The Bruins are moving on from Bieniemy, sources told Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger. The former Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator and NFL running back joined UCLA’s staff in 2024 as the offensive coordinator and assistant head coach following the hire of Deshaun Foster as the team’s head coach.
UCLA went 5-7 in 2024 and was 3-6 in the Big Ten. The Bruins averaged 5.4 yards a play and scored just 18.4 points per game. Only eight teams across the top level of college football averaged fewer points than the Bruins and UCLA scored more than 20 points just twice all season.
Bieniemy, 55, interviewed multiple times for NFL head coaching positions while he was the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator. He joined Andy Reid’s staff in 2013 when Reid became the Chiefs’ head coach and was the team’s running backs coach through the 2017 season. He was promoted to offensive coordinator in 2018 as Patrick Mahomes became the team’s starting quarterback.
However, Bieniemy never got a head coaching job in the NFL and moved on from the Chiefs after the 2022 season. Five NFL teams had job openings that offseason and he interviewed for just one.
Bieniemy became the offensive coordinator for the Washington Commanders in 2023, but he spent just one season with the team as the organization went through wholesale changes following the season. Washington’s new ownership group changed the coaching staff and hired Dan Quinn as the team’s head coach with former Arizona Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury serving as the offensive coordinator for No. 2 overall draft pick Jayden Daniels.
Before coaching for the Chiefs, Bieniemy was the offensive coordinator at his alma mater, Colorado, for two seasons and had served as an assistant coach with the Minnesota Vikings. It’s unclear just where Bieniemy’s next coaching stop will be and it’d have been hard to fathom four years ago that Bieniemy would be leaving his third job in three seasons at the end of 2024 instead of being the head coach of an NFL team. [Reply]
EB's and Nagy's abilities and impacts are mutually exclusive... it's strange they seem to go hand in hand.
It's like some people can't fathom a situation where EB had relatively little responsibility and impact, then Nagy has more responsibility and maybe just isn't great at it.... Nagy's offense doesn't make EB some kind of genius or even effective at whatever he did do around there, since of course we're ignoring every other change in offense as part of this dumb exercise of fan fiction. [Reply]
Originally Posted by UChieffyBugger:
Yeah Andy says otherwise but you obviously know better :-)
Andy is the consummate professional. I guarantee you for every quote you can find about Bienemy, there's an analogous quote for Nagy, Pederson, Kafka, or Childress.
Quotes from Andy mean next to nothing.
Find one shred of evidence outside of KC and I will stop. You won't find it, so I won't.
Eric Bienemy is a myth and a legend to Chiefs fans. In the real world, he's a failure. [Reply]
Originally Posted by htismaqe:
Find supporting evidence OUTSIDE of KC.
This is simple. To eliminate KC variables like Andy and Mahomes, you have to look at time spent outside of those.
Matt Nagy took Mitch and the Bears to two of their 5 playoff appearances in 20 years.
Bienemy has been fired everywhere he's ever been and players and other coaches dislike him.
I don't dislike Bienemy, nor do I like Nagy. I think they're largely unimportant when it comes to the Chiefs. I have a problem with this idea that Bienemy is great and Nagy is a stooge. It's simply not true and there zero independent evidence to support it.
Bienemy has reached legendary status with Chiefs fans and it's silly. He's a footnote in the growth of an NFL dynasty. No body will remember him even being here 25 years from now. That will be Andy and Pat.
I'm willing to accept that EB's recipe may only work in KC. Team and coaching dynamics are complicated. Andy creates a culture where he gets the best versions of people, and his demeanor keeps it all on an even keel. EB is a little bit of a disruptor and a different style than some of the other coaches. It somehow worked amazingly. Look at that stat line from 2022. We have better WRs now, even without Rashee, than we did then. [Reply]
Originally Posted by wazu:
I'm willing to accept that EB's recipe may only work in KC. Team and coaching dynamics are complicated. Andy creates a culture where he gets the best versions of people, and his demeanor keeps it all on an even keel. EB is a little bit of a disruptor and a different style than some of the other coaches. It somehow worked amazingly. Look at that stat line from 2022. We have better WRs now, even without Rashee, than we did then.
That's why the first step in any kind of objective data analysis is to eliminate all of the variables in KC.
All you have to do is look at EB's career outside of KC and it's right there staring you in the face. [Reply]
Originally Posted by wazu:
I'm willing to accept that EB's recipe may only work in KC. Team and coaching dynamics are complicated. Andy creates a culture where he gets the best versions of people, and his demeanor keeps it all on an even keel. EB is a little bit of a disruptor and a different style than some of the other coaches. It somehow worked amazingly. Look at that stat line from 2022. We have better WRs now, even without Rashee, than we did then.
It's a weird situation too because he was blackballed into some really really bad situations. I use blackball loosely because part of the problem may have been his insistence in becoming a HC. You're not winning games at Washington with Sam howell. Or at UCLA given their talent level.
He still may be a decent enough option as a college HC. Give him an offensive coordinator, and know that players can check out every few years when they're sick of his shtick. But it does seem that at the very least we've ruled out many situations where he wouldn't be a fit.
Still love the idea of him in KC as long as expectations are that he is an assistant and not a primary playcaller [Reply]
Some interesting twists in bringing the band back together
- bring in one hardass assistant to level out all our players coaches
- bring back the childress consultant role for a season. Our coaching staff has become too inbred and it's time to again re-examine offenses from all levels. Pipe dream to think pederson might do this? It could be a temp gig if he doesn't want to relegate himself to an assistant coach
- bring back Kafka as qbs coach. I know he didn't fly in NY. like EB, I don't think this guy cuts it as a playcaller
Who knows how much longer reid has to coach. Let's reset our thinking for a final-ish long term run [Reply]
And to the EB detractors. If EB's influence was so minimal, then why did Andy have him meet with the players before the AFC championship game and go over schemes with them? :-) [Reply]
Originally Posted by UChieffyBugger:
We all wanted those draft picks Bearcat :-)
And to the EB detractors. If EB's influence was so minimal, then why did Andy have him meet with the players before the AFC championship game and go over schemes with them? :-)
I'm not an EB detractor. I'm a realist.
Andy has had all kinds of guest motivators, some of them wers even from other teams. It means nothing. [Reply]
