KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- When Eric Bieniemy was a free-agent running back in 1999, he had some relatively lucrative contract offers with other teams. He instead signed a deal for the minimum salary with the Philadelphia Eagles so he could play for their new head coach, an obscure former assistant by the name of Andy Reid.
Reid had this way of making Bieniemy, at that point of his career mostly a special-teams player, feel on his free-agent visit that he would be a valued part of what the coach was trying to build.
"When I went on that trip and I visited the Philadelphia Eagles, I felt at home," said Bieniemy, who would play one season for Reid and then return to coach for him years later with the Kansas City Chiefs.