David Andrews was sitting out the 2019 season after being diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism and happened to be out at Patriots practice on this day. As he stood there, minding his own business, he saw Bill Belichick turn and start to come his way.
The two-time Super Bowl champion center figured he must be in trouble—for something.
But that wasn’t it at all.
“That was the 100th year of the NFL, and obviously Bill’s such a historian, such an ambassador of the game, how much he loves the game, and that year, they were putting more people into the Hall of Fame as contributors,” Andrews recalled on Monday. “And we had never really talked about my uncle. Obviously, he knew who he was and they obviously competed against each other, but we never addressed it really, never talked about it, and he just came up to me during warmups at practice and he just starting going on about my uncle.
“How great of a player he was and how his whole contribution to the NFL is not like a lot of people’s, he goes, ‘There’s a lot of great players, there’s a lot of great coaches, but for someone to do all of that in a career is really impressive.’ And that really meant a lot to me.”
Andrews’s Uncle Dan, ex-NFL player and coach Dan Reeves, died Friday at 77.
We’re going to get to this week’s mail in a minute. But first, I thought it was important to give Reeves’s legacy the space we gave John Madden’s last week—because while the impact each had on football was distinct, the stamp Reeves left, like Madden’s, was uniquely his own.
What Belichick said to Andrews that day two years ago really just scratched the surface on Reeves’s impact on football, and we’re going to get to that. But in talking with Andrews about his great uncle—he and Reeves were family through Reeves’s wife, Andrews’s Aunt Pam—it was clear there was a lot more to who Reeves was as a person than what his stats as a player, his record a coach or all those Super Bowls in both capacities could tell you.
To people in the league, Reeves will be remembered as one of the great gentlemen of pro football, and that’s the man Andrews grew up knowing. In fact, among his earliest memories of his uncle was hearing how his Aunt Pam would make Dan wear a suit, or at the very least a collared shirt and tie, on the sideline, because she worried about his losing his cool during games on TV, and figured being dressed up would be a reminder for him to act right.
“That was a funny story to me, because I never really saw that side of him,” Andrews said. “Anytime he dealt with the media, he’s got that Southern drawl, he was just so calm and collected, and when he dealt with me he was so gentle and kind, everyone just loved him. So I would hear those stories, and I would just laugh, because I never saw that, even when I was a kid growing up around it.”
A couple of decades later, Andrews calls it “God’s timing” that Reeves was coaching his hometown Falcons during his formative years, from 1997 to 2003, when he was a little league football player going through elementary school. “If he was in Denver or New York, we might’ve gone to a game or two, but it just worked out in a weird way where it was all right there.” And Andrews got to take advantage of it.
In the summers, he’d drive up with his mom or dad to morning sessions during Atlanta’s training camp at Furman in Greenville, S.C., then hustle back for his own practices later in the day. In the fall, he’d get picked up at school some days and drive over with his dad to see the Falcons’ practice at Flowery Branch. And he had great memories from those times that prepared him, without his knowing it, for his life’s work.
He can remember getting linemen’s gloves, seeing how big they were and thinking how cool it would be to be one of them, which helped encourage a young kid coming up playing positions that are short on glory. He can remember Ray Buchanan giving him a ride in his tricked-out golf cart at camp, before playfully throwing him in the ice tub. He can recall Keith Brooking picking on him, then quietly leaving signed gear behind for him. He can remember his mom finding him eating Cheetos with Jessie Tuggle in Tuggle’s basement.
All that was possible because of Reeves. And for Andrews, what ties it all together is how Reeves’s players treated him, like one of their own, which was a reflection of how Reeves treated everyone. It wasn’t like Reeves was trying to set an example for Andrews when he was around him, either. It was just who Reeves was. Andrews can even remember seeing it when he’d go to his uncle’s radio show on Monday nights in Buckhead, which was another sign, to the young kid with big dreams, that Reeves was simply like that all the time.
“I couldn’t tell you one thing about his offensive scheme or what he ran at that age,” Andrews said. “But watching how, at those coaching dinners, or even at training camp, how he was with people, how he treated people, how respectful he was to people, and then a lot of his players and how they treated me—I think that had a bigger impact on me, more than anything football, it’s how you treat people being in that position.
“It’s the respect you give people.”
He got examples of it to the end, too.
In the spring of 2019, Andrews went to get lunch with his uncle at the Atlanta Athletic Club, where Reeves had long been a member. In that place, it was basically like sitting with a dignitary, and Andrews saw that as member after member came to the table. At that point, Andrews was 26 and going into his fifth NFL season, but he was still taking lessons from his uncle, seeing Reeves engage in real conversation with every last person that approach the table.
And those lessons that Andrews took would continue to come up. One more recent one resurfaced when Andrews saw Belichick’s signature for the first time. He noticed you could make out the letters—it wasn’t just the scribbled mess that most of us leave—and it reflected another life lesson that Reeves gave him.
“As a little kid, you get signatures, right? And professional athletes, you can’t read any of our signatures,” Andrews said. “Everybody looks for, TEA, whatever it is. , whatever it might be. And he always wrote his signature out. He said to me once, .”
At one point, Andrews was able to return the favor for all those autographs that Reeves helped him get, too. When he was still in little league, his team had novelty trading cards made, and Andrews gave one to his uncle, signed with a message: . It was while Reeves was still coaching, with Andrews dreaming of playing for him in the pros. Reeves later joked he couldn’t hold up his end of the bargain, as Andrews had held up his.
Of course, Andrews says now that couldn’t be further from the truth. It was Reeves, in fact, who kept encouraging Andrews through an up-and-down rookie year, and told him he’d done the right thing in signing with New England as an undrafted free agent in 2015, even though the Patriots had drafted a center the year before who had started in the Super Bowl. Reeves knew, Andrews says, that it was the place he’d be developed best, and the place he fit best, and as usual Reeves was right.
So yes, there was a football impact here too in the relationship that started with those days getting to hang out with Mike Vick, Warrick Dunn, Roddy White and Alge Crumpler, which buoyed “my love for the game, my appreciation of it. Those guys were heroes to me growing up.” And to be sure, Andrews is proud of his uncle’s football résumé, and happy to champion his case for the Hall of Fame.
“There’s two people who’ve been to more Super Bowls than him, do you know who they are?” he asked. The answer: Only Belichick (with 12) and Tom Brady (with 10) have made it more times than Reeves (nine).
But mostly, Andrews will remember who Reeves was, not what he was. And if there’s something lasting, he hopes it’ll be in what the random person who comes up to him walks away thinking—because he knows how they all remembered his uncle.
“I definitely try,” Andrew said. “And there’s days I catch myself, whether you’re pissed off about a performance or a loss, and it’s hard to let that go somedays, and it’s hard to not let it get to you. And I’m sure he probably let it get to him at times, the story I told earlier about my Aunt Pam, his wife, wanting him to wear a tie so he was calmer on the sidelines, I’m sure there were times. But I don’t remember those.
“I think more people than not remember the other side of him, how gracious he was with people. That’s definitely something I try to emulate every day. It’s definitely hard, but it’s how you treat people, how you carry yourself, that’s gonna go on with you after, sometimes a lot more than what you’ve accomplished.”
For those who knew Reeves, it very clearly has.
On to your mail for Week 18 …
