Bieniemy's return as OC is Reid's hill to live or die on

By bringing back Eric Bieniemy, the Chiefs’ head coach signals belief in his system, and himself.

To the begrudging of many Chiefs fans, Andy Reid, the most successful head coach in franchise history, plucked an apple from his own coaching tree to replace offensive coordinator Matt Nagy.

The Chiefs have yet to officially announce the hiring of Eric Bieniemy, but they did bid a farewell to Nagy this morning. Rumors swirled of the return the morning after the Chicago Bears, whose running backs were led by Bieniemy, lost in the divisional round last Sunday evening to the Los Angeles Rams.

By Wednesday evening, it was reported that he had been in the building for at least a day and that he was set to return.

“I can’t wait to see him back in the building, man,” Kelce said Wednesday on his New Heights podcast. “He’s one of my favorite coaches of all time, one of my favorite people of all time. I’ve had so many unbelievable growing moments under him as a player, as a person, and I just love the guy.

“It’s gonna be awesome to see him back in the building and see him back wearing the Chiefs logo, baby.”

This was before the return was even officially reported, but it apparently was Kansas City’s worst-kept secret. Bieniemy, who was the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator from 2018 to 2022, winning two Super Bowls and appearing in three, will be the second in command for the offense once again.

The writing was on the wall. Chiefs Kingdom is smart, and although they wanted their 6-11 team to take interviews from bright offensive minds such as Patrick Mahomes former college head coach, Kliff Kingsbury, or former Rockhurst superstar and now up-and-coming Rams pass-game coordinator, Nathan Scheelhaase, it was likely never in the cards.

Reid is notorious for being loyal to his staff and working with coaches who know his system and how he likes to operate. With little to no rumors floating around regarding potential Nagy replacements since the end of the regular season, Bieniemy’s return was foreshadowed.

The angst is warranted after a third-straight year of offensive deterioration. When Nagy took over for Bieniemy in 2023, his unit finished 9th in total offense before finishing 15th and 21st the last two seasons.

It should be noted that they were 10th before the epic three-game collapse that featured Gardner Minshew, Chris Oladokun, and Shane Buechele. Still, the team was 6-7 at the time of Mahomes’ exit, and an offense featuring the three-time Super Bowl MVP should always have high expectations and, to a degree, carry the team.

In contrast, the offenses that Bieniemy led finished 1st, 6th, 1st, 3rd, and 1st, respectively. Recognizing that as a strong testament to Bieniemy would be short-sided, as most of those seasons contained tight end Travis Kelce and wide receiver Tyreek Hill in their prime.

All blame or praise should start and stop with Reid. He carries a strong 51 percent of the final say within the scheme and in-game play-calling. That is likely precisely why he chose Bieniemy as his first and last target to succeed Nagy. Bieniemy knows how Reid operates, and Reid knows Bieniemy’s ability to carry out the plan.

Reid knows a 6-11 team (or 6-7) with a Mahomes-led offense is unacceptable. The idea that he does not know he needs to, or does not know how to make offseason adjustments, is largely unwarranted.

In 2013, when he and quarterback Alex Smith took over as the faces of the franchise, the offense featured a whole new look than what he had in Philadelphia, showcasing many pistol looks to cater to Smith’s strength. He even hired former Nevada head coach Chris Ault to implement it into his traditional West Coast offense.

In 2017, after the offense grew stale, general manager John Dorsey drafted Mahomes, and in preparation for that, Reid altered the offense once again, showcasing a more downfield attack. It led to Smith leading the league in yards per attempt, all while having a 26-to-5 touchdown-to-interception ratio. Prior to this, Smith was known as a prototypical West Coast offense quarterback.

When Mahomes took over the following year, Bieniemy’s first as the offensive coordinator, and they took the league by storm. Mahomes won his first MVP, throwing for 5,000 yards and 50 touchdowns on his way to the AFC Championship game in his first year as the starting quarterback.

Perhaps the next iteration was 2022. They had lost Hill in the trade to Miami, and teams had already begun giving them two-high looks. That was Bieniemy’s last in Kansas City, and they held the league’s number one offense. Although they had a tight end at the top of his superpowers, JuJu Smith-Schuster as a wide receiver one, and Marquez Valdez-Scantling as the two, it was hardly a star-studded lineup.

That team won its second Super Bowl and saw Mahomes win his second MVP in five seasons.

All of that is not to say that Bieniemy was the key cog, but that Reid has adjusted his scheme when the team reaches an inflection point. That is where they are now once again, and it is behind his inovativeness that he believes Bieniemy is the man to help him see it through.

