Super Bowl LIX may not kick off until Sunday evening, but Kansas City head coach Andy Reid has likely already drawn up his first play call of the game. Like many disciples of Bill Walsh’s West Coast offensive system, Reid decides on his initial calls days in advance of kickoff—a process that Walsh began during his time as Chargers offensive coordinator in the mid-1970s. Walsh started with 10 plays in his “opening script,” but that number grew as he realized the utility of the process.
“We began to plan the opening sequences of the game,” Walsh said at a coaching clinic in the mid-1980s. “From there, I went to Stanford, and the list went to 20. We would have our first 20 plays to be called. Now with San Francisco, we finally stopped with 25. What we have finally done is rehearse the opening part of the game, almost the entire first half, by planning the game before it even starts.”
Following the success of Walsh’s dynastic 49ers teams of the ’80s, his assistant coaches spread throughout the NFL—and so did the scripting process. In the modern league, even coaches outside of the ever-expanding West Coast bubble are doing it—but no coach has more experience or has found more success with their “openers” than Reid. The 66-year-old head coach became a believer in the process while working under then-Packers coach Mike Holmgren—who picked it up during his time on Walsh’s staff in San Francisco. Reid brought the practice to Philadelphia when he was hired as head coach in 1999, and over the past 26 years, he’s mastered the art. Reid has become the NFL’s best scriptwriter—especially since Patrick Mahomes became his starting quarterback in 2018. Looking at just the first 15 plays of games over that span, the Chiefs are responsible for four of the NFL’s 10 best offensive seasons by expected points added, per TruMedia.
Best “First 15” Seasons Since 2018, by EPA
You’ll notice that the 2024 season isn’t included on that list. Reid’s opening scripts weren’t nearly as effective this past regular season, with Kansas City dropping to middle of the pack in EPA. But, like many facets of the Chiefs offense, we’ve seen an uptick in performance during the team’s postseason run. Offensive coordinator Matt Nagy credited Reid’s opening script for the the Chiefs’ fast start in a 32-29 win over the Bills in the AFC title game, and now with the Eagles defense standing in between Kansas City and a historic three-peat, Nagy says the script will play a key role in Sunday’s game against wily defensive coordinator Vic Fangio.
“[Fangio’s] really good at unscouted looks,” Nagy told me this week. “He’s going to have some stuff that he’ll continue to do, but he disguises a lot and he does it really well. And so that’s just something that we got to try to be good at [recognizing], and I think we’ve tried to do that all week long.”
The utility of the opening script stretches far beyond the results of the 15 plays. For Reid, it’s become a vital tool for decoding defenses and informing his decision-making on plays 16 and beyond. “It’s a key element to making sure that you kind of can understand maybe what [the defense is] going to do,” Nagy says. “It’s something that Coach Reid has been really, really good at over his career. It’s important for us.”
As the scripting process has evolved from its inception with Walsh to the modern-day iteration we’ve seen from Reid, its import has only grown. Yet Reid’s ability to craft an effective opening plan stands out from the rest of the league. This week, I talked to several key members of Reid’s staff to figure out how the Chiefs’ script is formulated, and the role it plays in the success of the NFL’s most decorated offense.
Putting together a full game plan is a process that generally includes a team’s entire offensive coaching staff. But that’s not necessarily the case when it comes to generating the opening script. At least not for Reid’s teams, his longtime offensive line coach, Andy Heck, told me this week. “It’s collaborative in the sense that it’s a week-long process, which starts with the game planning and every guy kind of taking a lead in their area, whether it’s run game or pass game,” Heck says. “But then he brings it all together in his head on Thursday night.”
Reid’s pass game coordinator, Joe Bleymaier, told me that Reid seeks out input from the entire staff when picking plays for his call sheet, but will leave his assistants out of the loop on the script (at least for one night). “He’s talking to the entire staff throughout the week on each of the plays,” Bleymaier says. “What they work best against, how they can best complement each other—or how you can sequence them the best way. Which one do you think would be the most beneficial to show first, which one is to complement? But then when it comes to that first 15, and how he wants to present the initial attack to the players, that’s all him.”
Like theater kids rushing to a cast posting to see which role they got in the school play, Chiefs assistants are always eager to see what Reid has decided on. “We’re all waiting on Friday morning to see how he’s come up,” Bleymaier says. “You have an idea that you want to see based on how the week has gone. Oftentimes, Pat [Mahomes] will try to guess what [Reid will] pick. Then you see it, and you’re like, ‘Ah, wasn’t expecting that sequence.’”
