The Eagles spared us from the Evil Empire

Philly are the Super Bowl champions, and they saved us from boredom.

Schadenfreude is a powerful drug, and 30 fanbases are addicted right now. Super Bowl LIX was the ultimate “GO BIRDS” moment for everyone outside of Kansas City, and on Monday, there’s a collective celebration that a communal foe has been slain.

The Chiefs had quickly become the next iteration of the Patriots. An inescapable cosmic horror forcing us to re-live the same Super Bowl moment again and again for all eternity: Patrick Mahomes celebrating at midfield, Andy Reid’s greatness proclaimed once more, with Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift embracing at midfield.

Like the Giants before them, the Eagles became kryptonite on Sunday, developing and executing a game plan in every game phase that Kansas City simply wasn’t ready for. The narrative entering this Super Bowl was that while every metric showed that Philadelphia was in the best position to win, there would be some intangibles in coaching and the dominance of Patrick Mahomes that would carry the Chiefs through to a third straight Super Bowl.

We were left with a game that was never close. A blowout of unimaginable proportions. A Super Bowl so lopsided that we haven’t seen anything close to it since Super Bowl XLVIII when the Seahawks destroyed the Broncos 43-8 — yet despite the score showing differently, it was never a contest.

For as much credit as Mahomes deserves, he needs to take the L here. The loss on Sunday was a calamity of errors on the offensive side of the ball for the Chiefs, but so much of it rests on the quarterback’s shoulders. Kansas City had built their team to be predicated on Mahomes creating, and he crumbled like paper under the weight of a pedestrian pass rush that ht simply couldn’t identify pre-snap. From there he made questionable decisions by throwing into coverage and didn’t move the ball at all until it was garbage time and Philadelphia was already celebrating.

The biggest shock is how unprepared the Chiefs looked for this game. It’s as if they spent no time learning any of Vic Fangio’s defensive sensibilities and managed to get caught completely off guard. Meanwhile, the Chiefs spent so much energy shutting down Saquon Barkley that they were unable to privot and handle a game where Jalen Hurts was the focal point.

One of the biggest indictments of these Chiefs is how they aren’t the Patriots. A consistent theme under Andy Reid has been an inability for his team to adapt on the fly when their game plan isn’t working. It’s for this reason Kansas City was forced into so many close wins in 2024, and too often it was on the offense to bail out poor game planning on the offensive side of the ball.

All great empires collapse. Being conquered is only the final step. The first is apathy. What we saw from the Chiefs was an apathetic team that sleep-walked into the Super Bowl and got punched in the mouth for its troubles. Kansas City is still a great team, but their legacy is tarnished by two Super Bowl losses in games they were expected to win. Meanwhile for the majority of football fans it’s a day to celebrate.

Winner: Jalen Hurts

That was a Super Bowl performance for the ages. Jalen Hurts had been slandered all season long for being the weakest part of the Eagles defense, the factor that would surely end up costing them a season. It became easy to believe that Hurts was simply a tool, an easily-replaced tush push decoy without a lot of merit on his own.

Then the Super Bowl happened, and Hurts completely took over the game. With his arm and legs he shredded the vaunted Chiefs defense in a way MVP Josh Allen wasn’t capable of doing in the AFC Championship game.

It wasn’t just taking downfield shots when he needed to, but Hurts’ improvisation post-snap that made the biggest difference. Every down he was a threat, each play he was dynamic. When the Chiefs finally found a way of flushing him out of the pocket he still found ways to create with his legs.

This was a career-defining game for Hurts, and it was redemption in the best way possible.

Winner: Vic Fangio

The Eagles’ defensive coordinator had largely been ignored this season as the Eagles’ defensive brilliance was often hoisted on their tremendous talent. While that talent was still on display, Fangio’s scheme was the difference-maker in who won the Lombardi Trophy.

Fangio devised a base defense that took opportunities away from Mahomes to improvise. Instead of overloading with pressure, Fangio asked his defensive line to win their one-on-one battles, and pressure Mahomes to break the coverage. He couldn’t do it.

Ahead of the Super Bowl it felt like the blueprint for beating Mahomes was going to be following what the Buccaneers did by overloading with interior pressure and sending multiple vectors of pass rushers. Instead, the defense was almost passive, waiting for the plays to come to them — knowing full well the Chiefs weren’t going to run the ball enough to give them problems or keep the secondary offense.

It was one of the best coaching performances we’ve seen in a modern Super Bowl.

Winner: Saquon Barkley

This all played out. This is what everything was about for the standout running back. Signing with the Eagles in the offseason was a move we knew was going to be good, but nobody had any idea that less than a year later we’d be seeing Barkley joining the Eagles as the defining reason for their Super Bowl season.

This was proof positive of every move that Barkley and the Eagles made this season, including benching him in the final week of the regular season, which prevented him from setting the single-season rushing record. At the time, it felt like a massive mistake, but in winning the biggest game in the sport, it all worked out.

Barkley is so deserving of a Super Bowl ring, and this capped off one of the greatest individual season we’ve ever seen.