24/7.com reporting that Andy Hill has been hired as Special Teams Coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs.
With do-everything stud Tyreek Hill in the return game and a rock-solid kicking game between punter Dustin Colquitt and kicker Harrison Butker, the Kansas City Chiefs have featured impressive special teams play to complement their high-powered offense over the last few years. The reigning Super Bowl champions don’t have many weak points.
Still, the Kansas City need to continue building talent both on the field and among its coaching staff if it hopes to repeat next year.
The Chiefs’ latest hire adds plenty of experience.
The team announced Friday that they’ve added former Missouri associate head coach and special teams coordinator Andy Hill as assistant special teams coach. Hill joins KC after nearly 25 years in Columbia, Mo., as he departed after Missouri fired head coach Barry Odom following last season.
That’s right — Hill worked on the Tigers’ coaching staff for over two decades across three head coaching regimes. He arrived in 1996 as wide receivers coach on Larry Smith’s staff and continued in multiple different roles under Gary Pinkel and Odom. Prior to Missouri, Hill was the head coach at Hutchinson Community College in 1994-95 where he was 18-6 in just 2 seasons .
New Missouri head coach Eli Drinkwitz opted not to retain Hill when he arrived in Columbia in December, so this hire doesn’t leave the Tigers without a special teams coach. This certainly seems like a solid way for Hill to land on his feet.
Drinkwitz’s decision to move forward without Hill seems like a risky one, as Souichi Terada of the Kansas City Star described Hill as “one of the primary recruiters for Mizzou in Kansas City,” and local high school coach Kelly Donohoe gushed about Hill to Terada. Drinkwitz doesn’t have major ties to Kansas City, although he is from Northwest Arkansas, just across the Missouri border.
“Andy Hill has always been a rockstar,” Donohoe said. “He’s as good a recruiter as we’ve had for a very long time. If they can match what Andy Hill has done, they will do as good a job as they could possibly do there at our school.”
The Chiefs had just one return touchdown on special teams last year, courtesy of Pro Bowl return specialist Mecole Hardeman, but that underrates the unit's success. Missouri, meanwhile, will look to revive a return game that had saw its only return score come against lowly FCS opponent Southeast Missouri State. The Tigers were also in the bottom half of the SEC in kick and punt return yards per return as well as yards allowed per kick and punt return, per cfbstats.com. Senior punter and kicker Tucker McCann departs, so the Tigers will start from scratch there.