Philadelphia's defense stamped themselves as historical by destroying the Chiefs in the Big Game

There was a lot of implied Patrick Mahomes mysticism in the leadup to the Super Bowl. I don’t know that I’d say the mysticism was unearned based on history, but it was always clear that the Chiefs offense was a little bit wonky this year. Eighth in offensive DVOA, reliant on Mahomes crushing it on third down, and without much of a running game. They were forced to play Joe Thuney at tackle because they couldn’t protect Mahomes for most of the season. An ability for the Texans to avoid a sack would have seen the Chiefs upset in the divisional round.

It was always obvious that the Eagles had the better roster. They had the best defensive DVOA in the NFL. They have a better offensive line. They have two better receivers than anybody the Chiefs have. They had the best running back in the NFL this year. I’m not trying to say the Chiefs have a bad team, but they were not the Eagles. The whole argument that they should be the favorites was rooted in the idea that Mahomes was going to terminate the Eagles on every key third down.

He did … very much the opposite of that. This was not a fluky 24-0 halftime lead for the Eagles. The Chiefs didn’t get weaseled out of some yards by a bad penalty. They were systematically destroyed up front. They didn’t cross midfield on any of their first nine drives. Chiefs running backs had seven carries for 24 yards, they had one carry before it was 17-0. The only play all half that actually looked explosive was when Mahomes hit DeAndre Hopkins for what should have been a big gain only for the ball to be slightly behind Hopkins and ultimately drop to the turf untouched. Mahomes had 61 passing yards as it was 34-0 with 2:06 left in the game. Travis Kelce dropped two easy passes.

The only person who had it worse than Mahomes on Sunday was Aubrey Graham.

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1) Shades of Tampa Bay-Kansas City

The Chiefs momentarily led in Super Bowl LV against the Buccaneers in 2021, but aside from that this game was not all that different. Mahomes wound up with respectable passing yardage numbers in the box score, but they were mostly accomplished after the game was out of hand.

You can’t give the Super Bowl MVP award to a defensive coordinator, and luckily you didn’t really have to here. Vic Fangio didn’t really have to go deep into the bag to beat Mahomes. His defensive line just beat the hell out of the Chiefs offensive line, to the point where there was not enough time for Mahomes to hold the ball and wait for players to open up underneath. I could pick many examples, but the one I remembered most was here:

Coming off his first sack, down 10-0, Mahomes drops back. Joe Thuney eats it on one side, Isiah Pacheco and Kelce eats it on the other. Both edge rushers, Josh Sweat and Jalyx Hunt, meet up at the quarterback. On the very next play, Mahomes frustratedly forces the Cooper DeJean pick-six. Game over.

Mahomes was pressured on 38.1 percent of his dropbacks for the game, but that number was more like 50 percent while the outcome of the Super Bowl was actually in question. He took six sacks, a career-high. The Eagles were actually more impressive than the Bucs were, as they only sacked Mahomes three times and got pressure on 34 percent of their rushes with four or fewer rushers.

Ultimately we leave a game like this talking about legacy, and to me the funniest part about docking Mahomes on his quest to be Brady is … Brady also had Super Bowls like this! He completed 29-of-48 passes for 266 yards against the Giants in 2008, in a devastating loss you might have heard about from whoever FOX’s color commentator was. He took five sacks in that game. He took five sacks against the Falcons in 2016, a game that they rallied to win. The Giants obviously got plenty of pressure with four-man rushes in each of their two Super Bowl wins against Brady. The Broncos were able to do it in the 2014 AFC Title Game.

Perhaps there’s a limit to just what having a great quarterback who can make every throw means for your team. Nobody likes to say that out loud because it makes it harder to reduce football in to an easy-to-talk-about sport. But I lived that life all season watching C.J. Stroud make sick throws while being decked for no good reason, then watching people second-guess how good he is because he’s now questioning every decision he has to make.

You need to have a great box around a quarterback who isn’t objectively one of the best in the game to win a Super Bowl, as we’re about to talk about. But that doesn’t mean that having a great quarterback guarantees you anything.

2) Jalen Hurts wins a Super Bowl exactly how you thought it would happen

Was Jalen Hurts individually dominant as the Eagles won the Super Bowl? I would say “not really.” But what he was, more importantly, was dynamic every time he had to scramble. It was Hurts, not Saquon Barkley, that broke the Chiefs defense. Hurts found DeVonta Smith on the sideline on the game’s first drive by scrambling and buying time, showing the sort of improvisational skill that he hadn’t for most of the year.

He also had 43 rushing yards on four scrambles that actually turned into runs, including two huge ones as the Eagles stepped on Kansas City’s throat to push the lead to four scores right after halftime.

Hurts took two sacks, but generally looked in control when blitzed. And he knew exactly when to take off and punish the Spagnuolo exotic looks. Then he was given a chance to hit the kill shot with the game already mostly over, and he stuck it:

The legacy of Jalen Hurts is … complex. He’s going to be remembered for tush pushes and he’s going to be remembered for developing well past the point most scouts believed possible. He’s going to be remembered for big playoff flameouts that felt disastrous. He’s going to be remembered as someone who needed the perfect box built around him to win this game, and nobody is ever going to confuse him with an elite quarterback despite his skill on the ground and the gutsy push throws he’s willing to take. (The A.J. Brown fourth-down catch on the opening drive that Should Have Been was audacious. I loved it.) That his life is pumped into a game of haters versus hypers, a life of noise, is probably exhausting for him. It’s exhausting for me and I’m not even him.

