SUPER BOWL LIX: The greatest American sporting spectacle has returned, as the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs will square off on Sunday in the Big Easy with the whole world watching. It’s a day for football, food, friends, libations, and, of course, gambling. Lots of gambling. Super Bowl Sunday is the one day where your aunt and grandma morph into degen racetrack punters tracking stuff like the coin flip, the length of the national anthem, the color of Gatorade dumped on the winning coach, and the number of times that Taylor Swift will be shown on the broadcast. And then there are the infamous Super Bowl squares, where the score at the end of each quarter becomes a point of fixation and you wonder how, year after year, your numbers are 5 and 8. You’ve been watching football your entire life and have never seen a score of 25-18 or 18-15 at any time, ever. But I digress…
The bottom line is the Super Bowl has become more of a cultural spectacle than a sporting event, and that’s okay. Kendrick Lamar and the aforementioned Ms. Swift are sure to get more screen time than Andy Reid’s moustache, and many of the people who are huddled around television sets at Super Bowl parties will be just as interested in the TV commercials as in the action on the field (incredible but true).
But in the midst of it all a football game will take place, and it should be a good one — the two-time defending champion Chiefs, led by the great Patrick Mahomes, will look to become the first team in NFL history to win three consecutive Super Bowls, and they’re facing a familiar opponent, as these teams met just two years ago in Super Bowl LVII, an instant classic that saw Kansas City erase a double-digit second-half deficit to pull out a 38-35 victory. Most of the key pieces for both teams remain, but the Eagles have made a significant addition in ex-Giants RB Saquon Barkley, a player whose career had been marked by more potential than production until this season, when he blossomed into the best running back in the league and completely changed the complexion of the Philly offense. Containing Barkey will be the primary mission of Steve Spagnuolo’s Kansas City D, and if they can’t do it, the Mahomes Magic that we’ve all come to expect may not be enough to secure another Lombardi Trophy.
Here are some thoughts on how it might all shake out:
SUPER BOWL LIX
Kansas City Chiefs vs. Philadelphia Eagles
BETDAQ Line: Kansas City -1 (48.5)
Here we are again, eh? What can be said about Mahomes and the Chiefs that hasn’t already been said? The consensus all season was that they weren’t quite as good as Chiefs teams of years past, despite the fact that they just kept on winning, finishing the regular season at 15-2 after a meaningless Week 18 loss and securing the 1-seed in the AFC once again. Too many close victories and an offense that didn’t quite put up the numbers that we’re used to seeing from the Reid/Mahomes Chiefs left plenty of doubters, but when the chips were down against future MVP Josh Allen and the red-hot Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championship game, it was business as usual, with the offense putting up 32 points and Mahomes leading two 4th-quarter scoring drives to clinch it.
So now, the doubters quieted, history beckons — with a win here, Mahomes and the Chiefs can do something that has never been done before: three straight Super Bowl victories. It’s not going to be easy, however, as the Eagles have been the NFL’s most dominant team since October, winning 15 of 16 games since their Week 5 bye and doing so in style, with an average margin of victory of 13.8 ppg in that span. They have the NFL’s top-ranked defense, leading rusher, and a tough-as-nails quarterback who showed the last time these teams met in a Super Bowl that he is more than prepared to meet the challenge. Despite all the talk about Mahomes and Saquon Barkley, it will be the performance of Jalen Hurts that is the deciding factor in this game. Kansas City has an excellent secondary, but with so much of the attention and gameplan likely to center around slowing down Barkey, Hurts is sure to have opportunities down the field, and in A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith he’s got the weaponry to do serious damage.
There’s no denying that the Chiefs aren’t quite what they used to be on offense — even in the AFC Championship game, one of their best performances of the season by any measure, Mahomes finished with just 245 passing yards and the team’s leading rusher, Kareem Hunt, totaled a mere 64 yards on the ground. The Eagles, meanwhile, are absolutely ferocious on defense, with a front four that will consistently harass the quarterback and allow the secondary to stay in 2-deep shell coverage all game, forcing opposing QBs into a toothless dink-and-dunk routine. As great as Mahomes is, and as efficient as I expect him to be in this game, it will be very surprising if the Chiefs are able to put up more than 20-24 points in this spot. I do expect Spagnuolo and the veteran KC front seven to have a good plan for slowing down Barkley (though “slowing down” might mean holding him to 85 yards and a touchdown), which is why, as mentioned, I believe the game may hinge on the play of Jalen Hurts, who has been dealing with various lower body injuries for the past few weeks but looked healthy enough in the NFC Championship game to account for 4 touchdowns and lead the Eagles to 55 points in a rout of Washington. The extra week of rest surely helped Hurts to be ready physically, and if he’s able to find A.J. Brown for a couple of big plays downfield early, it may be enough to crack open the Kansas City defense and allow Barkley and the dominant Philly o-line to control the game.
Not only will this matchup provide us with a great contrast in styles when it somes to scheme and personnel, but the way these teams actually go about winning couldn’t be any more different. While the Eagles have been piling up double-digit victories and bullying teams into submission, the Chiefs have been masters of the escape, seemingly finding new, improbable ways to win every week. This Kansas City team has now won their last 15 games that were decided by one score, an astounding figure and one that should send chills up the spine of any Eagles fan if this game is close in the 4th quarter. And we may get another classic one-score battle, just like these teams delivered two years ago. I’m expecting a different sort of outcome, however. Disregard the uniforms, names, and history, and one of these teams has clearly been better. Prediction: Philadelphia 27, Kansas City 17
