The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL - Super Bowl LIX recap: Eagles cap off dramatic turnaround from last season with dominant win over Chiefs

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

The return to bully ball was one of the stories of the 2024 season. So perhaps it's fitting that the story of the Super Bowl was that of the Eagles utterly dominating the trenches on both sides of the ball in their 40-22 triumph over the Chiefs. Robert Mays and Derrik Klassen break down Super Bowl LIX on this episode of The Athletic Football Show.Host: Robert MaysCo-Host: Derrik KlassenExecutive Producer: Michael BellerProducer: Michael BellerSubscribe to The Athletic Football Show...AppleSpotifyYouTubeFollow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.socialFollow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.socialFollow Robert on X: @robertmaysFollow Derrik on X: @QBKlassTheme song: HauntedWritten by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love SongsCourtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. Super Bowl, baby. This is the Super Bowl recap. We did this live from the Concourse at the Superdome with me and Derek Classen. Pretty surprising game. With all things considered, I would say, no matter what you thought about these two teams coming into this game,

even if you thought the Eagles had a significant talent advantage, which would be a totally reasonable place to land. I don't think any of us anticipated a game like this, an unbelievable performance for Vic Fangio in that defense, especially that defensive line. the Josh Sweat game, man. I'm not sure how many of us saw that coming, but he took it to Joe Tooney,

an incredible performance from that unit. Jalen Hertz played about as well as you want Jalen Hertz to play in these moments. The really good version of Jalen Hertz that they need him to be when a team is going to challenge those guys on the outside. They hit every single goal ball, seemingly they were challenged to hit. Just an organizational victory for a team that has done it the right way for a very long time. Me and Derek Classen dug in to all of that, chatted about the issues that the chiefs had on offense,

what things are going to look like for Kansas City moving forward. Let's get to that conversation with Derek right now. A surprising night, I would say, of all the different ways this game could have gone, of all the iterations a game between this chief's team and this Eagles team could have gone, that is not one that I expected. Even if you thought the Eagles were better,

which is a totally fair place to land, that is not what I expected to watch today. There was a point in this Super Bowl where it might have been, midway through the second quarter, our producer, Michael Beller, was slacking us a bunch of different stats and all this stuff. And it was mostly about how the Chief's offense just could not move the ball. I literally slacked him. There is not a universe you could have convinced me that existed where this game went exactly this way. Because I think you could have convinced me that the Eagles got out ahead and they started to sit on the ball, all that stuff.

The way in which we arrived there didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. A ton of stats that we're going to throw out as part of the show. The first thing I'll say, you mentioned the second quarter with Beller. In the third quarter, I was looking at the chiefs over the cap page to start figuring out who their free agents were and how much money they had to spend this offseason. You said the fact that you're looking at this in the middle of the third quarter is all you need to know about what sort of game we're watching right now. And it was completely warranted. There was no reason for you to be doing anything else at that point in the game. We were wondering what the Mahomes versus Eagles defense matchup might look like.

The Eagles had been by a lot of measures the best past defense and the best defense. in football for a huge chunk of the season. They're number one in defensive DVOA. They're number one in EPA per dropback. They're a really good run defense. But with the way that the Chief's offense had been playing in the playoffs, I expected it at least be a good matchup. I mean, Mahomes was in his best three-game stretch of the season

by the time they got to the Super Bowl. The Chief's offense looked the best it had all year. You know, the couple lingering concerns about what their offensive line had looked like, what their left tackle had looked like. I still expected them to be able to move the ball fairly efficiently against the Eagles, even if it was going to be a tough matchup, given who was on the other side. To see them dismantled in the way that they were.

And all the game-long stats in this game are completely meaningless, right? The 22 points, this is not a 40-22 game. This is a 40-6 game. Mahomes ended the game with eight yards in attempt. Yeah. That is not real. None of that is real. So some of these stats I'm going to throw out are more so about the first half

or the first three quarters of this game. At half-time of this game today, the Chief's offense had a 5% offensive success rate. They had three carries for three yards from the running backs in the first half. Mahomes had a 17% dropback success rate at halftime. His previous low in a game in his career was 27%. And that's not even the worst stat. At halftime of this game per next gen stats,

Mahomes had negative 1.36 EPA per dropback. That probably doesn't mean anything. if you look at every NFL game that has happened in the past five years, it was the 10th worst first half any quarterback has had. On that list, we have two Davis Mills starts. We have a Will Greer start. We have a PJ Walker start. And you pointed this out to me in real time.

