It'll be Super Bowl #3 for Andrew Wylie
Wylie already has a championship ring, but he wasn't on the field for that victory. Now the Chiefs' right tackle is primed to win one on the field.
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Onto Super Bowl #3 for the former Eastern Michigan offensive lineman.
After last night’s 23-20 win to claim the AFC Championship over the Cincinnati Bengals, the Kansas City Chiefs advance to the Super Bowl to play in the biggest game of the year. The team’s right tackle, Andrew Wylie, is an unlikely lineman from EMU.
Wylie, graduating class of 2017, entered the league as an undrafted offensive lineman where he practiced with the Baltimore Ravens, Indianapolis Colts, Cleveland Browns, and San Diego Chargers before he landed with the Kansas City Chiefs. Wylie, 28, has been with the Chiefs, who drafted Patrick Mahomes 10th overall in 2017. Wylie was just a practice squad addition when he initially signed with the team, but since then, he’s played in 81 career regular and postseason games with 69 total starts.
The Super Bowl will be Wylie’s 70th career start. Once #77 steps onto the field at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., he’ll have the chance to close out the football season with another title as his team aims to establish itself as one of the greatest pro football dynasties ever.
Kansas City, which hired Andy Reid as its head coach in 2013, has only missed the playoffs once during his tenure (2014). The team is on an eight-year run of making the NFL playoffs, but this current stretch of three Super Bowl over four years is what everybody’s highlighting. The Chiefs lost in the Divisional round in the 2015 and 2016 campaigns, then lost 22-21 in its Wild Card game vs. Tennessee. But, ever since the Chiefs drafted Mahomes in the first round of the 2017 draft, this franchise has had, undoubtedly, the best QB the team could’ve asked for. Mahomes has been locked up for a historic amount of money for a historic amount of time. The plan of letting his very expensive talent continuously play the team into the Super Bowl means that some of its offensive linemen would have to come on the cheap to block for the most talented quarterback in the league.
That’s where Wylie comes in. According to Spotrac, Wylie signed a 2-year, reserve/future deal worth $1,050,00 in 2018, re-signed on a 1-year deal worth $920,000 in 2021, and came back this season on a $2.385M deal. He’s certainly proven that he’s worth more money than he’s gotten, and has even reworked contracts to make less money to see more success in the end. Seems like things are going as just as he planned.
When Wylie, a former two-star recruit that had one offer out of Midland, Mich., runs out of the tunnel in a couple of weeks in the season finale, he’ll be make the 19th all-time appearance by a former Eastern Michigan player in the Super Bowl. There are still just 11 former EMU players to make it to the Super Bowl: Reggie Garrett with the Steelers (Super Bowls #9 and 10), Dave Boone with the Vikings (9), John Banaszak with the Steelers (10, 13, 14), Ron Johnson with the Steelers (13, 14), Clarence Chapman of the Bengals (16), Lional Dalton with the Ravens (35), Jason Short of the Eagles (39), Charlie Batch with the Steelers (40, 43, 45), T.J. Lang with the Packers (45), Pat O’Connor with the Buccaneers (55), and now Wylie with the Chiefs (54, 55, 57).
Wylie is already one of six former EMU players to win Super Bowl championships (13 total title wins), but four — Banaszak, Batch, Garrett, and Johnson — have won multiple Super Bowl rings.
In 2018, the Chiefs took down San Francisco 31-20 for the program’s first championship since 1969, but Wylie wasn’t on the field for that. Wylie was instead sidelined with an ankle injury. In 2021, Wylie was on the field for his next Super Bowl appearance, but the Chiefs lost 31-9 to Tom Brady’s Bucs.
Now, two years later, Wylie has the shot to actually put in his time and win it on the field.
