Frank Reich isn’t planning to use one year at Stanford solely as a springboard to get back into coaching in the NFL.

“This is it,” the former Buffalo Bills quarterback told The Buffalo News, answering a question of whether the door is open to a pro coaching return. “I’m excited about this year and everything that this year is going to represent, and my goal, for me, personally, is that this year would be my most rewarding season coaching football. I’m going to pour everything into it.”

Reich, of course, was Jim Kelly’s understudy for most of his nine seasons in Buffalo from 1985-94. He will, of course, be forever remembered for having steered the Bills to one of the greatest comebacks in NFL history in January 1993, a 41-38 win in overtime against the Houston Oilers in a wild-card game in Orchard Park. Reich started in place of Kelly, who was injured, and threw for 289 yards and four touchdowns as the Bills rallied from a 35-3 deficit.

Reich also was an NFL coach for 18 seasons, including six as a head coach with Indianapolis and Carolina.

But after an unceremonious dismissal from his last head coaching job, he was ready to experience a non-football life.

That changed when one of his protégés needed help.

More than three decades after that magical afternoon in the AFC playoffs, Reich is trying to help Stanford football craft its own comeback.

Reich, 63, finds himself in a unique position. He is the interim football coach at Stanford for the next year, filling a post that came open after the Cardinal fired Troy Taylor in March. After that, he will step aside and make way for a long-term coach to be chosen by Stanford and Cardinal general manager Andrew Luck.

Reich is only a couple of months into his one-year job, one that came out of his working relationship with Luck, the former Colts quarterback and 2012 Stanford graduate who became the Cardinal’s general manager in November. Reich coached the Colts during Luck’s final NFL season in 2018 before his surprise retirement.

“I’m excited to come in here and help him fulfill his vision … to get the football program back to where it’s been, and that prominence it has,” said Reich, whose NFL playing career lasted 14 seasons.

“Andrew will know how to do that. That’s one thing. But really, the main thing to keep in mind and what I’m focused on is just, ‘How can I help this program?’ ”

‘I was done coaching’

Reich coached the Colts for five seasons from 2018-22, departing early in that final season when the team fired him after Week 9. He latched on with Carolina, expecting to bring along No. 1 overall pick Bryce Young.

The Panthers fired Reich on Nov. 27, 2023, after only 11 games. But Reich quickly found diversions.

He planned to enjoy spending time with his wife, Linda, his children and his grandchildren, and he was ready to devote more work with charitable foundations, including his own — kNot Today, which has the goal of fighting and ending sexual abuse, exploitation and trafficking of children.

“We had made up our mind,” Reich said. “We made the decision that I was done coaching, and ready to move on to the next phase of my life.”

Reich, though, didn’t completely dismiss a return. It had to be the right opportunity, and at this phase of both his life and his career, Reich had the right to be choosy.

But as he and Linda wandered the aisles of a Costco in Greensboro, N.C., a phone call came from Luck.

He certainly didn’t expect Luck to ask him to be the head coach at Stanford. But that conversation quickly gave him a new decision, and then a new challenge.

“I told him he was crazy,” Reich recalled of that phone call. “But it was just crazy enough that it might make some sense to do it.”

Reich flew to Northern California, met with Stanford’s football and athletic staff, then spent “three to four days” discussing with his wife the possibility of a return to coaching.

“Then I made the decision to take that leap of faith, with really high expectations on how rewarding this can be,” Reich said. “I’m excited to bring my years of experience to the program, but I also feel very strongly that I’m going to get a lot out of this, personally, working with the people out here.”

The opening at Stanford also came out of controversy. Stanford fired Taylor on March 25, following a published investigation by ESPN into accusations of bullying and belittling female athletic staff members, and complaints from athletic department employees over hostile behavior.

Reich finds himself in a somewhat similar situation to that of Jim Grobe, a longtime Wake Forest coach who came out of retirement in 2016 for a one-year interim job at Baylor, which fired Art Briles in the wake of a wide-ranging sexual assault and Title IX scandal there.