We had these Sam Darnold's I'm Seeing go scam against the New England Patriots. Even if you thought this was going to be a tough road from a Holmes in this offense against Vic Fangio and this defense. that sort of outcome is unfathomable. You can't be on the same page as the Sam Darnold's seeing ghost games. Like that is just a completely unconsciousable end to this game. I think what was kind of racked my brain a little bit is that for the first two or three drives, you could really feel like the chiefs were trying to poke and prod at what the Eagles' rules were,

how they were going to react to stuff. You saw them doing a lot of shifting and motioning. They had a number of plays where they would come out and empty, the back would come back, reload back into the formation. I think they were just trying to see how was Dejean going to follow, or where the linebackers going to go follow out to the formation, all that stuff. And that, I just thought by drive four, by drive five, it would be like, okay, Andy Reid's going to find an answer. Mahomes is going to settle in, and they're going to start to get rolling.

That's not what happened at all. By the time we get to the fourth drive is when he throws the pick six, and the game really starts to fall away. So you could have convinced me that they could have a slow start and that Fangio's defense would kind of sit on them for a little bit. But I just thought Reed and Mahomes would have a better job of easing their way into, the game. And I don't even say this on the fact of like, oh, some of what they did in the late third quarter and early fourth quarter when they threw bombs away, it started to working. That stuff was working because the Eagles didn't care anyone. It didn't matter. Like that's not why I'm saying it. That wasn't the answer we were looking for for a good

majority of this game. That's not why I'm saying it. I'm just saying I'm surprised they didn't tap into more of that just based on the fact that like this is something they typically do well. They'll poke and prod to you for one or two drives and then boom, they hit a big one and then boom, they get themselves back into the game. They just never found that ability to do that in this game. I think part of that is that no matter what you're trying to do, no matter what levers you're trying to pull, no matter what tweaks you're trying to throw out there, if the other team is just dominating the game up front, then there's only so much that you can do. The story of this game, to me, at the end of the day, is what the Eagles front did against the Chief's Offensive Wine. In the first half, again, I think they finished with the 38% pressure rate. That's meaningless.

It was about 50% for the game. It was 47% in the first half. The Eagles had a 47% pressure rate without blitzing one time. They sent a couple simulated pressures, but they never set more than four over the course of the entire game, and the Eagles consistently were making him uncomfortable. This was a bad Patrick Mahomes game. We could talk about that. Even if you lump in some of the circumstantial factors and what was going on around him,

he did not play well. But part of that is he was really uncomfortable on the pocket from essentially the moment this game started. Josh Sweat was living in his lap. There was a play early on. It was a third and five that it was ultimately an incompletion to Hollywood Brown. Mahomes has Hollywood Brown on the right side. What's happening is he's looking front side to his left on a little high-low bender to juju. Quinion Mitchell was all over it, which he was all game.

We can talk about that. And Sweat was walking Tuny right back into Mahomes' lap. So he didn't even have time to get to Hollywood. Brown who was open against DeGine until it was too late. And that was the story of the game. The pressure was happening immediately, but even on plays that were a little bit slower developing, this coverage was so, so sticky. It all working in concert, that is as good of a defensive performance as you can put on as a single unit. And they did it for the first three quarters against arguably the best quarterback we've ever seen. I think that's a really good play to kind of

highlight how this game went. I think another one was, so for a majority of this game, they really did not help Tune at all with like chip help and all that stuff. And I get it. When you know that Fangio is only going to send four, you don't really want to dedicate another body to pass protection because it's just at that point you just start getting really outnumbered. This is an Eagles defense that does really good at tackling, all that stuff. But there was a play.

