For The Win
The Kansas City Chiefs are on the brink of NFL history. No team in the league has ever won three straight Super Bowls.
Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid are slight favorites to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy again, but it won’t be easy. Standing in their way is a Philadelphia Eagles team that surged through the back half of the 2024 regular season and parlayed that into a dominant playoff run.
Kansas City beat Philadelphia in a tightly contested Super Bowl 57 in 2023. There’s reason to believe this year’s game will be different.
Here’s how the Eagles can make life miserable for Travis Kelce and a legion of Taylor Swift fans and be the Chiefs’ worst case scenario in the biggest game of the year.
Let’s begin with the most obvious route for a Philadelphia victory. Last week, the Eagles faced the league’s 27th ranked run defense. Barkley’s first carry was a 60-yard touchdown. Six more followed, all on the ground (and less than 60 yards, but still).
The Chiefs have a better run defense than the Washington Commanders, but it’s not unimpeachable. Kansas City’s expected points added (EPA) allowed per opponent run ranked 15th in the NFL over the regular season and playoffs. That’s a perfectly average ranking that slotted the Chiefs between the Las Vegas Raiders and Cleveland Browns in the pecking order.
The good news is the Atlanta Falcons also belong in that clump of mediocrity. They held Barkley to just one of his five games in which he failed to run for 100 yards and beat Philly, 22-21. The bad news is that was the early season version of the All-Pro back.
He averaged 96 rushing yards per game over the first five weeks of the season, which is still pretty dang good. But that number rose to 140 in the 14 games that followed. The Eagles went 13-1 in those games.
That’s a rough matchup for a team that got shredded by James Cook for three-plus quarters before he disappeared from the Buffalo Bills’ game plan in the AFC Championship game. Cook’s 64 percent success rate — a play that gains at least 40 percent of yards needed for a first down or touchdown on first down, 60 percent of yards needed on second down, and 100 percent on third or fourth down — would have ranked first among all NFL running backs by a significant margin in 2024.
Barkley is the tool Philadelphia will use to set up third-and-manageable situations and create space for Jalen Hurts to thrive. If the Chiefs let him get going, they’re playing the game on hard mode.
Defensive coordinator Spagnuolo’s defenses are always good but rarely elite — until you need them for a big spot in a clutch moment. In 2024, his unit ranked ninth in yards allowed and 17th in EPA per play....
