NEW ORLEANS – This is how you take down a dynasty: by the knees.
During one Kansas City possession in Super Bowl LIX, the Philadelphia Eagles actually sacked Patrick Mahomes on first down, then sacked him on second down, then, on third down, chased him until he forced a throw that was picked off by rookie cornerback Cooper DeJean, who sprinted it back 38 yards for a touchdown.
That made the score 17-0 — and we were only halfway through the second quarter! This may be in the city of beignets and crawfish, but there was a distinct smell of soft pretzels in the Superdome. Philly fans were roaring. The Rocky statue was running up the steps. The Eagles weren’t losing this game. Not unless they didn’t come out after halftime.
Offense impresses, defense decides. That’s been the mantra for decades in the NFL. On Sunday, the Philadelphia defense reversed the Chiefs’ magic like a rabbit making the magician disappear.
“Defense wins championships,” Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts told the TV cameras after the Eagles obliterated the Chiefs, 40-22, in a game that wasn’t remotely as close as the final score. “We saw the difference they made today. They gave us opportunities. They gave us short fields. (And) we were able to do what we do.”
How lopsided was it? By the end of the first half, the Eagles had more points, 24, than the Chiefs had total yards, 23. I’m pretty sure that’s never happened before in a Super Bowl. Certainly not to Kansas City, which had gotten used to finding a way to slay every dragon, some even one-handed while falling down.
Then along came Philadelphia, with its massive defensive line and sticky secondary, and the celebrated Chiefs, who had hoped to win their third straight Super Bowl, went from the Beatles to a Bar Mitzvah band.
“(The Eagles) were better than us,” Mahomes admitted afterwards, “from start to finish.”
Cheesesteaks for everybody.
Feeding goldfish to piranha
“We needed to come out and play our best game,” said Philadelphia coach Nick Siriani. “And we did.”
Yep. On the biggest stage, the Eagles chewed up the scenery like 22 Nathan Lanes. They intercepted Mahomes twice. They stripped him for a fumble. They snuffed out his ground threat without even blitzing.
Philly’s four-man rush is more effective than many teams’ eight. They sacked Mahomes six times. It was like feeding goldfish to a piranha.
And without their drum major, the Chiefs were like that band in “Animal House” that marches into an alley, trombones crushing trumpets crushing flutes. Travis Kelce might as well have been sitting with Taylor Swift. He had no catches midway through the third quarter. The KC running backs, at that same point, had nine total yards. It was already 27-0.
The rest was garbage time. I was half-expecting to see Chuck Nevitt.
Sure, Kansas City had stitched a legend out of second-half comebacks. But not against a defense like this one. They weren’t coming back Sunday any more than Louis Armstrong. The Chiefs wore red, and red means stop.
Green means go.
The Eagles, in case you’re not a football fan, wear green.
Cheesesteaks for everybody.
The Hurts effect
Meanwhile, as their defense was chomping on Kansas City beef, the Philly offense was stealing the Chiefs’ playbook. The Eagles were supposed to be the team that brought back the running back, with Saquon Barkley amassing more than 2,000 yards and finishing third in the MVP race.
But on Sunday, Barkley, with just 57 yards, looked like most terrific running backs in the NFL — overshadowed by his quarterback. It was Hurts who won the night — and the MVP award – with a steady passing attack and a Mahomes-like scramble mentality: Wait, wait, then dash up the middle.
Hurts finished with 221 yards passing and 72 yards rushing. He hit A.J. Brown in the flat for one touchdown. He lobbed Devonta Smith a 46-yard bomb for another. He pushed into the end zone for a score of his own.
“A helluva game,” the low-key Hurts said on the victors’ podium. That’s understating it by a mile. All night long, Hurts looked as well-stitched as the Chiefs looked unstrung.
And this should surprise no one.
People forget that, when these two teams met two years ago in the Super Bowl, Hurts had the game of his life. He hit 27 completions on 38 attempts, for 304 passing yards, and ran for 70 yards and three touchdowns. Had the Chiefs not pulled off one of their classic heart-thumping wins (a last-second field goal) everyone would already have been gushing about how Hurts handles the big stage.