It was the DeAndre Hopkins drop where they actually do finally go start to, I think they threw the back and the tight end over to Sweatside, over to the left side. They said, this guy is not ruining this third down. They block him up. They get that side handled. Holmes ends up bailing to his. right and he finds D'Andre Hopkins that throws a little bit off and D'Andre Hopkins isn't able to connect on it. That to me spoke to the idea of like, okay, this is just not the Chiefs' Day. And like,

even when they started to find the thing that was going to help them a little bit in past protection, the rest of around them what needed to help, just wasn't able to do it. Like Hopkins wasn't able to make that play. And then you bring up, you know, him struggling to get to Hollywood Brown on on that one play. Another one to me was the Zach Bonn interception. He actually gets to, I think it might have been Hollywood Brown again over the middle of the field trying to hit the slant behind Zach Bond. He gets to it. It's going to be there in that second window on Bond's other side. But because Thuny is in his lap because Josh Swet puts him there, he just can't make the throw. Like he's just, he literally has sweat and Thuny like rocked up on his left side.

There's just no way to make the throw. Ends out throwing you behind it. It's a pick. And so again, the entire day was basically whenever the Eagles wanted to rush with four and they did the entire game, they were able to get home. Sweat finished with six pressures in the first three quarters of this game. That feels low. And that feels low. And he had two and a half sacks. One of them was on like a missed assignment.

That was the other thing is that the chief sort of shooting themselves in the flitch is so much more than we're typically used to seeing. One of them was that screen. Yeah. I couldn't even tell what was actually happening in real time. Not watching the game on TV, you don't get the same level of replays. So it's kind of hard. You're watching the dots and what you saw live.

So it was hard to kind of decipher what happened on that play. It looked like some sort of blown coverage. And then on the other side, they had multiple blown coverages in this game. Some of it is the talent you're dealing with. but this is just not the buttoned up version of this Chiefs team that we're used to seeing. And to watch them be so disjointed on the biggest stage and the biggest moment was genuinely surprising. It was shocking. Like they had the big overrout to Dallas Goddard, where he's running completely free early in the game.

And then obviously the touchdown to Jahan Dotson. It's when I first saw how bad it was and then like rewatching the dots, so the Chiefs are playing a three deep fire zone. So they're playing cover three. They're sending one extra body. It looks like I think it was Watson. It looks like he gets beat so bad that he's staying in the flat to play cover two. That's how bad it was. But he's actually just jamming in cover three.

Jahan Dotson, maybe not the greatest player, but Watson's a bigger and slower corner. Watson's a smaller and faster receiver. And it was kind of just one of those times where that particular matchup didn't go well for them. Dotson was able to win on the double move. And Watson just has zero recovery speed to make up for that. And Hertz, to his credit, one of his best throws is that he'll put the go ball straight in the bucket. He did it like four different times this game. And that was the one where it really started to like, you could start.

to feel the damn kind of breaking for them. And Watson also gets toasted on the Devante Smith touchdown in one-on-one. And he misses so bad on that with the jam that he's behind. And Smith has a step on him from the moment that place starts and Hertz puts it in the bucket. And you know what? The Chiefs, they know that's going to happen. Spagnolo knows that at some point, his guy jamming, who's, he's a replacement-level cornerback.

He's an okay guy coming off of injury and stuff like that. He knows that he's going to lose to these talented receivers at some point. but the bet is that we'll get home with some of this pressure. They did not get home to Jalen Hertz nearly as much as they needed to, both with their four men rush and with some of their pressures. There were a couple of big ones, right? Like they were able to get home to him on a couple of pressures. There's one where the sack got wiped off.

The first cover zero sack got wiped off. And then on the pick, Bowling was unblocked on the interception. Spags is playing. I don't even know how to describe it. It's like a weird version of quarters. But for the most part, we talked about this coming into the game, Were we going to have five or six moments where it felt like hurt struggled at some of the funky stuff and some of the funky pressures they were throwing at him? Or was it going to be one or two moments?

And it ended up being one or two moments. Some of that is past protection, right? The game is simple sometimes. If you get your ass kicked on the offensive defensive line over a four quarter game, there's a good chance you're going to lose this game. Maybe we should have thought about that more coming into it. But because they were going to send extra bodies more often, it's like, okay, even if the four-man rush isn't going to get there for the Chiefs. They're going to be able to heat him up because of the extra guys they're going to be sending.

