Sometimes, some couples in life are so successful that they remain joined at the hip forever in the minds of the masses. In sports, we see it all the time, regardless of how the relationship ended. Tom Brady and Bill Belichick will always be linked to each other, just like Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson, And the list continues. We usually don’t get the reunion (if ever) until several years later, as we saw recently with Jones and Johnson. The Kansas City Chiefs and Eric Bieienmy are a duo that parted ways not too long ago and appear to be headed for a quick revival.
Perhaps this seems rushed or far-fetched, but there isn’t much hope that Washington will elevate Bieniemy to head coach to replace Ron Rivera. Bieniemy was brought in to improve the offense and Washington hasn’t been horrible on that front, but there hasn’t been much improvement, if any, from the year before.
With Bieniemy in limbo, it’s only natural that we start hearing rumors about a possible return to KC. This makes even more sense after “Down” year for the Chiefs had finished the regular season 11-6. Kansas City hadn’t won fewer than 12 games since Patrick Mahomes became a full-time starter in 2018. The year before, they went 10 wins behind Alex Smith with Mahomes on the bench as a rookie.
After winning the team’s second Super Bowl last year, it was understandable that Bieniemy wanted to move away from head coach Andy Reid and the Chiefs. Not because there were bad feelings, but because Bieniemy wanted to stand on his own two feet. Even if it wasn’t as a head coach, it’s always confusing how every other coordinator, offense or defense gets a chance after one or two successful campaigns without even winning a ring. It also doesn’t matter if they call plays because we’ve seen plenty of examples of that outside of Bieniemy.
Too much shade to go home?
Having the pieces in place is just as important as the coach laying out the board. Commanders have some attacking pieces, but not like leaders, even though they are experiencing what is considered a down year. There was early talk of players challenging Bieienemy’s training methods. It was something LeSean McCoy spotlighted at the Bieniemy exit from KC. This is one of the problems that has been imposed on him for some time, in the way he interacts with players.
As several former chiefs came to Bieniemy’s defense, we saw in Washington what McCoy was talking about. Some Commanders players had a problem with the way Bieniemy spoke to them on the field. Older generations might call players soft for this, but you can’t talk to everyone the same way. Some players will absorb this aggression and use it as fuel, while others might shut down completely. Then there are those players who hit back directly at the coach.
Whatever his quirks, Bieniemy feels like a boss. They had such a good run over a span of five or six years that it seems fitting that Bieniemy would end up in Kansas City after a lackluster stint in the nation’s capital. If the commanders offer him the position of head coach, of course he will have to accept it, but that does not seem to be the case. The way things are going this year is that if it’s not in Washington, Bieniemy will probably be ignored once again.
Add to this the way the Chiefs appeared offensive (we can’t blame everything Taylor Swift) and even though he never calls plays, there’s just something that works with Bieniemy and KC. If the Chiefs suffer an early playoff elimination, you can guarantee that talk of Bieniemy returning to KC will start to heat up.