Pushing for a particular play to be included in Reid’s script can be a nervy experience, Bleymaier says. After all, the guy has essentially mastered the art. “There’s nerves when you stand on the table [for a call to be included],” Bleymaier says. “But there are times when you say, ‘Hey, this play would be best when we’ve run these three other ones first.’ But then Coach Reid puts it up early in the script and hits for 40 yards. And he’s just like, ‘I know what you said [but] this play was gonna work regardless, so trust me.’”
Mahomes has also been known to offer up input on the plays he’d like to see most in the opening script. But the two-time MVP respects Reid’s process and knows the coach doesn’t need help formulating the right plan of attack. “I let Coach Reid go out there and be the mastermind and figure out the best place for us as a team,” Mahomes told me this week. “And it’s helped me out a ton to have someone like that drawing up the first 15.”
Reid’s mentor, Holmgren, had a similar deal with his star quarterback in the 1990s. In this NFL Films piece on Holmgren’s scripting process, you can see him review his first 15 play calls with Brett Favre ahead of a 1996 game against the Giants:
Holmgren didn’t just show Favre the script. He made sure Favre was comfortable with every play, knew what to look for from the defense, and knew what to adjust based on the different coverages he might see.
“More than anything, it gets you in a rhythm,” Mahomes says. “It gets you in a spot where you feel like you know what the defense is doing, you know where to go with the football, and you can be on time and in rhythm.”
That’s exactly what it did for the Chiefs two weeks ago against the Bills—right from the opening play of Reid’s script.
Before the ball is even snapped in the clip above, Mahomes and Reid are downloading tons of information about the Bills’ defensive plan—including how they’ll match up against three-receiver sets, how they’ll align against a bunch set, and how they’ll react to a receiver motioning across the formation. They then change the formation from a three-by-one receiver distribution to a two-by-two formation, which provides even more intel. When the Bills responded by switching from single-high to two-high, and had no player following the receiver’s motion to the other side of the formation, Mahomes knew he was getting some sort of zone coverage. That’s how it played out after the snap, and the Chiefs quarterback got the ball out of his hands in a flash. Those are just some of the tells Reid can draw out of the defense early on in games.
Over the course of the script, Reid will cycle through a variety of formations and personnel groupings to see how the defense reacts. He’ll use motion and formational shifts to draw multiple pre-snap looks. He’ll dial up play-action shots to gauge how aggressively the safeties are playing. Give Reid one or two drives, and he’ll have all the information he needs to make the adjustments throughout the game.
Defensive coordinators are smart, though, and there is very much a he knows that I know he knows cat-and-mouse game at play. Bleymaier says because the script concept is so widespread and well-known now, that defenses will counter Reid by throwing out misleading looks early on in a game. “They know we got these 15 plays that we’re going to get to,” Bleymaier says. “They’re giving us a one-off look to disguise their base calls to a certain formation.
“So as much as you want to say, ‘Hey, that third play of the game is going to tell you everything you know about the next 40,’ you really have to separate it.”
Because of that, Bleymaier says the Chiefs prioritize getting all the offensive players—not just Mahomes—in a rhythm. “The one thing I’ve learned working for Coach Reid that I would have overlooked—and potentially others do—is his opening script is written with the offensive line in mind,” Bleymaier says. “He is an ex-offensive lineman. He still sees the game from the perspective and will give the offensive line different pitches—the best possible techniques for them to feel confident to execute for the rest of the game. Oftentimes, you might default to the best opening script being quarterback-friendly. You want to get them into a rhythm. You want to find easy completions. … But Coach Reid is able to do that while also putting the offensive line in the best situations, which I think is a rare skill.”
Kansas City will need every bit of Reid’s ability against the Eagles defense on Sunday. Fangio may only run a handful of coverages in the game, but he’ll have plenty of pre-snap presentations designed to make Mahomes take an extra beat or two before getting rid of the football. And against a leaky Chiefs offensive line, that could buy enough time for Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith to beat their blockers to pressure the pocket. If Reid can get Mahomes comfortable with what he’s seeing and help him find a rhythm early, Philadelphia’s defense will have a tough time getting off the field.
Unlocking Fangio’s defense early will pay dividends later on in the game, but ultimately, the success of Reid’s opening script will be measured by the scoreboard. Getting all that vital intel helps, but Bleymaier says he would gladly trade that for points. “Even if we just fall into points, we’ll take it and just try to fill in the information gaps later in the game,” Bleymaier says. “Especially in the Super Bowl when you have a 30-minute halftime break and all those commercials.”
Reid’s teams are 21-4 over his head coaching career when he’s had extra time to prepare for a game, and he’s had an additional week to think about his opening script for the Super Bowl. He’ll have plenty of time to tinker with the offense during the game if his script doesn’t yield the expected results. But based on his history and reputation, he shouldn’t need it.
