When the Kansas City Chiefs visit the Buffalo Bills on Sunday night in the AFC divisional playoffs, we will get to the pre-eminent quarterback and head coach combination in the NFL, and one of the best in the game’s history in the Chiefs’ Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid. Mahomes is the best quarterback in the game today, and Reid is the top head coach.

Before that, it was the New England Patriots’ Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, which many say is the greatest such combination of all-time since Brady is considered maybe the best quarterback of all-time and Belichick is considered perhaps the greatest head coach of all-time.

Down through the years, there have, of course, been others, including Troy Aikman and Jimmy Johnson with the Dallas Cowboys, Joe Montana and Bill Walsh with the San Francisco 49ers, Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll with the Pittsburgh Steelers, John Unitas and Don Shula with the Baltimore oh, Colts, Bob Griese and Shula with the Miami Dolphins and Dan Marino and Shula with the Dolphins.

Quarterback is the most important position in team sports, and you can say that the head coach on a football team is the second-most important position. With that, then, the most important relationship in team sports is that of the quarterback and the head coach. It produces championships and sustained greatness.

But Browns fans should be reminded that all of this started in Cleveland with Otto Graham and Paul Brown. When the two were paired together for the franchise’s first 10 years from 1946 through ‘55, the Browns played in 10 straight league championship games, garnering seven titles. That is almost unfathomable. Talk about a winning combination!!

Steve King