They can start this morning. Hurts kept a photo on his phone of himself walking off, dejected, in the red and white confetti of KC’s win two years ago. It was motivation, he said.
That photo is likely to change now.
“All week I answered the question of what was different (this time),” Hurts told the media after the game. “I think that failure just lit a fire in me.”
On Sunday, he burned the house down.
Chiefs fatigue
Coming into the night, there was a decided Philadelphia tilt to this game — around the country and certainly in the Superdome. Football fans everywhere seemed to be tired of the Chiefs. The crowd here was. They booed Kansas City from the opening introductions. In fact, they booed anything in red – fans, mascots, flags.
Excellence will do that. Kansas City coming in, was not unlike its most famous fan, Swift, in being overexposed and seemingly over-awarded. Not surprisingly, Swift herself was roundly jeered when projected on the big screens.
It may not be nice, but it can’t be surprising. Five of the last six Super Bowls have now had the Chiefs in it, with three wins coming into last night, including the last two.
That kind of dominance always brings resentment, Think the Celtics. Think LeBron James. Think Tom Brady. Ironically, Fox ran an interview between Brady and Mahomes before the game, in which the two legendary passers jointly lamented being hated for their consistent brilliance.
“I think that’s our edge,” Mahomes said. “We don’t panic whenever stuff doesn’t go our way. We just know that we can make it right the next play.”
Not on Sunday. They may not have panicked, but they were roundly and soundly beaten. Nothing they could do — not Andy Reid’s offensive scheming, not Steve Spagnola’s supposed defensive brilliance — could throttle either dimension of the Eagles’ game. KC lost for the first time in its last 10 postseason appearances. And the NFL pundits will do some deep thinking now about who’s really the king of the league.
The Eagles certainly look set up for a while. Sirianni, as unlikeable as he can be, certainly seems to work as a coach for his team. Hurts is only 26. Barkley is 28. Howie Roseman, the Eagles GM, seems as gifted at finding value in draft picks and trades as, shall we say, Brad Holmes?
“These guys did not want to let each other down,” Sirianni said in the postgame interviews. “Yesterday in the meeting, they talked about how they didn’t want this to be over. They said the only way it’s not over is if we have a parade and a ring ceremony later. So this 2024 Eagles team is not done yet.”
It may not be for a while.
Thank you, New Orleans
Thus ends the 2024 football season, in which the No. 2 NFC seed beat the No. 1 AFC seed for the biggest prize. Lions’ fans will remember it as a thrill ride that ran off the tracks at exactly the worst moment. And no doubt, many Detroiters will ask themselves this morning if their club would have beaten either of the teams playing here Sunday night.
My take? The Lions might have kept pace with Kansas City offensively. Maybe enough to win. But they weren’t likely to beat the Eagles. Not with a depleted defense. Not with the offensive line banged up.
Philly is really solid and supremely talented. They can obviously beat you passing or running. And they choke the life out of you defensively. Should the two teams meet at full-strength next year when Detroit visits Philadelphia, it’ll be a hell of game.
Before ending this column, I’ll share one more thing. It was good to see New Orleans put on this show, given the terror in its streets on New Year’s Day, a tragedy that took 14 lives and shook the citizens here to their core. Some of the victims’ families were honored before kickoff. That was nice.
As usual, the party vibe off Canal Street was full bore. There were celebrities seemingly everywhere at the Superdome, with Jon Hamm actually introducing the Chiefs and Bradley Cooper bringing out the Eagles.
And the music here before the game was better than any Super Bowl I’ve been to — and I’ve been to nearly 40 of them. Every genre, from jazz genius Terrance Blanchard to Christian singer Lauren Daigle was on hand, all with decided New Orleans swing.
They could do worse than put this game in the Crescent City at least every other February. No other American metropolis matches the Super Bowl groove like this one.
But in the end, it’s still about football, and football is still about defense. And no team is playing better defense right now than the Eagles. Which is how you take down a dynasty.
Just ask Mahomes and the Chiefs, who today are likely wondering what kind of tank just ran them over.
Like all tanks: a green one.
Cheesesteaks for everybody.
Contact Mitch Albom: malbom@freepress.com. Check out the latest updates with his charities, books and events at MitchAlbom.com. Follow him @mitchalbom.
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