“Principles and values and culture and taking a step forward — that’s enduring, and that’ll last,” Luck told reporters April 1 when Stanford introduced Reich as its interim coach in Palo Alto. “That’s what we’re feeling, and that’s what we’re preparing for. Frank’s here, the staff’s here. We’re doing something that will last in many ways.

“That’s why I have deep conviction that this will work.”

The plans for Stanford

Stanford football hasn’t had a winning record in a full season since 2018, when David Shaw coached the Cardinal to a 9-4 mark and a win in the Sun Bowl against Pittsburgh. Stanford was 4-2 in a Covid-19-shortened 2020 season, but has finished 3-9 in each of the last four years.

Reich’s first goal is to stabilize the program. Stanford fired Taylor after two seasons, and the firing — a decision Luck made in the wake of the ESPN report, which detailed the accusations against Taylor and investigations into Taylor’s behavior, as well as NCAA rules infractions — came less than four months after Luck became Stanford’s general manager Nov. 30.

Reich first leans on Luck’s vision for the program. Luck will handle everything from fundraising to business operations and roster management, with the aim of bringing Stanford football back to national prominence.

Stanford was ranked in The Associated Press Top 25 for 11 straight seasons, from 2009-19, even winning the Rose Bowl in 2012 and 2015.

Reich enters his first college coaching job in a precarious time for Stanford, for college football and for college athletics, which includes the finalization of the House settlement, a revenue-sharing plan that requires colleges to directly pay current and former athletes who competed between June 2016 and September 2024.

Even well-heeled Stanford faced some insecurity. A recent report by The Athletic detailed its initial reluctance as an institution and as an athletic program to embrace name, image and likeness efforts, but also noted the willingness of new administrators, including Stanford president Jonathan Levin, “to go all-in on revenue sharing.”

Stanford will enter its second year as an Atlantic Coast Conference member, and is one of the most far-flung members of a league primarily on the East Coast. Reich once played in the ACC, when he was the quarterback at Maryland from 1980-84. He jokes that all the cross-country travel he did as an NFL player and coach will serve him well with Stanford’s 2025 football schedule, which includes its season opener Aug. 23 at Hawaii, and ACC road games Sept. 20 at Virginia, Oct. 25 at Miami and Nov. 8 at North Carolina.

And there’s the matter of adjusting to a schedule of living on the West Coast. His wife, children and grandchildren were still on the East Coast while he was in his first weeks at Stanford.

“By the time we get off the practice field, they’re asleep,” Reich said. “If I’m going to have any FaceTime with the grandchildren, it’s got to be early in the morning.”

The immediate approach

University at Buffalo football coach Pete Lembo said he was “shocked” when he saw Reich at the Call To Courage Award breakfast April 5 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Buffalo.

Stanford had just named Reich its interim coach a few days earlier, in the middle of a time when Football Bowl Subdivision programs are going through spring practice. They aimed to not only bring in, but also retain players who may consider transferring to other schools, and navigating a recruiting schedule that ramped up in March, April and May. So, the spring was not the most opportune time on the calendar for cross-country travel.

Still, Lembo said he and Reich exchanged contact information. And Lembo, who has been in college coaching since 1992, offered his perspective.

“He’s really taken a crash course in college football, and in some ways, pro football and college football are coming closer together, whether you’re looking at the rules of the game or you’re looking at NIL or things of that nature,” Lembo said. “But it’s still a different game when you’re coaching 18- to 22-year-old guys.”

Lembo gives Reich this advice: Embrace the coaching staff that is in place at Stanford. Embrace the players. Adapt, but have a plan.

“If you’re in the NFL, you can probably make changes more quickly than in a college environment,” Lembo said.

A large part of Reich’s ability to create stability at Stanford will be about setting expectations that center on the intangibles.

During a recent conversation with The Buffalo News, Reich considered some wisdom from a former coach of his, a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee who helped set a standard for Reich’s own development as a coach.

“Let’s focus our expectations around the process,” Reich said. “Let’s focus our expectations around how consistent we’re going to be, how excellent we’re going to be in getting prepared …

“And this is an old Marv Levy-ism: We’re going to worry about how we prepare, as Marv would say. The results are going to take care of themselves. If we can be excellent at all those things, then the results follow, and that’s our goal.”