How ‘Uncle’ Andy Reid became part of the Kelce family: legendary coach took a chance on ‘cocky’ Travis after working with Jason… and put both brothers on the road to Super Bowl glory

It was privately, in April 2013, when Andy Reid had Travis Kelce’s ear and gave the tight end a piece of his mind. It was in front of all the world, almost eleven years later, that Kelce gave the head coach his own savage talk.

Few images from the first Super Bowl in Sin City will last as long as the sight of Kelce bumping into Reid and yelling in his coach’s face.

It didn’t matter that the Kansas City Chiefs secured back-to-back championships. Never mind that it was Patrick Mahomes who orchestrated (yet again) a piece of history.

That first-half clash was caught on camera and swept social media. The incident also came up again and again during the post-match debriefing.

Who could have blamed Reid if he had turned back the clock to the 2013 NFL draft, when he picked up the phone and called younger brother Kelce. In Las Vegas the coach could have thought: maybe I was right all along.

After all, the story goes that Reid — who had already drafted Jason Kelce to the Eagles in 2011 and was now considering bringing Travis to Kansas City — reprimanded him over his behavior and apparent volatility.

As Kelce later recalled, Reid all but said, “Are you going to screw this up? I need a grown man. I don’t need a man to come in and be crazy.’

More than a decade later, Kelce accepted that he had crossed a line in Las Vegas. But Reid shook off the meltdown. A “cheap shot,” he jokingly called it. “I didn’t see him coming, otherwise I would have torn his forearm.”

It was a masterclass in how to defuse a bubbling PR disaster. But also a look at the special relationship that helped two brothers and one family achieve superstardom.

Jason only worked with Reid for a few seasons, yet he says the coach and his family “played such an incredible role in me and my brother being able to play at this level.” Travis credits “Big Red” with straightening him out.

Sometimes all you have to do is look for his message to arrive; their bond goes beyond the professional. The 65-year-old coach considers himself part of the Kelce family. Jason agrees. As for Travis? “He’s like one of my kids,” Reid has said. “There’s no one I can get better than him.”

“For Travis, Coach Reid is almost like the uncle you have, who you listen to and get advice from,” quarterback Mahomes told ESPN. “He makes Travis a great football player, but I think even a better person. He has a good sense of getting at Travis when he needs that motivation, but at the same time he lets Travis be who he is.”

Jason is a different character, but Reid brought both to the NFL. He plucked them from Cincinnati, hardly a football powerhouse at the time. Neither had generated much hype. Neither was taken before the third round of the draft.

And yet? Jason recently retired a Super Bowl winner and future Hall of Famer. Travis – three-time champion under ‘Big Red’ – also threatened to walk away. His reasoning?

“I love Coach Reid, Coach Reid knows how much I love playing for him, how much I want to be a product of his coaching career. I don’t play for anyone other than Big Red. If he quits this year, I’ll go with him.’

Fortunately for the Chiefs, neither coach nor tight end is completely gone yet. The ties that connect this football family are becoming stronger and stronger.

Jason took a trip down memory lane during his 41-minute retirement speech earlier this month.

‘When I look back on the road, I’m sure there are things I will forget. But these are some of the things I know I won’t do,” he said.

“I won’t forget the phone call I got from Andy Reid on the day of the service, and my father (Ed) rushing into the room with tears running down his face as his son’s dreams had just been realized… and I will don’t forget two years later that same guy (Reid) and my brother (Travis) got a call and he was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs.

“This time, tears were streaming down both my father and (my) face, because my brother had just realized his.”

The waterworks resumed — and barely let up — during Kelce’s retirement announcement. The reality, of course, is that those early days were beset by turbulence. There were more than tears of joy.

Especially when Travis’ college career in Cincinnati fizzled out. He was kicked off the team and lost his scholarship after testing positive for marijuana. Only thanks to Jason – a teammate at the time – the younger brother was steered towards the NFL again.

Reid saw Kelce play during that time. The tight end reportedly addressed the veteran coach as “big guy.”

“Deep inside I’m thinking, ‘If I get my hands on that son of a bitch, I’m going to rip his heart out,’” Reid once recalled. ‘Stubborn, cocky, damn it, he was cocky. But I knew the roots.”

It was only thanks to Jason that Reid was convinced that Travis had more than his bravado. Only thanks to Jason, Reid ended that phone call in 2013, convinced that Travis was worth it.

It is said that after rebuking Travis, Reid asked him to turn on his brother. “Jason convinced me he would be fine,” the coach recalled. “And if he wasn’t, he’d beat him up.”

The elder Kelce felt that Reid held him, at least partially, responsible for the fate of his gamble.

‘They knew what type of player they were getting. Thanks to the inside scoop, I think, they were able to address some of the concerns with him,” he told ESPN.

From there, through one-on-one meetings and by “challenging” him “every day,” the coach helped tease the bad habits out of Travis.

“I was late to meetings, hung around too much all week, and couldn’t necessarily concentrate,” Kelce once revealed.

“Now football is the only place in my life where I’m really detailed, really professional… I get dialed in. I can close myself in, really divide myself into boxes. That’s because of Coach Reid.”

Even last season, their eleventh together, there were still kinks that needed to be ironed out. Kelce threw a tantrum on the sideline during the Chiefs’ Christmas Day loss to the Raiders. The tight end sometimes struggled with motivation and had to battle the distractions that come with life as Taylor Swift’s boyfriend. In the postseason, however, Reid had led him out of a slump.

During that 2013 phone call, it is said, Kelce tried to reassure Reid by promising that he would work on becoming the coach’s best ever.

More than ten years later, that promise has been fulfilled. Thanks to the bonds between two brothers and a father figure who knows what drives them. Even after their family expands to include a pop sensation. Even after they scream in his face.