Andrew Luck looks back on process of hiring Frank Reich, thinking he might say no

Just four months after the hiring of Stanford GM Andrew Luck, the Cardinal had him looking for a new football coach after the firing of Troy Taylor. However, within a week, Luck named an interim head coach in one of his own former ones in Frank Reich.

While at the 2025 ACC Football Kickoff in Charlotte on Monday, Luck recalled that hiring process of Reich. He said he had no plan once Taylor was dismissed on March 25th but that the first person who came to his mind was his final coach in the NFL with the Indianapolis Colts.

“You know, I did not plan for a coaching change in March,” said Luck. “You know, I sat there and said, well, shoot, I need a plan for moving forward.

“I think, from my subconscious, like, Coach Reich and I have had an incredibly strong relationship. We only, you know, played one season, I played one season for him as a head coach but we’re very tight. I think we grew love, mutual respect, everything. I mean, he helped me be a better version of myself as a football player on and off the field. I want to say it was reciprocity where I was helping him be a better head coach and all that. So, he was like, my first call, maybe beside my wife, to like, check.”

From there, the process moved quickly from when Reich picked up the phone to him flying cross-country to meet with Luck. Then, after talking with leadership at the school as well as his former player turned general manager of the program, Reich took the job within the week on March 31st.

“He was shopping for strawberries at a Costco in Greenboro, North Carolina in this state and he had no clue what I was doing. Like, he knew I was at this job but he had no idea,” said Luck. “I sort of said, ‘Coach, here’s the deal’. And, you know, it’s not odd for me to call him…Well, it was intriguing enough for him to say, ‘You know what, I’ll get on a flight tomorrow morning’. And I had really just started recruiting. You know, with recruits, like, oh, he’s getting on a flight? That’s a good sign.

“We pulled out the big guns, met with our President of the University first and Dr. Condoleezza Rice second. Then we sat in my office for five hours and I gave him (the pitch), including the warts, right, including our pain points because, you know, our relationship is built on honesty and transparency amongst other things. He went home. I thought for a second we might not get him but we figured it out and, a couple days later, he called and said yes. And I remember sitting in someone’s office and just banging the couch, ‘Yes, yes, yes!'”

Reich brings nearly two decades of experience of coaching with him in the pros to Stanford. That’s namely from over the past decade with four seasons as an offensive coordinator with the San Diego Chargers and Philadelphia Eagles and six seasons as head coach of the Colts from 2018-2022, including Luck’s final season in ’18, and the Carolina Panthers in 2023.

With that, Luck is happy to have Reich coaching their players at Stanford. Luck is just as glad to be working with him again too as he continues to better him as well.

“He has helped us take steps forward. He has helped me grow,” said Luck. “You know, he’s got such wisdom. I say this, I think he very much is a shepherd of young men and programs. He’s pouring his soul into our young men and he’s helping me professionally understand what it means to be a GM that creates a system that supports a head coach, that supports a coaching staff, that supports a training room. You know, he’s seen good football and he’s seen good programs.”

The Cardinal were in a bad spot in being without a coach in the last week of March. Still, even if it’s only for a year, Luck thinks they got as good of a hire as they could with Reich as their interim this fall.

“I’m thankful for him,” said Luck.