And that just didn't really work. They didn't blitz that much. When the game was still in the balance, they only blitz like a quarter of the time. They played a lot of like a base cover too. Yes. And so not when they weren't sending extra bodies and even sometimes when they were, the past protection in this game was absolutely phenomenal. I want to talk about a couple more things on the defense before we move to what the Eagles

were doing on offense. First of all, Milton Williams and Josh Swett, both hitting in free agency, both hitting in the spring. Going to get some money. Milton Williams, especially. Again, reminding you what type of pass rushing force he can be. But the play I want to talk about,

just like personnel-wise, to point out a couple guys, the Dijin picks six to me is like a perfect encapsulation of this game for the Eagles. Even when Mahomes gets a little bit of time and buys a little bit of time by escaping outside of the pocket,

he's trying to hit Hopkins on this big crosser all the way across the field. The Eagles are playing quarters. The Eagles played 15, 49% quarters in this game. That is the second highest rate in a meaningful NFL game since 2020. The only reason I think meaningful NFL game, the Bengals did it more in a week 17 game where Brandon Allen was starting in 2020.

That game does not count. So 59% quarters is an astronomical rate. And what they were doing is it was so sticky, even if they were playing a lot of zone. And on that play, you get Hopkins coming on this big overrout. And even if DeGine doesn't pick that ball off, Quinnion Mitchell was running, step for step all the way across the field for Hopkins,

with Hopkins, Dejean sees it, falls off, makes the pick. But even if he doesn't, that's an incompletion. The quality of the coverage, independent of what DeGine was doing, was incredible, and that was the case all game. But those two guys, you know, we mentioned Zach Barn, Josh Sweat is somebody this team invested in.

We know how they built the offensive line. DeGine and Mitchell making that play on the same play is just such an expression of what this defense was able to do and how quickly this defense was able to be remade this offseason, going from one of the oldest, creakiest, least explosive units in the league, to what we just watched putting together, I don't know, if not the best defensive performance I've seen in the Super Bowl since I started doing this, right there with what the Seahawks did in 2013.

It is at least up in that market. And like the Dijin pick, obviously you notice what Dijin is doing in the moment, and how heads up he is. He's the flat player in what they're doing in Quarters. And he immediately realizes on 3rd and 16, they are fully flooding and flooding deep the right side of the field. So he has no reason to sit in the flat. And if the bat comes out, then Bonk can go take him.

It's the middle of the field. It's phenomenal awareness. The coaching on it, it's incredible. So as soon as he sees Mahomes, go to throw that ball, he just drives on it. So that was amazing. I didn't see what Mitchell was doing in real time. Like, I was just the whole place flooded the other way. So I'm not really looking what the bat side corner is doing.

When you rewatch the dots, it looks like he is moving at like 1.5 speed. That was the case the entire game. It was amazing. Every time he's at the outside corner and quarters and he's got to stick with the number one receiver on some sort of crossing route. He was running step for step with him. Even the play he made coming downhill on the little swing early in the game, the whole defense was playing with that. And that brings me to the one character on the defense.

I don't even think we've mentioned by name yet. We talked about it this week. This was the opportunity for Vic Fangio to put himself in a slightly different conversation, to go from somebody who has been this phenomenal and pactful character in the league, but maybe doesn't have his signature moment when you compare him to somebody like Steve Spagnolo or some of these other really good accomplished defensive coordinators that we've seen. Well, now he's got it.

Now he's got one of the best defensive performances we have ever seen in the Super Bowl against the best quarterback of his era. They systematically dismantled them for three and a half quarters. And I obviously didn't think it would look this good. I didn't think you would beat the hell out of Patrick Holmes in a way where he is like basically not playing football for two and a half quarters. But what I said kind of coming into the week, was Vic Fangio, his defense is, we run what we run. We want to rush for. We'll throw in a couple of

Sims and creepers every now and then, but we want to run a lot of quarters, cover six, and like, this is our defense and we're going to make you beat it. That was all they did. They literally just played the hits for his defense. They did not do anything that was off type. They didn't do anything that was weird for him. They literally ran basically his favorite plays off the top of the list, and they just played it incredibly well. And there was no point where the chiefs played well enough to push them off of it. And that was kind of what I thought was missing in this game, is I thought Andy Reid would come up with something, do something weird with Xavier Worthy out of the backfield or the first drive. They run an RPO. They get a completion. And then they don't

do it the rest of the game. Yeah. And I don't know if that's what we can't run the ball anyway. I have no idea why you go away from that. But some of that, putting the linebackers in conflict or some of that horizontal stretch that we were talking about, you just didn't see a lot of that. It was static and they They're running a lot of downfield routes. And when you watch it all unfold, the linebackers are getting underneath stuff. And the quarter's coverage is pressing down. And they're just squeezing all that second level stuff. The amount of error they took out of the defense in this game, even while playing a lot of zone, was remarkable.

