KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The building blocks of Andy Reid’s journey to three Super Bowl championships and 301 NFL wins and, one day, the Pro Football Hall of Fame, are self-evident: an absurd work ethic, tactical brilliance and what might be called taskmastery.

The mortar of it all, though, is the sense of humor and care that go into the personal relationships he’s cultivated and maintained every step of the way — including with many offensive linemen he guided as a University of Missouri assistant coach from 1989-91.

So count him among the multitude of mourners for forever Tiger Andy Lock, the charismatic and popular restaurateur who died April 3.

“It’s a sad deal, but what a great, great guy,” Reid said during a Zoom call Monday, in his first media availability since Lock’s death, as the Kansas City Chiefs launched their voluntary offseason training program. “And he’s left a nice legacy for us all here, too, that we can cherish … in the true flavor of an offensive lineman.”

That wasn’t just nostalgia from Reid, who the night before the visitation and funeral for Lock attended a tribute to him in Lee’s Summit with a number of former Mizzou players.

It was part of an ongoing relationship formed even though they had only overlapped for one year at Missouri (1989) — where Lock’s father, Jerry, and son, Drew, also played.

The school, and football, was such a part of Lock’s life that one section of the visitation featured memorabilia from his playing days — including a 1989 St. Louis Post-Dispatch article noting his mother had gone into labor with him at halftime of a football game, and that he’d been given a toy football the September 1967 day he was born.

Brief as their time together there was, it’s a testament to both that the engagement between Reid and Lock, as well as Reid and most of his former MU linemen, had lasting significance.

As was on display at a Mizzou reunion some years back held in Waldo at the Summit Grill — one of Lock’s many restaurant ventures as founder and co-owner of Summit Hospitality Group.

“We only had about a year’s relationship at Missouri, but it’s funny how when you carry that relationship over and years go by and by and by, but you still feel like he’s a great friend and mentor who would do anything in the world for you,” Lock told me in a 2018 phone interview. “I know for a fact that if I ever needed anything, or if he did, we’d be there for each other. That’s a neat thing and a powerful thing.”

A case in point of Reid living out that that I’ll never forget:

The 2005 day before Reid’s Philadelphia Eagles were playing the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, Reid spent hours in his hotel suite with Doug Hembrough — a former MU lineman of his who was dying of brain cancer.

Days before Hembrough died the following September, Reid spoke to him over the phone for some 15 minutes even though Hembrough was unable to respond.

If he ever coached you, I’d imagine Reid still feels like your coach — both coming from him and within you.

In the case of Andy Lock, perhaps one manifestation of that is how Reid perceives Drew Lock, who now is back in Seattle as he enters his sixth NFL season.

That’s why Reid expressed a certain sense of conflict the first time he coached against him when Lock was with the Broncos in 2019.

Thought enough of it, in fact, to make it part of his opening statement to the media days before that December game the Chiefs won 23-3.

“It’s good to see Andy Lock’s son doing so well,” he said. “But on the other hand, we have to play him.”

For that matter, Reid nearly always has made it a point to praise the younger Lock, who a year later in a conference call said “any compliment from Andy Reid is one” you can always be proud of.

Just like Reid being this way for so many for so long is something he can be proud of himself.

Something that both defines what he has sought in his career and has been inseparable from his success.

From his alma mater, Brigham Young, to his years at San Francisco State and Northern Arizona and Texas-El Paso and Mizzou before his NFL stints in Green Bay and Philly, every step and every player has been essential.

Players like Andy Lock, from whom a lifetime connection to cherish was formed in their one season together.

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