Had it not been for former Packers HC Mike Holmgren, Andy Reid may have remained a college football coach his entire career. Reid has often spoken about his relationship with Holmgren, which started back in his days at BYU. Holmgren promised Reid that he will take him along if he ever got an NFL opportunity and the rest is history. So, it was no surprise, that the Chiefs HC vouched for his former mentor to be in the Hall of Fame.

Andy Reid has led the Chiefs to three Super Bowl wins in a span of five years and is arguably the best-known head coach in the league today and he has Holmgren to thank for a lot of his success. He got hired by the former Packers’ HC and worked under him for seven years and has often said that Holmgren is the greatest to ever do it.

Andy Reid believes ‘nobody has done it better’ than Holmgren

In a recent interview on the Y’s Guys podcast, Andy Reid was discussing the impact of good coaching trees, where one coach develops more coaches who might go on to become elite coaches themselves in the future. Reid mentioned Holmgren and how he has mentored “seven or eight guys that came -off of his tree that became head coaches.”

Under his guidance many assistant coaches grew in stature and became head coaches in NFL. Apart from Andy Reid, Ray Rhodes, Jon Gruden, Dick Jauron, Steve Mariucci, Marty Mornhinweg, Mike Sherman, and Jim Zorn were all mentored by Holmgren and hired as HC’s across NFL.

During the interview, Reid went on to praise Holmgren, calling him the best in the league and saying that he should be inducted into the Hall of Fame. “I’ve been a head coach for a lot of years here, 25 years going on 26,” said Reid. “I felt like Mike Holmgren -nobody did it better than he did at this level, and I still feel that way today. I mean -he was an amazing head football coach and -I think he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame and should be in the Hall of Fame.”

In his 16 years as an NFL HC, Holmgren won 174 games with the Packers (1992-98) and Seahawks (1999-2008). He won Super Bowl XXXI with Packers and under his tutelage Seahawks became playoff regulars and won five division titles and made their first Super Bowl appearance in 2006. This isn’t the first time, Andy Reid has vouched for Holmgren to be inducted into the Hall of Fame.

In 2016, after the induction of Packers legend Brett Favre into the Hall of Fame, Reid made a pitch for Holmgren to be in the Hall. He said, “They just need to get one more guy in, and that’s Mike Holmgren. Then they’ll have the whole Godhead of the Green Bay Packers there and set up in the Hall of Fame.”

While Holmgren is in the Green Bay Packer Hall of Fame and has the Seattle Seahawks Ring of Honor, a gold jacket is still missing from the cabinet of the former coach. He also created a flourishing coaching tree in his time, which is headlined by none other than Reid himself, whose career was heavily impacted by Holmgren.

Mike Holmgren and a promise well kept

The two coaches had crossed paths long before they entered the professional league! The former Packers HC was working as the quarterback coach while Andy Reid was the Graduate assistant. It was in 1982 itself that Holmgren had promised to hire the now Kansas City HC.

“This is corny, but he said, I’ll promise you I’m gonna hire you someday,” revealed Reid in last year’s press conference via the ChiefsWire. “So he did good on his promise. Well, it’s a good opportunity. I mean, I’ve worked for Mike Holmgren for seven years. And I had a hard time believing anybody did it better. And I still feel that way. He’s a great head football coach, a great offensive mind. So, I was very fortunate to get into that situation. I knew him from BYU, where he’s coaching the quarterbacks.”

The respect between the two goes both ways. Holmgren once praised Reid, stating, “Early on, we developed a friendship. He’s a very bright guy. He was a journalism major in college, and I will still say he’s a bright guy. But he had a lot of interests. I really liked how he approached things, and he loved football, and his work ethic was super. So, it was not difficult to recognize ability there, and talent. He was a lineman himself, so he became a line coach, and a very good one.”

Once Holmgren established himself in the NFL, he remembered his promise to hire Reid someday. A decade later, in 1992, the then-newly appointed Packers’ HC hired a 33-year-old Reid as a tight end and offensive line coach.

At the time, Reid only had anan undistinguished, having served as the O-line coach in colleges. But Holmgren believed in him, as he once said about him, “Good coaches are good coaches.” It was surely the keen eye of Mike Holmgren and his trust in Reid’s ability that resulted in an elite coaching career for the Chiefs’ HC.