This week, the Kansas City Chiefs and offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy agreed to a multi-year deal for Bieniemy to return to the team he won two Super Bowls with. A lot of things come to mind when Chiefs fans
think of Bieniemy, but near the top of the list is the distilled nuggets of wisdom that he has an innate ability to drop into a presser on a random Tuesday.
Some might call them Bieniemisms, others might call them proverbs — however you label these maxims, one thing is true: Bieniemy is one quotable son of a gun.
To celebrate Bieniemy’s return, I thought it might be fun to comb through the catacombs of articles and dig up the best Bieniemy quotes from his last stint in Kansas City.
So without further ado, I present a collection of all of my favorite Bieniemy sayings.
On screwing up.
“One thing in this industry — the only way you’re going to learn to improve is to go out there and make a mistake. Sometimes the best thing you can do is make a mistake.”
On giving praise
“Great job of finishing the play. Now catch your breath. We’re about to feed your ass.”
On not shooting yourself in the foot
“When it’s all said and done — like I tell our guys each and every week — ‘Let’s line up and play against the opponent.’
“Because the Chiefs right now are kicking the Chiefs’ ass. Let’s go out and play against the opponent, give ourselves an opportunity, and then let’s see what happens.”
On what makes Mahomes unique
“You guys have been around him — you know him,” said Bieniemy. “He’s a competitive prick. OK? He’s a great kid, but he’s a competitive prick.”
On getting frustrated
“I don’t have time to get frustrated. Because I have to get up and go to work the next day. We do this for a reason – we coach football to be the very best that we can.”
On running the football
“The more yards you can put on the ground, the more pressure you apply to the defense.”
On committing to the run game
“We have to run it,” Bieniemy asserted to reporters. “We have to invest in it — meaning that we can’t just run it a few times and expect success.”
“It’s just like when you’re pounding concrete and you’re using that hammer,” suggested Bieniemy. “It’s not going to break the first few times you utilize it. It’s going to take a while.
On self-reflection
“So when you get your ass kicked, you re-evaluate everything. So guys have to take a look at themselves [and] coaches have to take a look at themselves.”
On overcoming adversity
“No one ever wants to go into a game [by] turning over the football — but at certain times, things happened. The thing that we need to do is make sure that we have the wherewithal to overcome the adversity and make something positive happen. So just like I told the guys: ‘We’ve got to create our own luck.’”
On giving feedback
“The thing is these guys understand I coach hard, and I coach fair, and I always tell them, ‘I’m going to be your harshest critic, but I’m also going to be your biggest fan,’” explained Bieniemy. “The reason why I coach that way is because I know what they’re capable of doing. So, when those guys make mistakes, I just want them to understand that obviously we don’t want you to make a mistake, it’s OK that you made the mistake, but now what are we going to do from here on out to amend that mistake?”
On the 13-second game, preparation, and situational football
“It wasn’t by chance that it happened,” Bieniemy said of the game-tying drive. “It happened because we’ve practiced it over and over and over again.”
On teaching phonics
“Our guys are going to do whatever is needed to go out and win, because when it’s all said and done with — we talk about this every week. It’s not about the numbers; it’s about the alphabets. And the only two [letters] that matter in this industry is a W and a L. Whatever we have to do to get that W? That’s all what matters.”
“I’m not trying to sound arrogant or anything, that first drive we always want to go out and score,” Bieniemy insisted. “I don’t care if it’s a 15-play drive or a one-play drive, we want to make sure that we go out there and establish our identity and who we are and what we’re going to be about today.”
On digging deep
“If you want to beat this team, you have got to out-effort them. You’ve got to out-strain them. You got to be willing to play to the echo of the last whistle.
“So that’s the type of game this is going to be. Put your hand in the dirt [and] knuckle up [for a] 60-minute dogfight. Then after that — if we have to go additional minutes — drink some water, get your Kool-Aid. [Then] we got to go do it. We gotta go fight!”
On protecting the football
“Guys need to understand this. In order to be a team that wants to exceed all expectations and go out and pursue a championship, there’s certain things you can’t do. You can’t turn over the football. Right now, we got to protect the ball. We got to do a better job of understanding how important it is of possessing it and making sure that whatever individual has that ball last, their job is to hand it back to the ref.”
What about you? What’s your favorite EB saying to date?
