better off for it, too. He told friends before the draft that he thought and hoped the Chiefs would select him.
Please come up with a better way to start a career: spend a year backing up a friendly and abnormally smart veteran, then become the starter with the league's best tight end to attack the middle, fastest receiver to make that arm pop, and among the most innovative coaches to make it all work together.
So, yeah. This is marital bliss.
But which is the better half?
"Quarterbacks are either the victim or beneficiary of the people who coach them, and Mahomes is the beneficiary," said Dick Vermeil, the former Chiefs coach and a longtime friend of Reid's.
"I lean toward most of it being the player," said Dan Orlovsky, a former 12-year NFL quarterback and now an analyst for ESPN.
"I'm a big, big, big _ and you can put that in bold letters _ big believer in coaching," said Ron Jaworski, the former Chiefs and Eagles quarterback and longtime analyst.
Let's debate!