He’s also going to be remembered as a champion. I love when quarterbacks like this win. There’s so much focus on the quarterback horse race every year that we get stuck on the idea that the quarterback is the only thing that matters.

3) What’s left for the Chiefs?

While I don’t think the Chiefs had a better roster than the Eagles, I have to admit that they do have a pretty enviable situation on paper. If Kelce does retire — and there were plenty of rumors about the thoughts of this happening pre-game — they’d instantly lop off close to $20 million in cap space for someone who was a non-difference maker this year. Xavier Worthy looked to take a big step forward. Rashee Rice will be back off a torn ACL suffered early in the season. Perhaps some real recovery will bring Isiah Pacheco back to the explosive back he was in 2023 after suffering that horrific knee injury.

The Key Chiefs free agents are basically: Trey Smith, Justin Reid, and Nick Bolton. Safeties don’t make much money and Reid shouldn’t be overly hard to keep — I did give him a vote for second-team All-Pro this year, but the market does not seem to value good safety play. Smith will probably find greener pastures as the rare top-notch lineman who makes free agency unless he receives the franchise tag.

But this is built to be pretty sustainable and it remains that way. I know it’s tempting to watch a team get its ass kicked and proclaim them done, but one of the lessons of the Chiefs getting their ass kicked at the end of the 2020 season was … sometimes good teams get their ass kicked on a big stage. It doesn’t have to be a harbinger of doom. Nobody on the planet is expecting Mahomes to suddenly regress.

The Chiefs will remain the Chiefs. Sometimes that means they’ll bow out in the Conference Championships, and sometimes that means they’ll lose a Super Bowl. That’s just the luck of who you run into, your current form, and your injury situation as well as how things runout on your gambles (such as at left tackle) every season.

What no one can debate is that having Mahomes means they need to catch fewer outs than most teams to keep winning, and now that they’ve actually started to get a young receiver core established with him, I’m not concerned at all about them continuing to churn out 13-4, 14-3, and 15-2 records while everyone pretends they hate the Chiefs instead of the fact that the Chiefs are everpresent. (OK, other AFC West fans actually do hate the Chiefs. But otherwise.)

4) Nick Sirianni — A Barry Switzer for Gen Z

One thing that stuck with me listening to Super Bowl content was just this broad discussion of what exactly it is Nick Sirianni does here. He doesn’t call offensive plays. He doesn’t call defensive plays. Howie Roseman gets the credit for creating the broad talent base. Jeff Lurie gets the credit for creating the money stream that keeps these guys ahead of the curve on the salary cap. It seems to be agreed that Sirianni didn’t hire either coordinator of his own accord. He feels like a chief vibes officer, expect the vibes of this team late last season stunk.

I have two major comparisons here, neither is flattering, but that doesn’t speak anything to who Sirianni is. One is Bill O’Brien. The other is Barry Switzer.

O’Brien, of course, ran his offense. He just wasn’t appreciably good at it. But where Sirianni reminds me of O’Brien is this kind of public demeanor where he’s just a dick for no good reason. In saying that I’m not saying that who Sirianni is will inherently be a bad thing — the trust of the locker room is all that matters. But you know, dragging your kids up to deflect reporter questions, just generally being gruff and above it. That part of Sirianni reminds me a lot of O’Brien.

Then there’s the credit part of Sirianni — that’s where we get to Switzer. Switzer wasn’t well-regarded as a head coach, his job was simply to take the overwhelming talent advantage that was given to him by Jimmy Johnson and make it work. Switzer resigned after the 1989 season at Oklahoma after 16 years as their head coach. He hadn’t coached since. Then he immediately won the Super Bowl with the Cowboys in 1994. He did. That’s really all there is to it. You don’t have to consider Switzer a pioneer or a huge portion of history. He was an outgrowth of the ego of Jerry Jones. He’s the last major head coach I can remember who took up as little space in the public imagination as Sirianni.

I suppose the major takeaway here is that Sirianni’s job to be in charge of the locker room and be a driving force as a leader. He’s great in that role. To me it points to the idea that head coaches and quarterbacks aren’t all that dissimilar. You can build a box around Sirianni just as you could around Hurts. Perhaps you don’t want him calling plays, but he’s great at motivating and leading. Many head coaches are given — and some want — the idea of being the unquestioned spot where the buck stops.

What I think Sirianni actually teaches us is the power of collective collaboration. The idea that a coach doesn’t have to serve as the creator of all culture, but the maintainer of it. And that this is as worthwhile as Ben Johnson drawing up 13 sick trick plays that draw everyone’s attention. It’s very difficult for the media to talk about leadership without experiencing it in-person, and it’s very easy to talk about Johnson’s plays and what they mean and how open someone is.

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