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Update: Wednesday, 8:05 a.m. Arrowhead Time
NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport checked in Wednesday morning with Eric Bieniemy’s interview schedule for the week.
#Chiefs OC Eric Bienemy is set to interview with two teams today -- #Jets and #Bucs. He’ll do his #Dolphins interview tomorrow. The #Bengals interview is Friday, following Vance Joseph’s today. He’s elected to not take the #AZCardinals interview. Four is plenty.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) January 2, 2019
UPDATE: Monday, 1:37 p.m. Arrowhead Time
After our initial report on the New York Jets’ interest, news emerged that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Miami Dolphins and Arizona Cardinals have all asked to interview Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy for their vacant head-coaching positions.
This makes four requests now for Bienemy, who also has been contacted by the #Jets, #Bucs and #Dolphins. Andy Reid tree is hot. https://t.co/uoUxRwZ05q
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) December 31, 2018
As expected, on Sunday night the New York Jets fired the head coach Todd Bowles. On Monday, reports surfaced that the Jets have asked to interview Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy for their head coaching position.
Source: The #Jets have put in a request to interview #Chiefs OC Eric Bieniemy. Makes a lot of sense, given his success and how the Andy Reid tree has done.
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) December 31, 2018
It’s not a surprise that Bieniemy is already drawing interest from teams in need of a head coach. As we pointed out last week, the last two Chiefs offensive coordinators under Andy Reid — Doug Pederson and Matt Nagy — have had success as head coaches, and the coordinator for a league-leading offense is always going to draw interest.
Fans always hate this, of course. It seems like a distraction for other teams to be interviewing our coaches while they are preparing for upcoming playoff games. And let’s be honest: it is a distraction for them.
But at the same time, it isn’t fair to potential head coaches to remove them from the field of candidates because their current team is still in contention. Teams always want to fill vacancies quickly, and if they have to wait on an opportunity to interview someone, the chances are they won’t be considered.
This is just one of the prices of success: other teams want to hire your assistant coaches. And with a bye week in front of the Chiefs, at least Bieniemy has a little more time available than he would if the Chiefs were playing in the wild-card round.
We’d better get used to it, too. It’s likely that this won’t be the only head coaching position for which Bieniemy will be considered.