On the surface, Bieniemy’s hiring seems to signal a lack of change, but other moves contradict that. They have let go of running backs coach Todd Pinkston and wide receivers coach Connor Embree, among others.

They have also hired Chad O’Shea as the new receivers coach, who held the same position with the New England Patriots from 2009 to 2018 and the Cleveland Browns from 2020 to 2015. He coached Randy Moss in his final good season, Wes Welker, Julian Edelman’s entire career, and got career seasons out of Amari Cooper and Jerry Jeudy.

He was also Cleveland’s pass-game coordinator and is completely outside Reid’s coaching tree, spending only some time with former Chiefs assistant Brad Childress. Identifying a lack of development in Rashee Rice and Xavier Worthy shows that Reid is identifying a major issue.

One could argue that they are a year too late in making massive adjustments to the offense, but hardly anyone was saying that a year ago. The offensive line was getting fixed, and they were set to see an ascending Rice and Worthy, and an intriguing Hollywood Brown play together for the first time sometime around Week 7 in 2025.

That, and coming off three straight Super Bowl appearances, it was easy to see why an overhaul of the offense was not needed. It is hard to overhaul anything in mid-February for three straight years after most coaching staffs are already put together.

6-11 will make you think a little bit, and I am sure it is heavy on Reid’s genius offensive mind as he’s getting all of January off for the first time since the 2014 season.

There have been some buzzwords floating around since Bieniemy’s homecoming: Accountability and the rushing attack.

Last week, when asked what he wanted to see in a new offensive coordinator, Mahomes had some choice words.

“For me, I just want someone that loves football,” Mahomes began. “That cares about football, that wants to give everything they can to win, to hold people accountable, and to bring new ideas every single day. I think that’s something that we have to continue to do if you want to continue to be great in this league.“

“... I want to get back to that winning culture of being accountable to each other and going out there and playing great football every single day, practice or game.”

Arguments can be made about Bieniemy’s ability to “bring new ideas every single day,” but the rest of it embodies the name he has made for himself.

The Chiefs finished 2025 26th in offensive penalties, and although there were schematic and predictability issues, there was a general lack of attention to detail in executing the offense. It is impossible to put all of that on Nagy, nor is it possible to say Bieniemy will be the remedy, but the players in the building rave about the 56-year-old’s ability to get the most out of them.

His heralded attention to detail will come in handy if Reid comes into the offseason with a plethora of new ideas. He demands high effort and attention to detail every day of the week.

As for Bieniemy bringing new ideas and the rushing attack, that is a loaded question.

On the one hand, his stints as offensive coordinator for the Washington Commanders in 2023 and UCLA in 2024 were complete flops, though they were far from ideal. Both organizations were in disarray, and eventually, the entire regimes he was part of were ousted.

On the other hand, Bieniemy just spent the entire 2025 season with the NFL’s current offensive golden child, Ben Johnson. After an extremely successful stint as offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions, Johnson and his lauded rushing scheme wound up as the NFC’s number two seed and took the Rams to the brink of the divisional round.

Bieniemy’s running back room, under Johnson’s tutelage, saw two running backs have stellar seasons. D’Andre Swift set career highs with 1,087 rushing yards and nine touchdowns. Rookie seventh-rounder, Kyle Monangai, rushed for 783 yards and five touchdowns, offering an offspeed to Swift.

It is unknown how much Bieniemy will bring from Johnson, or how much Reid would allow him to bring, but it cannot be anything but a good thing that he just came from a year with the league’s youngest and brightest mind.

The Chiefs are coming off a season in which they finished 25th in both rushing yards and attempts. Under Bieniemy, they never ranked high in rushing attempts, but they always outperformed that ranking in rushing yards, sometimes by a wide margin.

The Chiefs’ backfield is set to receive an infusion of talent this offseason, and it will be interesting to see what Bieniemy does with it.

Whether it is the rushing scheme, under-center runs, play-action, RPOs, or the ability to get receivers open against man coverage, it all needs to be self-scouted and either overhauled, fine-tuned, put by the wayside, or given a higher usage rate.

Here is the reality, though: We will not know how far Reid will take the adjustments or whether they will work or not until nine months from now, and we may never know how much influence Bieniemy had on the results.

This is Reid’s hill to die on, and he just made that very clear. As far as who holds Reid accountable, I think he has earned the benefit of the doubt from Chiefs CEO Clark Hunt, at least for the 2026 season. No one in that building is interested in wasting another year of Mahomes’ prime.