NEW ORLEANS – The Birds have slain the beast, prevented history in the process and turned in one of the most dominant Super Bowl performances of all time.
The Philadelphia Eagles throttled the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 on Sunday in Super Bowl 59 at Caesars Superdome to deny the Chiefs becoming the NFL’s first-ever “three-peat” Super Bowl champions.
The Eagles didn’t let the Chiefs being on the brink of history – or the last Super Bowl between the teams two years ago, a 38-35 loss for Philadelphia – affect their performance. Philadelphia snatched the pen to write its own version of history and did the football equivalent of drawing on the Chiefs’ forehead.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes ran for his life all game, and the Eagles’ defense deserves the credit for making him jumpy from the start. Josh Sweat led the team with 2 ½ sacks, and Milton Williams had two. The team’s six sacks were one off the Super Bowl record for most sacks in the game. Williams’ strip sack of Mahomes in the fourth quarter, which he recovered, was the exclamation point on the commanding defensive effort.
Mahomes had two touchdown passes in the final three minutes to make the game appear closer than it ever really was.
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Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, aside from one ill-advised interception while facing a free blitzer, played with poise and finished 17-for-22 passing for 221 yards with two touchdowns to go with one rushing score. He was the game’s leading rusher with 72 yards on the ground on 11 attempts. After the Eagles took over on downs late in the third quarter, he found DeVonta Smith (four catches, 69 yards) on a go route down the seam for a 46-yard touchdown to make it 34-0.
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Running back Saquon Barkley, who set the all-time record for rushing yards in a season (including playoffs) during the game, did not unleash a breakout run as he’d done all postseason – sometimes multiple times in those games. He finished with 57 rushing yards on 25 carries but caught a team-high six passes for 40 yards. It marked his first time since Week 15 of the regular season without more than 100 rushing yards in a game.
The Chiefs went from the verge of cementing themselves as the team’s most prolific dynasty to facing the prospect of becoming the first team to be shut out on the world’s largest stage. Kansas City started 0-for-8 on third down, and Xavier Worthy caught the team’s first touchdown to make it 34-6 with 34 seconds left in the third quarter.
Down the field, Mahomes had nobody to throw to. Travis Kelce (four receptions, 39 yards) was a non-factor; his first catch came with three minutes remaining in the third quarter and the game already decided. And the lack of rushing attack was one of several factors that allowed the Eagles’ pass rushers to tee off on Mahomes all game.
Mahomes showed up to the stadium Sunday wearing an Eagles shade of green. But it was the Eagles’ defense who had him feeling green.
Eagles rookie cornerback Cooper DeJean, celebrating his 22nd birthday Sunday, returned an interception – the first of his career – for a touchdown halfway through the second quarter to make it 17-0 after his Eagles teammates had sacked Mahomes on the previous two plays.
Two series later, Zach Baun intercepted Mahomes – feeling pressure again – over the middle to give the Eagles the ball back at the Kansas City 14-yard line with 1:45 left in the half. Hurts found a wide-open A.J. Brown for a 12-yard touchdown two plays later and the blowout was in full force, 24-0, with 95 seconds remaining until halftime.
Over the first 30 minutes, the Eagles completely suffocated the defending champs. The Chiefs had one first down, on their first drive, at halftime. With Mahomes sacked three times, Kansas City had 23 net yards of offense. Meanwhile, Philadelphia had 179 net yards and ran nearly twice as many plays (39-20) and held possession twice as long. The 24-point lead was the steepest margin at halftime in Super Bowl history.
Not much changed for the better for the Chiefs in the second half. Once again, the Eagles sacked Mahomes on consecutive plays to force a punt.
Both teams punted following their first offensive possessions of the game. An offensive pass interference penalty on Brown as the Eagles converted a fourth-and-2 did no favors to the narrative – which the NFL tried to dispel the entire week – that the Chiefs receive preferential treatment from the referees. However, Brown shoved his left hand into Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie’s helmet to trigger the flag.
The Eagles were on the other side of flag luck when Hurts overthrew Dallas Goedert on third-and-5, but the tight end took a shot to the helmet from McDuffie to keep the drive alive. The scoring then began, as Hurts found Jahan Dotson for a 27-yard touchdown to the one-yard line, and Philadelphia executed its patented “tush push” for a six-point lead with 6:15 left in the first quarter.
Kicker Jake Elliott made all four of his field-goal attempts (48, 29, 48, 50) to round out the scoring for Philadelphia.
The Chiefs were undisciplined penalty-wise, notably Nick Bolton’s penalty for unnecessary roughness for nailing Barkley in the back following an incompletion with the Eagles backed up toward the end of the first half.
The vastly pro-Philadelphia crowd was persistent throughout the day in the “Big Easy,” starting “E-A-G-L-E-S” chants more than two hours before kickoff. Those fans also made their disdain of the Chiefs well-known throughout Sunday – from player introductions to the cheerleaders receiving a bombardment of boos while descending an escalator to field level. By the fourth quarter, they mockingly performed the “tomahawk chop” Chiefs fans do in support of their team.
And they went into the New Orleans night chanting as the champs for the second time in eight seasons.
