Joe Banner was sitting in a hotel in New Zealand, about to travel to Hawaii, enjoying a life at least temporarily removed from football, when I tracked him down this week.Make no mistake, the longtime team president of the still follows the game as closely as po sible, especially with so many of his protegees thriving in the postseason again, but within days of his old pal Andy Reid being handed the Lombardi Trophy, Banner was vacationing literally on the other side of the world. Yet his fingerprints, in some ways, remain all over the most succe sful teams in the NFL. For the second time in three years, the Super Bowl winner included a brain trust with an abundance of Banner's former hires, with the and Eagles organizations carrying a significant Banner influence. Throw in the , coached by John Harbaugh, and the , coached by Sean McDermott both of whom Banner hired in Philadelphia for the first NFL jobs to kickstart their career and the Banner coaching family tree is in full bloom.I hadn't considered these obvious connections until a happenstance conversation with a mutual friend, who mentioned it in pa sing, which prompted me to track down the man who first hired Reid -- now the darling of 2020 -- to coach the Eagles two decades ago before he was even on the radar of most NFL decision-makers. I could tell from the strange ringtone that Banner was out of the country, and the 18-hour difference in time zones did little to dampen Banner's enthusiasm about seeing so many he helped give a start to in this league again prosper at the highest level.Helping to find Andy Reid"Of my list of hires, Andy is the one I am most proud of," said Banner who ran the Eagles from 1995 to 2012, was president of the from 2012 to 2013 and has consulted with the and other teams on more recent hires. "He had been working in Green Bay for eight years under Ron Wolf, a Hall of Fame GM and they were looking for head coach, too, and he doesn't even interview Andy. And there were eight other teams looking for a head coach, and not one even took a look at Andy. And to be honest, he blew us away in the interview, and we were sold, and I don't know how Ron Wolf skipped over him. He hired Ray Rhodes instead and he was gone in a year."Suffice to say, Banner was sweating out the Chiefs' slow start two weeks ago a constant of their historic postseason and cheering wildly as Reid's offense finished the game with 21-unanswered points in the fourth quarter to give Kansas City its first NFL title in 50 years."He is truly a superior person," Banner said of Reid, whom he hired when still just a quarterbacks coach with no experience calling plays or running a football team. "The joy I have for him and his family is very real, and I do take some pride in seeing him accomplish this. We were able to find him, and I wish we could have done it together, but he's special on all fronts and I'm glad this ends the conversation about whether or not he is going to make Hall of Fame."NFL burning offseason questions, mailbag part 2: .... Could the move on from Dak? Does have any time left in New Orleans? The Pick Six Superfriends answer these questions and more.Banner also hired Chiefs team president Mark Donovan just the fifth person to hold that title in the history of the team early in his tenure running the Eagles for then novice owner Jeffrey Lurie, Banner's longtime friend. Banner brought Donovan to Philadelphia from the league office in 2003, where he was working on sales, the beginning of what would be a fruitful career as a team executive."He was working in the NFL's corporate sales department Michael Irvin Jersey when I started to hear about him," Banner said. "We made him the head of busine s and promoted him a few times and he's become one and he's someone I recommended for other jobs and now he's the president of the team that just won the Super Bowl."Playing a key role in another champion
0
