REID A LONG WAY FROM 1999 PRESEASON FINALE AGAINST BROWNS
By STEVE KING
It was late on a Thursday night at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia about 21½ years ago.
It was Sept. 2, 1999 and the expansion Browns had just lost 30-17 to the awful, rebuilding Philadelphia Eagles in a terribly-played, hard-to-watch preseason finale. The Eagles had a rookie quarterback named Donovan McNabb and not much else. The Browns had a rookie quarterback named Tim Couch and not much else.
With that, then, you had to feel sorry for the rookie head coaches, Philadelphia’s Andy Reid, who was booed as he walked off the field by the always-tough Philly fans, and Cleveland’s Chris Palmer. The two virtual unknowns appeared to be in for a long season, and so they were. The Eagles ended up 5-11 and in last place in the NFC East, with the Browns, also finishing in the basement in their division, the AFC Central, doing even worse, going 2-14.
It was more of the same the following season for the Browns, as they were 3-13, causing Palmer to be fired after two years and a 5-27 record, being replaced by Butch Davis.
But Reid blossomed quickly, and so did his Eagles, as they finished 11-5 in 2000 and began a string of five straight seasons of winning 11 or more games in the regular season and making the playoffs, culminating in 2004 when they went 13-3 and advanced all the way to the Super Bowl, where they lost 24-21 to the New England Patriots and a young standout quarterback named Tom Brady.
But coaches and teams, even the best ones in both regards, sometimes get tired of one another after a while and have to part ways for the good of both parties. The Eagles several years won their first Super Bowl, with former Browns backup quarterback Doug Pederson as head coach, and last year, Reid, now with Kansas City, won his first Super Bowl and the first for the club in 50 years. And he and the Chiefs are going for two straight as they get set to meet a much older, wiser and much more accomplished Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl 55 next Sunday night.
Yes, indeed, it’s amazing how much has changed since 1999. In fact, it’s not anything that anyone – even the biggest of dreamers — could have imagined on that late-summer night in Philadelphia.
