ClutchPoints
Week 1 of the 2025 NFL season featured very different results for the Philadelphia Eagles and their Super Bowl LIX opponents, the Kansas City Chiefs.
For the Eagles, it was a dominant effort performed under very unusual circumstances, with Jalen Carter spitting on Dak Prescott starting Thursday Night Football up on a strange note, and an hour-plus lightning delay robbing both teams of their momentum before Vic Fangio’s defense shut Brian Shottenheimer down in commanding fashion.
And the Chiefs? Well, they opened the season up in Brazil just like the Eagles the year prior, only they didn’t exit the contest with a win, instead being bested by their division rival Los Angeles Chargers to open the season 0-1.
To make matters worse, the Chiefs lost arguably their best receiver, Xavier Worthy, in the game after the speedster collided with Travis Kelce in the first quarter, leaving the team severely undermanned at the position thanks to Rashee Rice’s suspension for violating the league’s personal conduct policy.
On paper, this game is more or less a coin flip, with the Chiefs actually being favored 51.4 percent to 48.2 percent according to ESPN Analytics, but will it be such a close contest? Or will the Eagles, with regular season momentum, Super Bowl momentum, and a slew of new pieces looking to make their 2025 debuts, give former head coach Andy Reid fits on his home turf? Needless to say, this has the potential to be an early favorite for game of the year, especially if Nick Sirianni’s squad can continue to call the Chiefs’ number.
After having to watch the Eagles’ first win of the season from the locker room, instead of the sidelines, Jalen Carter is going to come out with a chip on his shoulder against the Chiefs.
Now granted, the Chiefs know how it feels to face off against Carter all too well, as he helped to collapse the offensive line snap after snap after snap in the Super Bowl as the Eagles’ offense ran up the score, but in 2025, he has yet to see the field, with every single defensive snap in Week 1 recorded without the Pro Bowl pass rusher.
Sure, offensive coordinator Matt Nagy will certainly show his players tape from Week 1, in addition to some of Carter’s highlights from 2023 and 2024, but ultimately, he has no idea what Fangio had up his sleeve for the third-year rusher in Week 1 and how he plans to deploy the “Baby Rhino” now that the Eagles have a very different collection of players around him.
In Week 1, the Cowboys basically played Moro Ojomo like he was Carter, doubling him often to slow down the Eagles’ second-best interior pass rusher. Fangio countered after the lightning delay by largely rushing five when he wanted to pressure Prescott, a look he likely won’t deploy as often against an offense he famously stifled in the Super Bowl without ever...
