Well, That Explains A Lot

Once the Washington Commanders were out of NFL playoff contention, there was some talk that their offensive coordinator, Eric Bienemy, might get time off to moonlight with his former team, the Kansas City Chiefs.

Instead, the story went, the Commanders screwed him around and over, keeping him occupied instead of letting him get some work. Then instead of hiring him as head coach (after they fired Ron Rivera), they picked someone else ... and fired Bienemy.

Which sucks for him, and the Commanders.

If you can have Eric Bienemy working for your team as offensive coordinator, or better yet head coach, and you pass on the deal, you don't want to win football games. It's a Talleyrand "worse than a crime, a blunder" decision that teams keep making every time he's available and looking for work.

The standard explanation for why he hasn't been hired as a head coach yet is that he "doesn't interview well." Well, so what? He wins football games. And that's what matters from pretty much every angle, including a team's financial bottom line. Winning teams sell tickets. Winning teams sell merch. Winning teams get the plum game slots for prime time TV, which sells more tickets and sells more merch.

Passing on the opportunity to bring Eric Bienemy onto your team is like Patrick Mahomes turning up free agent somehow and the best offer any other team comes up with is "yeah, we could use him on our practice squad as the third string backup."

But, it seems, the stories weren't quite completely true. Fox News reports that Bienemy drove to Baltimore and advised KC's offense before the AFC championship game.

Which, to me, explains much of why the Chiefs outperformed their earlier play and rolled on to victory and a Super Bowl berth.

If the Chiefs are smart and no other team has the front office gray matter to snap Bienemy up as head coach, they should bring him back as offensive coordinator with a huge raise and a tacit promise that when Andy Reid retires, Bienemy moves into the top slot.