Bleeding Green Nation
There were multiple important milepost moments in Super Bowl 59, but here were the six biggest.
There was a time when most Super Bowls were like this.
I remember when the 49ers and Cowboys routinely blew out lesser opponents on the game’s biggest stage, when the Broncos and Bills lost huge seemingly every season. The Bears killed the Patriots, the Ravens smothered the Giants, the Giants and Washington football team battered Denver, and so on, and so on, and so on.
It was a rarity to have a Super Bowl played down to the wire, but in the age of NFL free agency, most Super Bowls have been relatively close, if not downright thrilling.
Last night, your Philadelphia Eagles authored a throw-back beatdown that was as impressive as anything we watched Dallas, San Francisco, Pittsburgh or anyone else author on the NFL’s biggest stage. Somehow, the 40-22 score didn’t come close to indicating just how thoroughly the Eagles dominated the best quarterback and best head coach in football and how completely they decimated an honest-to-goodness dynasty.
For fans who, like me, cut their teeth on the Buddy Ryan era of Eagles football, this seven-year run is beyond our wildest dreams. Never could we have imagined the Birds playing in three Super Bowls in seven years and winning two of them, nor could we have imagined them beating perhaps the two greatest QBs ever to play — Tom Brady and Mahomes — as well as perhaps the two greatest coaches to wear the headsets — Bill Belichick and Big Red, to win them.
Think about the three straight first-round playoff losses by Buddy’s Gang Green, the Rich Kotite and Ray Rhodes squads that won a playoff game each but never sniffed the Super Bowl. The Andy Reid era in Philly, littered with success, frustrations and, ultimately, a three-point loss to Brady’s Patriots after the 2004 season. For decades before that, the Eagles were an afterthought, the little brothers of the league constantly punching up at Dallas, San Francisco, New York, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles.
Mostly bad, sometimes good, never quite good enough. Hopelessness abounded.
No more. Now, the Eagles are the team everyone in the NFC and, for the moment, the NFL, is looking up to.
Even if you felt as I did that the Eagles would win this game somewhat comfortably, no one could have predicted they’d be up 34-0 in the 3rd quarter or 40-6 with three minutes left as Kansas City’s ill-fated three-peat landed with a resounding thud. The game was like a giant snowball gathering steam as it rushed down the side of a mountain, ultimately crashing at the bottom in a glorious display of green confetti’d destruction on the Super Dome turf.
There were multiple mileposts along the way to Sunday night’s victory, but here are the six most pivotal moments that paved the way to the Birds’ second Super Bowl title.
Why am I starting with a play...
