Reid credits Mahomes and Kelce for their leadership, setting the tone for how the team should practice. He also praised general manager Brett Veach for adding players who fit that mentality.

“You’re not going to dog it with Pat Mahomes going full speed, Kelce going full speed,” Reid said. “They’re not going to allow you to do that, first of all. Then you watch them, and you watch how they practice, you know it’s not a fit if they can’t do that. Brett is not going to bring in guys that dog, jog, whatever you want to call it.”

The Chiefs lost a Thursday night game at Denver to a team that came in 2-5. Two weeks later, they lost a Super Bowl rematch at home to Philadelphia when Marquez Valdes-Scantling dropped what should’ve been a go-ahead touchdown pass late in the game.

There was another prime-time loss at Green Bay on Dec. 3 followed by a loss at home to the Bills when Kadarius Toney’s TD off a lateral from Kelce was wiped out by an offside penalty on Toney.

A loss to the Raiders on Christmas was the third straight defeat at home and led Reid to make some adjustments. The offensive coaching staff decided to simplify a complex offense and five wins later the Chiefs are back in the Super Bowl for the fourth time in five years.

“I think it gave our guys a nice little — for (lack of) a better term — a wakeup call that, ‘Listen we need to step things up here. Things aren’t just going to fall in our lap,’” Reid said of the loss to Las Vegas. “We’re taking everyone’s best shot, here’s a team that went through some adversity, and they stepped up and were able to present themselves like they did. We were able to learn from it and move on. I felt all along though (that) we had the ability to do that, like I said, we need a little kick in the tail there.”

Reid has already won two Super Bowls and more games than any coach in the history of the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. He’ll end up in the Pro Football Hall of Fame win or lose against the 49ers.

If the Chiefs win, it’ll be hard to argue that the 65-year-old Reid isn’t getting even better with age.