KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Days before his most recent media interview, Andy Reid’s Chiefs were conspicuously absent from the Super Bowl for the first time in four years — and from the playoffs for the first time in more than a decade.

More distressingly, their 11 losses last season didn’t just mark the head coach’s first losing season since his tenure in Kansas City began in 2013. It matched the total of the previous three regular seasons combined.

Despite many narrow defeats, the reversal of fortune certainly has raised legitimate questions about where the recent dynasty is headed now.

Among many unsettled matters, Reid’s supremely gifted on-field alter ego, Patrick Mahomes, is recovering from knee surgery. He may not be ready for the start of the 2026 season. Star tight end Travis Kelce’s future remains unclear, and several other personnel situations — how to navigate some financial gridlock, for instance, and off-field issues — remain unresolved.

Amid all this, Reid will turn 68 in a few weeks and recently underwent a knee procedure that prevented him from attending the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis, even as the Chiefs approach what looms as a pivotal NFL draft (they’ll be selecting ninth).

All of which would seem to be a lot of flux and anxiety to navigate.

So Reid could have been forgiven if he was subdued or even terse in a pre-combine Zoom interview with media on Feb. 20. Instead, he was almost eerily animated for virtually the entire 18 minutes or so that he spoke.

Instead, he projected eagerness about taking it all on.

That started with smiling broadly in his opening comments as he mentioned “this long offseason that’s not normal for us,” and “all these good things happening as we go forward here.”

Speaking of several coaching changes, he grinned as he said “sometimes change can be good, as we know. And I think this is good for both sides: People have moved on and have had opportunities to hook onto other places, and they’ll be very successful doing that.”

He beamed as he referred to “a lot of moving parts” … and even as he acknowledged the organization’s salary cap issues.

It was such a striking mood under the circumstances that I felt compelled to ask to what degree Reid feels invigorated by what he and the Chiefs are facing — which seems to me to be the most to sort out or fix since Reid fired defensive coordinator Bob Sutton and replaced him with Steve Spagnuolo after the 2018 season.

Perhaps not surprisingly for a man who nearly every week speaks of “looking forward to the challenge” of the Chiefs’ next foe, Reid began his answer thusly:

“Listen, I love challenges,” he said. “Every year is a challenge. This one presents a little different because of what we’re coming off of after this last year.”

As he started to smile again, he added, “Nobody wants that. Fans don’t want that, (the) organization doesn’t want that. Coaches, players, they don’t want that. So you dig in and you work to fix the problems that you think were in place and take care of business there. So that’s what we’re doing.”

The more he spoke, the more I was reminded of something that I think at times is too easily forgotten about Reid. Something, frankly, I’m not sure I thought about enough when Reid recently re-hired Eric Bieniemy as the Chiefs’ offensive coordinator.

It struck me as OK but unimaginative at a time the Chiefs sure seem to need entirely fresh thinking and more than mere tweaks. There are thin lines between grooves and ruts and being stubborn and resolute, I wrote then, suggesting that this choice would be quite a test of that.

But while it remains to be seen how the Chiefs will seek to revitalize an offense straitjacketed by apparent predictability and snags in their running game, to me Reid’s genuine enthusiasm the other day reiterated a crucial aspect of how he’s become the fourth-winningest coach in NFL history. And why only two coaches (Bill Belichick with six; Chuck Noll with four) have won more Super Bowls than Reid, whose three are tied with Joe Gibbs and Bill Walsh.

None of that would ever have been possible if Reid were inflexible or just so set in his ways that he couldn’t look to adapt over and over and over and over.

It’s no simple thing to stay true to a foundation and principles while also innovating, but much of Reid’s success has hinged on how he’s found that sweet spot over the decades.

So even if it doesn’t sound dramatic enough this time around, between the return of Bieniemy and Reid saying there won’t be “wholesale change,” it’s also true that more nuanced adjustments — including in player personnel and other staff members — can generate change.

Certainly, Reid is cognizant of the need to refresh and modify.

General manager Brett Veach, whose first NFL job was as Reid’s personal assistant in Philadelphia, has long marveled at how Reid has changed over the years to loosen up with his players. But Reid seemed to know from the get-go in Philly that his career would hinge on adjustments of all sorts.

In 2022, Bieniemy recalled Reid telling him this in 1999 — Reid’s first season as head coach of the Eagles and Bieniemy’s last as an NFL player: “‘You either evolve, or you die out like a dinosaur.’”

From the basement of his Kansas City home early in the pandemic, Reid was on a Zoom call when he was asked about contending with disruption and uncertainty. The Chiefs were coming off their first Super Bowl win in 50 years and working toward an encore.

He thought back to his first full-time coaching job in the mid-1980s as an assistant at San Francisco State, which was a Division II non-scholarship program.

“Everything wasn’t easy there,” Reid said then. “I mean, to film practice we had to have a guy climb up on a ladder … We had to have the players pick up rocks on the dirt field so we could actually practice.

“So those experiences help me at times like this … when everything’s not quite perfect, to make it work.”

Everything’s not quite perfect now, either. And it’s going to be fascinating to see whether last season was a blip or the fall of an empire.

But it bears mention that engaging the challenge ahead is the very essence of what Reid loves about the work he’s mastered like scant few before him.

And it’s about something far more holistic than one hire or another, or fresh plays — though all of that matters, too.

Speaking at the combine, Veach talked about how the last few years (including 21 postseason games starting with the 2018 season) didn’t allow for much time, between the end of the season and the Super Bowl, for personnel staff and coaches to convene.

This time, he said, they started connecting right after the Chiefs’ regular-season finale Jan. 4 at Las Vegas.

Reid and his staff “were all-in, and it was exciting. And energetic in a way,” Veach told reporters in Indianapolis. “I think the last few years, we were kind of just like in a maintenance stage. And now we’re trying to just rebuild this thing again, and I think for a (general manager) and personnel staff, that’s exciting.”

Not to mention for a coach who obviously knows the status quo isn’t good enough — and who at least by appearances still relishes trying to solve what he long has thought of as a puzzle.

“A lot of moving parts (are) going on. But all good,” Reid said, smiling again. “All good stuff to give us an opportunity to be better.”

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