Andy Reid Signals For Emergency Quesadilla

As the third quarter of the AFC championship game begins and with the ball on the Bills’ 22, Chiefs’ head coach Andy Reid called an audible. Time for a trick play? Spike the ball and regroup? No. It was time for an emergency quesadilla.

Since joining the Chiefs in 2013, Reid’s established what he calls “queso protocol” (or “Queso Proto”), an emergency game-(and sometimes practice-)day procedure that puts a warm, cheesy quesadilla with Kansas City smokehouse beans in his hand within 3.4 seconds. Since ‘Queso Proto’ went into effect, the Chiefs have called only six Q.T.O.s (quesadilla timeouts) — most notably in 2019, when a Q.T.O. managed to turn the tide of the Super Bowl.

“Next to the Gatorade cart we have the glass Case-a-Dilla. It says ‘Break in Case of Emergency For A Cheesy Resolution’. If I give the ‘Q’ signal with my hands, Steve Spagnola will blitz the case and scramble its contents over to me in seconds,” said the four-time Super Bowl–winning coach. “Anything beyond four seconds and I’m liable to play-call a fumble or interception.”

Reid admitted that, during his time with the Eagles, he made too many “bone-headed play-calling mistakes” due to hunger. In 2005, for example, if he’d been armed with a warm quesadilla and two squirt bottles (one sour cream, one guac), he might have beaten Bill Bellichick and the Patriots in the Big Game.

“Eat and learn,” said Reid, whose Chiefs have won the last two Lombardi Trophies.

And if he runs out of Q.T.O.s? “We resort to the B.O.T.O., where I pull half of last night’s Bloomin’ Onion from a zip pocket in my fleece.”