Andy Reid’s year in Flagstaff, and its enduring impact on him and now 98-year-old boss

When Chiefs coach Andy Reid was in his late teens in Los Angeles, his older brother, Reggie, studied geology at Northern Arizona University.

After Reggie suffered permanent damage to his right arm in a motorcycle accident, the little brother spent a summer in Flagstaff helping him with the demanding field work of digging holes for soil samples.

In an interview with The Star in 2013, Reggie Reid said he could still remember Andy “sweating his tail off” as he kept telling him he had to dig deeper.

“And all that cinder block,” Andy Reid recalled with a smile Monday night. “That’s tough.”

As it happened, that wasn’t the only time Andy Reid dug as deep as he could for the cause at Northern Arizona — which would become a one-year building block in the arc of his coaching career at one of its many pivotal junctures.

And that time also became a cause for him to pause and celebrate his former boss there amid all the hoopla on Monday, when Reid invoked the name of near-centenarian Larry Kentera repeatedly at the Super Bowl LVII Opening Night shindig.

“Ninety-eight years old and still going strong,” Reid said at one point. “He’s something.”

So was Reid’s brief but meaningful time working for Kentera, who by telephone on Tuesday gushed over Reid and was gratified by his references to him.

“I haven’t coached for a long time, and then Andy brings up my name,” he said, laughing and adding, “Everybody probably thinks I’m underground right now.”

While Reid’s 14 seasons in Philadelphia is the most visible previous stop in his career and part of the pandemonium as he prepares his Chiefs to face the Eagles in the Super Bowl on Sunday, his year with the Lumberjacks was part of the connective tissue of his budding career when it was pivotal he gain traction.

Reid had relished his three years at his first full-time coaching job at San Francisco State, a now-defunct and then-Division II non-scholarship program. He was making about $22,000 a year as part of a three-man staff, responsible for teaching classes and selling hot dogs (at times amid campus protests) to fund-raise for a lean football budget.

But by the end of the 1985 season, it was time to make a move up. And when LaVell Edwards, his mentor and former coach at Brigham Young, touted Division 1-AA (now FCS) Northern Arizona — a school located in Flagstaff, about two hours north of Phoenix — Reid resolved that he had to get the offensive line job there.

So moments after Edwards called on Reid’s behalf, Kentera said, the eager Reid called in what seemed a rather orchestrated approach. But Kentera told Reid the same thing he had told Edwards: I’m not making any decisions now, because I have to get to Sacramento for a recruiting trip and I’ll get back to you after that.

Off Kentera went to Sacramento (about 90 miles from San Francisco) … where he was surprised to have Reid meet him at the gate back in the days before modern security would have precluded such a greeting.

For that matter, this was well before the advent of the internet and any number of easy ways to track possible flights.

“I had my ways,” Reid said, smiling. “I talked to enough people.”

And then he talked and talked to Kentera, who said he was practically running to baggage claim since he was in a hurry. But Reid kept pace, and kept saying “I want this job.”

“And, you know, I kind of liked that,” Kentera said. “He was hungry, you know what I mean?”

Between that, Edwards’ recommendation and the sense that Reid’s “demeanor and personality” made him the kind of guy who would just fit in, Kentera hired Reid with no real sense of what kind of position coach he would be.

Turned out Reid had a certain knack for the work.

“I can’t say enough about his coaching technique,” Kentera said, later adding, “He taught those players how to play offensive line. He didn’t just say, ‘Get down there in position and hit that guy down.’ You understand what I’m saying?”

If you know Reid and his ability to connect with people, perhaps particularly players, you definitely understand what he’s saying. And even by then, Reid’s gift with people, now a vast expanse that might be seen as six degrees of Andy Reid, was becoming a bedrock of his future.

Talk about a coaching carousel:

After a graduate assistant year at BYU under Edwards, he’d gone to San Francisco State to work for Vic Rowen — who had been a mentor to Edwards. Before he hired Reid, Rowen had hired a then-high school coach named Mike Holmgren — whom Rowen helped get a job with Edwards while Reid was at BYU … and would later give Reid his first NFL job with the Green Bay Packers.

And at San Francisco State, Reid would be joined by Dirk Koetter, with whom he would later coach at Texas-El Paso and Missouri.

It was more of the same at NAU, where Reid was accompanied from San Francisco State by Tom Melvin — now the Chiefs’ tight end coach. And Flagstaff was where he met Brad Childress, the new offensive coordinator. When Reid took over the Eagles in 1999, he made Childress his quarterbacks coach and then offensive coordinator before Childress became head coach of the Vikings and ultimately rejoined Reid in Kansas City for four years.

Meanwhile, beyond Reid and Childress, Kentera also hired two other future NFL head coaches in his five seasons at NAU: Bill Callahan and Marty Mornhinweg, who like Reid and Koetter spent time at Mizzou.

“I was just lucky; I guess that was it,” Kentera said. “They made me a good coach because they were good.”

That 1986 team went 7-4 overall and 5-2 in the Big Sky Conference, and Reid fondly recalled the wisdom he gained from Kentera.

“Great human being. Learned a ton from him,” Reid said. “His energy level was something we all wanted, and he wasn’t young back then, either.”

It was mutual admiration, to be sure. Even after Reid decided to leave only a year later soon after Koetter called and convinced him to consider joining him at UTEP under Bob Stull, later the MU coach. After an interview lunch in El Paso, Reid also got an endorsement from Dave Toub … now the Chiefs’ special teams coordinator.

When Reid sheepishly approached Kentera to tell him he had an opportunity to take a Division I job, Kentera remembered encouraging Reid to seize the chance.

“‘As much as I hate to see you leave,’” Kentera recalled saying, “ if you’re going to be in this game, you’ve got to go because it’s another step up.’”

When NAU announced Reid’s departure in February 1987, Dave Brown, the school’s co-athletic director at the time, told the Arizona Daily Sun the Lumberjacks were disappointed to lose him.

“I believe,” he said, “Andy has a very bright future ahead of him.”

Nearly 40 years later, as Kentera frets that he might be starting to get old, Reid frequently reminds him of the meaning of that year in his life.

He was Reid’s guest at a Chiefs-Steelers game in the last few years, and they have exchanged multiple text messages since the Chiefs beat the Bengals to advance to their third Super Bowl in four years.

Kentera tries to watch every Chiefs game he can. And when they lose, which he notes is “very seldom,” he tends to “kind of feel it a little bit.”

Thanks to Reid always remembering from where he came, each step of the way, Kentera also is feeling something now: gratitude for Reid all over again.

“Oh, yeah, hey, very nice,” Kentera said. “He’s just that kind of guy.”

Just like the guy he met that day in Sacramento and sensed was what he might be looking for.