Only a few members of the Kansas City Chiefs have been present for all three of the team’s Super Bowl wins since the 2019 season. You already know most of them if you follow football—head coach Andy Reid, quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and tight end Travis Kelce are the most prominent names. And it’s possible you’ve heard of assistant coach Porter Ellett, who joined Reid’s staff in 2017. An above-elbow amputee since the age of 16, Ellett has drawn more attention than the average assistant coach. Most impressively, he’s stayed with the same organization for nearly a decade, resisting the eternal churn of firings and hirings in the NFL (aka “Not For Long”).
While media coverage typically focuses on the novelty of Ellett’s limb difference, the Chiefs appreciate him for his unique traits as a teacher and leader. Mahomes has touted Ellett as a future NFL head coach, and the idea’s not far-fetched—about half a dozen current NFL head coaches started out as Reid assistants.
Ellett himself isn’t focused on that right now. He just wants to help the Chiefs extend their dynasty this weekend in Super Bowl LIX against the Philadelphia Eagles. If it happens, he’ll be up to four Super Bowl rings—with no fingers remaining for any future championship bling, and (at only 35 years old) many chances ahead to win more titles. Where will Ellett wear rings #5 and beyond? That’s a problem almost any unsung NFL coach would love to have.
We talked to Ellett last week, before the team flew down to New Orleans for the title match. Our conversation is lightly edited for clarity and length.
Most football fans would say the Chiefs have evolved as a team and an organization since this championship era began in 2019. Has it felt that way to you from the inside?
I think so. I think the old saying, “Rising tides raise all ships,” you get that same vibe here. Along with the winning comes a standard, and then everybody builds to that standard. I’ve seen it every step of the way, and it’s not just the people who have been here the whole time. You have new people come in and they meet the standard. They see right away, “Oh, this is the expectation, and this is what we’re doing.” That’s fun to be a part of.
Is there a way you can characterize or describe that standard? What are you doing that’s elevating you and keeping you above the rest of the league?
We never rest on our success. You try to leave last year behind and use this year to improve upon what we have. That’s only fair for the players, because how many players have been here the whole time? Not many. So really, when you look it at season to season, we have a whole different group of players every year, and we try to make them the best they can be. We try to achieve that sort of excellence with every player that comes in. And that’s how we look at it. You can’t look at it as we’re building on last year, when 60 percent of the team was not here last year. You can’t really do that. So you chase excellence, you chase perfection, and hopefully you catch greatness as you go.
This year in particular, it has looked like like every time there’s a close game, the Chiefs always make the right play or the opponent makes the wrong play. A lot of your games literally came down to the last play of the game. Does your accumulated success over the six-year arc psyche your opponents out? Do they get pulled out of those pivotal moments just enough to give you guys an edge?
I can’t speak to other teams, but I do know when we play great teams, we feel a certain amount of expectation that they’re going to do the right thing. When you play a team like the Bills, who we just played, they’re not going to beat themselves. And they proved that. I mean, they won the turnover battle. They gained more yardage. They didn’t beat themselves.
I think other teams see us that way. They think, “This team knows how to win, so when it comes down to the margins, they’re going to do everything they can to make the right play.” Now, we’ve been fortunate. We’ve caught some breaks here and there. But we have players that create luck for us. We have Travis and we have Pat we have Chris [Jones], we have Nick [Bolton]…the list goes on and on.
When you were a high school athlete, did you have coaches who influenced you, and whose influence you still fall back on as you’re working in the NFL?
Oh yeah, no doubt. My dad was my first coach, and I think I took from him his demeanor. My dad’s very calm, but he’s also very explosive at the same time. He kind of did a slow simmer, and he’s very intense. But he’s also very calm; he’s the guy you could go to to think through things. I hope I kind of carry that with me a little bit.
I had great coaches all the way while I was growing up. [Ellett spent his childhood in Loa, Utah.] Obviously, with one arm, I had things that I had to overcome. I had a coach named skip Jackson and one called Gordon Ellett who helped me learn how to do everything. They were very patient with me and thought outside the box a lot of ways, as far as playing baseball with one hand—that’s not a natural thing. So they helped me develop those skills. They were incredible coaches that way.
My high school team had a ton of success in baseball. Our head coach was named Scott Ellett, and to this day he might still be the greatest coach I’ve ever interacted with, as far as his ability to teach the game and his selflessness. When he taught baseball, he never claimed to know everything, but he was fascinated with the game. In his free time, he was always watching training clips on YouTube to help people hit better and throw better. He was also a wrestling coach, and he coached me on the high school track team. He is one of the the greatest coaches in Utah sports history.
Is he related to you?
There’s a lot of Elletts back there. The town’s small enough that almost everybody’s related one way or another. But Scott Ellett is my distant cousin, and Gordon Elliott as well. Gordon and Scott were brothers.
