From Taylor Swift to going viral with his own t-shirt, Grafton's Steve Spagnuolo has the Chiefs defense strong entering Super Bowl

Numerous Kansas City Chiefs players wore custom-designed, tribute T-shirts during warmups before the AFC Championship against the Ravens on Jan. 29 in Baltimore.

They were adorned on the front with the words, in large, capital letters, IN SPAGS WE TRUST, and multiple photos of Steve Spagnuolo, their highly respected and exceptionally cunning defensive coordinator.

Images of the shirts — the brainchild of veteran safety Justin Reid — went viral, much to the chagrin of Spagnuolo, a Northbridge native and 1978 graduate of Grafton High who is nearing the end of his fifth season in Kansas City.

“I had to tell (Reid) I’m burning every T-shirt that’s produced right now,” Spagnuolo, 64, good-naturedly said last weekend before departing for Las Vegas, where the Chiefs will meet the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday.

Then “Spags” turned serious, acknowledging he was obviously surprised and extremely humbled by the show of support from his good-natured, hard-working and quick-learning players.

“I’m glad that they put trust in me, but trust is really a two-way street,” Spagnuolo said. “I have extreme trust in all of these guys in terms of how they work, what they can do, what we can feed them. You can’t always do that with every group.

“This is the highest number of high-end cerebral players I have ever worked with. To a man, they’re all really smart. They have football get-it. And when you have a group like that, you can do a lot of different things.”

What the defense has done is spearhead the Chiefs to their fourth Super Bowl appearance in the past five years. They’re looking to hoist the Lombardi Trophy for the third time during that dynastic span.

The Chiefs finished the regular season second in the NFL in both fewest points allowed (17.3 average) and most sacks (57). They surrendered 31 points and collected six sacks while defeating the Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills and Ravens en route to the Super Bowl.

They have playmakers at all three levels and love — love, love, love! — to blitz. That will make Spagnuolo’s aggressive approach against 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy, who has thrived when teams send extra pass rushers at him, one of the most intriguing and impactful matchups Sunday.

“Are there some risk-reward calls?” Spagnuolo said about blitzing. “Yeah, you just have to decide in the moment if the risk is worth the reward, and sometimes we just pull the trigger on them. … Now, it doesn’t always work.

“The people you’re going against — and especially this team — can make you pay for being a little bit too risky. So you have to pick your spots, but when we do decide to do it, it’s because we trust the guys who are running it.”

Spagnuolo began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at UMass in 1981. He entered the NFL in 1999 as a defensive assistant for the Philadelphia Eagles, hired by current Chiefs coach Andy Reid.

This will be the sixth Super Bowl Spagnuolo has coached in, the last five as a coordinator. If the Eagles win, he’ll become the first coordinator — offensive or defensive — to win four rings, one of which came with the New York Giants when his game plan suffocated and stifled the previously perfect Patriots of 2007.

With his 24th NFL season nearing an end, in his fifth decade on the sideline, Spagnuolo still loves being around the game and the people he works with. He also loves his wife, Maria.

“At some point I’m going to decide that I need to give more time to my wife because I love my wife, and I love spending time with her, and this business pulls you away from that,” said Spagnuolo, who plans to get in some R&R with Maria at their place in Miami once the season ends.

“So that is coming at some point, but until that happens, the enjoyment of being around the guys I work with — coaches and players — I just get great satisfaction from that.”

Spagnuolo, who quarterbacked Grafton to an 18-2-1 record and the first Super Bowl berth in school history in his two years as a varsity starter, doesn’t get back to Central Mass. as much as he’d like these days.

But Spagnuolo still has family and friends in the area and was glad to hear from a longtime acquaintance that his alma mater reached the Division 4 state semifinals in football each of the past three seasons and advanced to the final at Gillette Stadium in 2022. He also wanted to know a bit about Grafton coach Chris McMahon.

As for that Gators nickname, well, Spagnuolo said, “They’ll always be the Grafton Indians to me.”

And as for Taylor Swift, inquiring minds wanted to know if Spagnuolo has met the world-renowned, record-setting Grammy artist who doubles as Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s girlfriend.

The answer is no.

“I will say this, I’ve probably heard her music, but I can’t tell you that I did because I’m not a music guy,” Spagnuolo said. “But, listen, you kind of hear the players talking stuff, and everything I’ve heard is good things.”

—Contact Rich Garven at rgarven@telegram.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @RichGarvenTG.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Grafton's Steve Spagnuolo is back at Super Bowl with gifted Chiefs defense