Mike Ditka’s name came up in Kansas City long before Friday’s news of his death at 86, and one of the more memorable moments involving the Bears legend and the Chiefs belonged to Andy Reid.
Back in 2014, Ditka was in Kansas City as a presenter at the 101 Awards, and he used the stage to deliver a light jab at Reid, who had just finished his first season as Chiefs head coach. Reid had gone 11-5 and reached the playoffs a year after Kansas City won only two games. Ditka, already known as much for his hard-edged honesty as for his success, was there to present the NFC Coach of the Year award to Carolina’s Ron Rivera.
That’s when Ditka turned to Reid and said: “Andy, I want to tell you one thing: They gave me this award one year, and they tried to take it away three years later.”
The line landed exactly the way he wanted. The crowd roared, and Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt jumped in with his own promise: “Andy, I will tell you, we will not take back the award in three years. You have my word on that.”
Ditka’s relationship with Kansas City ran deeper than that one joke. He was the Bears’ coach from 1982-92 and finished with a 106-62 record, taking Chicago to the postseason seven times. He later coached the Saints, though New Orleans managed only 12 wins across three seasons.
He is also remembered for one of the most famous draft-day gambles in league history. In 1999, Ditka traded away his entire draft class in order to move from 12th to fifth in the first round and select Texas running back Ricky Williams. The Saints sent off their first, third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh picks in 1999, along with a first- and third-round pick in 2000, to get the fifth selection from Washington.
Reid had his own Ditka story before that 2014 appearance. At his first NFL Combine with the Chiefs, Reid said Ditka had once contacted the Eagles about making that same kind of deal when Reid was coaching in Philadelphia. The Eagles held the No. 2 pick, and Reid wanted Donovan McNabb.
“ Coach Ditka, yeah that was a pretty big offer, ” Reid said at the 2013 Combine, per the Chiefs’ website. “We looked at all of those; we looked at all the offers.
We felt that that pick was an important pick and we had an opportunity to pick up Donovan there and it worked out pretty good for us. But we did - we looked at all the different options and kind of weighed them out.”
Ditka later spent time as an ESPN analyst, and in 2008 he again took aim at Reid during the Donovan McNabb benching in Philadelphia. His issue wasn’t the decision itself. It was who delivered it.
“I don’t let the ballboy tell him,” Ditka said, per the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I don’t let the quarterback coach, the defensive coordinator tell him.
I tell him. Not only do I tell him that he’s benched, I tell him why he’s benched.”
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