What do you think are your own strengths as a coach? Are you an Xs and Os guy? Are you a teacher, a technique guy? A motivator? Some amalgam of all that stuff?
Oh, that’s a good question. You don’t really think about yourself much in that vein. I think I’m solid with the Xs and Os, because I’ve learned from Coach Reid, who is maybe one of the greatest Xs and Os guys ever offensively. And then Coach allows me to be creative. He allows me to come up with ideas, and he’s willing to try them. You see it every week, little things that are fun and creative.
And then I do think that there is a motivational aspect. I don’t think I’m trying to be motivational. I’m not a rah-rah guy or a cheerleader. But I think players just see the way things are [with my disability], and they can say, “okay, all right, “Well, I’m not going to complain about my problem today,” or “We can solve this problem if we work through it together.” So I do think that what might be perceived as a weakness, is actually a strength in a way.
Whose idea was that Ring around the Rosey thing you guys did a couple years ago? That was brilliant.
That was pretty good, huh? Actually, it’s kind of a funny story. No one really ever takes credit for ideas; it’s kind of the team’s idea at the end of the day. But the very first time we ever did that Ring around the Rosey thing was when Chad Henne and I played this three-on-three football game on Friday afternoons. Chad and I put our arms together and we came up with that circle. We called it the Circle of Death originally, so it became a joke over there. And then it morphed into the thought that maybe it would confuse the defense. It just started out as something fun. But that’s how every idea comes about here.
In one of the NFL’s videos about you, Patrick Mahomes says he sees you as a head coach someday. Is that an aspiration? Would you like to get to that level?
I mean, yeah. As a competitor who wouldn’t? I’d love to see if I could have the kind of success Coach Reid has had. And Coach Reid trains people to be that. He allows people to grow and become leaders and become head coaches. In the long run, I think you owe it to him to one day be a successful head coach. He would expect nothing less.
Are there aspects of your skill set that you feel you need to level up to become a competitive candidate for a head coaching job?
You really need to prepare yourself for the moment. I think Coach Reid has done a phenomenal job of preparing me for that. For three years I was his assistant, so I got to see everything he did schedule-wise, personnel meetings, installs, game prep. I got to see all of that. Then I moved over to quality control, where I did all the grunt work as far as drawings, breaking down film, that sort of thing. Now I’m coaching positionally. I’ve been in meeting rooms with every position group but the offensive line.
If you became a head coach, or even a coordinator, you would be the first NFL coach with a disability at that level. Is it important to you to be that boundary breaker?
I think it would matter to people, but I don’t see myself as that. I’m just trying to do the best job I can. But I do think it matters to other people, and I do think it’s important. Listen, I grew up with one arm, and I saw no one like me doing the things I was doing. That’s hard. So if it does bring people hope, then that’s important it to me.
But at the same time, I don’t think you can go into it with the perspective ofk, I’m going to break through this barrier. I’m just trying to win ball games.
You just want then to offer you another contract.
Exactly. I’m just trying to stay in the league and keep my job.
When you mentioned you didn’t see anyone like yourself growing up, things are a little bit different now, right? More people are getting opportunities to show what they can do, and there’s more visibility. That’s partly because of social media, but also because the mainstream media recognize that these are worthwhile stories.
I would agree. Because of social media, there’s a lot more availability to it. There’s that kid who plays Division 1 [college] basketball with one hand, Hansel Emmanuel. That’s a good example. I didn’t have anybody like that when I was growing up. I was the only one-handed person playing basketball that I knew.
There was also a baseball player who played recently in Division 2 with one hand, Parker Hanson. Have guys like that ever reached out to you?
There’s also a running back for Northwestern who has one arm. It’s funny, I think we all know about each other, but we don’t really interact. I think part of that is because of the way that we’ve each had to deal with our own challenges. There’s a very private aspect of dealing with a disability. So when people suggest, “You should get together with this guy,” I always feel like his struggle is different than mine, and I don’t want to interfere with whatever he’s doing.
My sisters sometimes will have people ask them, “I know this young amputee, it’d mean a lot to him if your brother met with them.” And I think back to when I was that age. The last thing I would have wanted was some dude walking in and saying, “Hey, I’ve won three Super Bowls, nice to meet you.” I would have looked at him like, “Great, your life’s awesome. That doesn’t do anything for me.” Everyone has their own perspective, and I think it is helpful sometimes. But you need to be very aware that just because you faced your challenge the way you did, that’s not always helpful for another person.
What sort of game are you anticipating against the Eagles?
Like the Bills, they’re not going to beat themselves. They have had a ton of success. When two great teams play each other, it comes down to winning individual battles. So I think that’s what it will come down to, is our big-time players making big-time plays. We have great role players, too, and they’re big-time players in big moments. We’ll just stick to our process and try to continue to have success.
You think it’s going to come down to a kick at the end of the game?
It always comes down to a kick here or there, right?
