Some losses sting. Others echo throughout a career. The Philadelphia Eagles pummelled the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, ending any hope of a historic three-peat. It was a humbling. A humiliation. A beatdown for the ages. Most jarring of all, the Chiefs didn’t threaten for a moment.
Even the final score is misleading. Late in the third quarter, the Eagles held a 34-0 lead, the largest lead in a Super Bowl since 2014. The Eagles were dunking Gatorade on their head coach Nick Sirianni while the Chiefs were still trying to find a way into the game. By the fourth quarter, there was a sighting of Eagles backup quarterback Kenny Pickett, the human victory cigar.
[ Super Bowl: Eagles soar to 40-22 win over Chiefs in New OrleansOpens in new window ]
The Chiefs entered the game chasing history. They left with their heads spinning, having been outplayed, outcoached and, most surprising of all, outclassed at quarterback.
There was a moment late in the second quarter when the Chiefs looked to Patrick Mahomes to make anything happen. The quarterback who routinely pulls off the unthinkable had led his team into a 10-0 ditch. He had been harassed, dropped and rocked early in the game, with the Eagles’ four-man defensive line dominating the Chiefs’ woeful offensive line. But with Mahomes, it always feels like you’re one play away from the Chiefs finding a spark.
Five things we learned as Ireland go clear of the pack in the Six Nations
Cristiano Ronaldo leaves no doubt as to who he thinks is the GOAT
Talking point: Scotland fail to make Ireland pay price for first-half profligacy during Six Nations game
The NFL is coming to Dublin. What teams will play, how can I get tickets and what can we expect?
If anyone could conjure a moment of magic, you felt, it was Mahomes. In each of their three Super Bowl wins with Mahomes at the helm, the Chiefs have trailed by 10 at some point in the game. But this time was different. After being sacked on back-to-back plays, staring down a two-score deficit, Mahomes faced a third-and-17. He took the snap, scrambled to his right to evade pressure, and then threw across his body into the waiting hands of Eagles corner Cooper DeJean, who returned the ball for a touchdown. That made it 17-0 to the Eagles; the refs may as well have called ballgame.
The Chiefs could never get rolling on offense. By the end of the first half, they had run only 20 plays and gained 23 yards – the kind of distance Mahomes usually gets on a single throw. Mahomes hit on just six of his 14 pass attempts, and the team struggled to cross midfield. The Eagles drained the clock, put together long scoring drives, then quickly won the ball back as the Chiefs offense imploded. As Kendrick Lamar was taking a dig at Drake, the Chiefs were less concerned with their three-peat as scraping together three points.
This was a game decided in the trenches, as Super Bowls often are. The Eagles shattered the Chiefs’ offensive line and the ripple effect swallowed everyone and everything in Andy Reid’s offense, including Mahomes. Scared of running the ball against Philly’s enormous defensive front, Reid bailed on the rushing game altogether. That left the ball in Mahomes’ hands, facing a hellacious Eagles pass rush that sacked the quarterback six times and pressured him on over half of his dropbacks. The pressure came quickly and was sustained. On every play, it felt like two or three Eagles were greeting Mahomes in the backfield. For large chunks of the game, it was as if the Eagles’ defense had 15 players on the field. The pass-rushers came in all shapes and attacked from all angles, forcing Mahomes to scramble around for his life.
The Eagles' pass-rush was the story of the game, but Mahomes should not be absolved of blame. He turned down throws, moved into pressure and made panicked decisions in key spots. From the first drive, he looked skittish, as though he knew his offensive line wouldn’t be able to hold. By the second quarter, his fears confirmed, he looked downright lost, tossing up wayward picks to Zack Baun and DeJean. Rarely has Mahomes, typically the coolest guy in the building on the biggest stage, looked so frazzled. He ended the game with three turnovers, including a strip-sack on the first play after the Chiefs had scored their first touchdown to cut the Eagles lead to 37-6.
[ Super Bowl LIX in pictures: Kansas City Chiefs v the Philadelphia EaglesOpens in new window ]
The seeds for this defeat were planted all year. When they needed to raise their game most, season-long concerns came back to bite the Chiefs: the flaky offensive line, the one-dimensional offense, the lack of a vertical passing game and a slow, ineffective Travis Kelce.
And it’s not as if the team’s defense did not hold their side of the bargain. They slowed Saquon Barkley and the Eagles all-conquering run game down early and often, forcing quarterback Jalen Hurts into tough, clutch third-down throws to keep the Eagles ticking along. It was the Chiefs’ offense that was their undoing – for what is only the second time during their five Super Bowl trips in six seasons. They could not put sustained drives together or bank on Mahomes to cover up for struggles elsewhere, as he has so often before.
Entering Sunday, the Chiefs were hardly a free-rolling contender. Of all their Super Bowl teams, this was the most flawed. But they were able to cover up deficiencies with masterful coaching, high-end talent and their quarterback always finding a way.
The Chiefs relied on eking out tight, one-score games this season. They entered Sunday winning 17 one-score games in a row and had ripped off 12 come-from-behind, one-score wins. Was it skill or luck? When teams close out tight victories, we like to ascribe them all kinds of virtues. They wanted it more. They’re smarter. Mahomes is magic in the clutch. Two of those, with the Chiefs at least, are true. But there was plenty of luck along the way for the Chiefs this year: A blocked punt to end a game against the Denver Broncos, some favourable flags against the Cincinnati Bengals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The talent and luck ran out in Louisiana.
This, ultimately, will be remembered as Mahomes’ most significant defeat. It feels almost cruel that one game will take on such outsized importance in the arc of his career. But when you’re chasing the ghost of Tom Brady, being waxed in a Super Bowl matters. This isn’t Mahomes’ first blowout defeat in the final game of the season; he has now quarterbacked two teams in the last five years to lose by more than 20 points. The defeat on Sunday was shockingly similar to the defeat to Tampa in Super Bowl LV. In both a four-man pass-rush smothered Mahomes, he panicked, and made ill-considered decisions. Mahomes has three rings to Brady’s seven. But Brady, calling the game rather than playing it these days has opened up further distance on his chief rival for GOAT status. Brady’s three Super Bowl losses with the Patriots came by a combined losing margin of 16 points. Mahomes is up to a combined losing margin of 40 in his two defeats.
After Mahomes got clobbered in the Chiefs’ first Super Bowl loss, general manager Brett Veach raced down to the field to tell Mahomes he would not let the quarterback get wrecked in a pivotal game again. He asked Mahomes to trust him, that he would rebuild the team’s offensive line so that the quarterback always had a chance. That rebuild lasted for two seasons. Now, Mahomes will have to trust Veach to again reboot his offensive line in the offseason, to give the Chiefs and their quarterback a chance to put right a crushing loss.
And the Chiefs should expect to be back. For all the concerns along the offensive line and offense in general, the Chiefs have a ton of young talent. Outside Kelce, all the key architects of their dynastic run are expected to return. They still have the best coaching staff in the league. They defense is still loaded with talent. And they still have Mahomes.
So, the Chiefs and Mahomes may well make it back to the big dance next season. But this loss will be etched into their legacy. The potential three-peaters did clinch immortality, in a sense, but in a way that will scar their dynastic run. — Guardian
