Veach of Trust: How bond between GM + coach Andy Reid made KC Chiefs annual contenders

On the occasion of Brett Veach’s wedding in 2015, then-Chiefs general manager John Dorsey gave a toast about how essential trust is in marriage. He even provided an example:

“Just like Andy and Brett,” he said.

Meaning Andy Reid, the Chiefs coach who ushered Veach into the NFL as his personal assistant in 2007 in Philadelphia after the relentless Veach had made an impression on Reid’s staff as a training camp intern.

At the time, Dorsey had no idea how prophetic his words would prove to be when it came to the connective tissue in the Veach-Reid union, a wavelength that has been fundamental to where the Chiefs are today: on the verge of a third straight Super Bowl berth as they prepare to play Cincinnati in the AFC Championship Game on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium.

“In Veach We Trust” isn’t just a catchy term that’s lent itself to T-shirt, sweatshirt and hoodie sales in honor of the GM from Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, whose roots seemed to make this work meant to be.

It’s a telling signature of how Reid feels about the architect of the Chiefs’ ascent from perennial playoff team to annual Super Bowl contender in the Reid era.

“He went from going out and grabbing me cheeseburgers to doing this; it’s quite the climb,” Reid said, smiling, earlier this week. “Listen, he does a great job. You guys know him, and you know how hard he works and the energy level that he brings every day.

“So I’d put him up against any GM in the National Football League for covering all the bases and making sure the communication is right between (him) and the coaching staff. He’s got a great feel for all that.”

As good a feel as you could imagine in the job, in fact, particularly in the context of understanding just what Reid needed.

“The sum and substance of building a franchise is that the head football coach and general manager … have to be joined at the hip,” said Carl Peterson, the former Chiefs president and GM who is a friend and admirer of both Veach and Reid. “Their mindsets have to be the same.”

Noting that Veach distinguished himself with his diligence in scouting and has made his mark in drafts and other acquisitions as a GM, Peterson added, “Just as importantly, and maybe more importantly, he understands Andy and what Andy looks for and needs.”

Such testimony is compelling coming from Peterson, who reinvigorated the franchise in numerous ways, including but not limited to the team going 176-43-1 in his 20 seasons, and is long overdue to be inducted in the Chiefs Hall of Honor.

Now, Veach is on trajectory to that sort of recognition himself as a pillar of arguably the most triumphant time in franchise history … with the dynamics and nucleus in place for more to come regardless of the outcome Sunday or in the Super Bowl should the Chiefs prevail against the Bengals.

Because you can see Veach’s handprints in the most vital elements of this team.

The bold trade-up to draft Patrick Mahomes in 2017 was orchestrated by Dorsey but animated by Veach, who at the time was co-director of player personnel with Mike Borgonzi — a budding GM candidate himself.

It’s no exaggeration to say Veach was so obsessed with Mahomes that he inundated Dorsey with data about him and so pestered Reid on the topic that at one point Reid told him, “All right, just stop.”

After the 2018 season, he orchestrated the demolition of a porous defense that remains the only known Kryptonite to Mahomes. That teardown enabled the Chiefs to sign safety Tyrann Mathieu, the defensive counterpart to Mahomes, and trade for defensive end Frank Clark, among others.

And Veach’s part in that went well beyond just negotiating.

“What really made me jump towards (Veach) was he wasn’t just trying to get me to come to Kansas City,” Mathieu, who signed a three-year, $42 million contract, said before Super Bowl LIV. “It was his whole idea, this vision that he had for the defense. You don’t always get that from general managers or head coaches, alright?

“Like if the offense is good, (they might just say), ‘Let’s just stack the offense and just score as many points as we can … (and the defense) can take care of themselves.’ But here, it’s just overall a team concept of, ‘We can’t just rely on Pat Mahomes’. It’s, ‘We have to get better, we have to put pieces around him.’ ”

So under new defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, the defensive revival in the second half of that season was pivotal in the franchise’s first Super Bowl appearance in 50 years … making the then-42-year-old Veach the second-youngest GM to construct a Super Bowl winner.

“Getting that right, getting those players to fit together, getting them to work in a scheme with the new coaching staff, that was a heavy lift,” Chiefs chairman and CEO Clark Hunt said before that Super Bowl. “But (Veach) did a magnificent job.”

Then came another heavy lift after last season: When a ravaged and aging offensive line was overrun in the Super Bowl loss to Tampa Bay, Veach and his staff tirelessly set about reconstructing the offensive front through the draft and trades and free agency.

They began the season with five new starters, including three rookies, a proposition that Veach understood could take some weeks to gel and may come with “some ugly moments early on.”

But that investment was paying dividends by mid-season and all the more so now … just as Veach and Co.’s ever-churning scan of the scene around the NFL did in their deal just before the trade deadline for Melvin Ingram from Pittsburgh.

For a sixth-round draft choice, the Chiefs got a force who revitalized and reset their then-drooping defense.

We could go on about that part of this, but there’s something else in the equation that speaks not just to how this has come to pass so far but why it should be enduring.

When the Chiefs announced in November 2020 that Reid and Veach had been signed to new contracts that were expected to keep them here at least six more years, Hunt identified key aspects of the relationship.

“That dynamic is really great: A lot of times you can have tension between your GM and head coach, but the two of them really work together hand-in-hand,” Hunt said, later noting Veach’s keen eye for talent and ability to be “always thinking ahead (and be) proactive finding solutions before the problems emerge.”

Hunt that day also referred to a “virtuous circle” that comes with having the right people at the top, starting with Reid.

That term was new to me, so I looked it up and it sure seemed apt:

Merriam-Webster.com describes it as “a chain of events in which one desirable occurrence leads to another (that) further promotes the first occurrence and so on resulting in a continuous process of improvement.”

The Chiefs have that harmonious framework now, in part because Hunt himself grew out of the vicious cycle the franchise had been in from the time his father, Lamar, died in 2006.

Between then and when Hunt astutely hired Reid in 2013, the Chiefs had managed one winning season and suffered four seasons of 10 or more losses. They extended their postseason winless streak to nearly two decades and were in chaos by the end of GM Scott Pioli’s tenure.

When Hunt hired Reid and ultimately replaced Pioli with Dorsey, he overhauled the structure of the management flow chart to place Reid, Dorsey and president Mark Donovan on the same line reporting directly to Hunt.

In an interview in his office that fall, Hunt said he did it so he could have more input and involvement with the head coach and hear his perspective directly “as opposed to hearing it through the general manager.”

All of that was welcomed by Reid, who was both coach and GM his first seven seasons in Philadelphia and retained “personnel authority” there until he was fired after the 2012 season.

He reiterated on Wednesday that being freed up to just coach “was something I really liked to get back to doing.”

And while it might be assumed that Reid retains plenty of voice with Veach, who took over for Dorsey in 2017, it’s also understood that Veach thrives in this job because he is both his own man and in alignment with Reid.

“The thing about Andy is, when you really get to know him, he’s not a control freak and he’s not power hungry,” Veach said shortly after taking the job. “He surrounds himself with guys who work hard and guys who challenge him. He likes people … who come to him with outside-the-box thinking because it elevates his game.”

All of which has combined to elevate the game of the Chiefs to a place they haven’t been in half a century, if ever before.

And though this is all about how the players perform, it’s also about how they got there in the first place. Which is a matter of trust.

Just like Andy and Brett, you could say.