It was suffocating. Like, whatever constrictor analogy you want to use, that's how the game felt. I always knew that would be possible. But to watch it happen on this scale and this definitively was still surprising. And that's the thing. If you know Vic Fangio's defense is going to be relatively static with as much talent as they have, you can't be static on the other side. Like even outside of like some of what they were doing conceptually, the first four drives, they ran the ball one single time. And obviously with the RPO's, technically they could have ran it a couple more times. But they ran the ball one single time for two yards. And they ran the entire offens out of the shotgun. You cannot be that simple and that silo to basically tell Vic Fangio, hey, we're going to be in shotgun. We're going to pass the entire time with a four down front that. is just going to beat the hell out of you. Like, it's kind of no one. Like, once you kind of think about it in hindsight,

the way that the chiefs were trying to play the first three drives, it's almost no wonder it looked that as bad as it did. On the other side of the ball, if I told you coming into this game that Sequehuan Barclay was finished with 25 carries for 57 yards and have a 16% success rate, how do you think this would have gone? Very, very poorly. He was 12 for 31 in the first half, and he had three receptions, three yards.

Like everything, that's actually, the fascinating part is that for until the game got out of hand after the pick six, the chief's defense was like fine. Yes. They were actually okay. Like, obviously. Yeah, you had a pick six and then you had a 10 yard scoring drive to get it to 24 points. Exactly.

And you get beat on some of the one-on-ones, but fine. Like you were probably baked in that that was going to happen. But like relatively the chief's defense played, I think if you, if you told me that the chiefs played well enough to basically give up like take out the pick six, like maybe 13 points in the first half, right? that's probably about how the Eagles were playing. You'd take that any day of the week. In the Super Bowl, the Eagles offense only scored 13 on me in the first half.

I'd take it. And so the fact that we got that and then on the other side, the Chief's offense gave them absolutely nothing. It's kind of funny how it's basically flipped of how previous Chief seasons have gone is where Patrick has had to do everything. And then the defense completely let him down in some of these other moments. Seguan did not have an impactful game. J-1-Hurts had as good of a game as you could want from J-1-Hurts in a game like this. I mean, it was the perfect J-1. The perfect version of Jaylen Hertz for this sort of moment, right?

Multiple timely scrambles, not only when they came and down in distance situations, but knowing when to take off, knowing when to use his legs. Devastating. Like in devastating moments, we know that. And this season has been his best season as a scrambler that he has had in the NFL. He's had better seasons as a designed runner. But what he was doing with his legs on passing downs was different this year. And it showed up in the biggest game of the season and the biggest moment of his

career. But throwing the football, he hit every single downfield opportunity that he was given in this game. You had the first one to John Dotson we talked about. He hits the back shoulder ball to AJ Brown for that 20-yard game to set up the field ball on the first drive to AJ Brown. That doesn't get taken away from a terrible OPEI. And then he hits Devante Smith on that play action design from the shot zone. I love the call. McKaybeckton pulls. They block it up. And he makes it happen. It's everything you could want from J-1 Hertz in this offense, the way that it's conceived in what they asked him to do. He was the best version of himself tonight. And he also even did have a couple of good designed runs. Like you talked about it before, some of the stuff where they tried

to get him on the perimeter. The horizontal design runs need to be tossed in the garbage candlelit on fire. I never want to see another one again. I made the joke to you during the game that like because they keep trying to make that play work and we see him just get hawked down two yards behind the line of scrimmage every single time. I almost feel like it's made us not fully appreciate how good of a runner Jalen Hurts actually has been this year. And he was obviously better than last year. And we said that a number of times.

But those plays are so memorable that we almost forget some of the other good stuff. But I thought overall as a scramble, he was fantastic. And like, especially when the chiefs only brought four, what was happening most of the time in those instances is that you would get to three, three and a half on the play clock where Jaylen Hertz was holding the ball. He would be relatively clean. someone like Karloftus or you know FAU would try to get inside shoulder to just be like I got to get to him somehow. Well, if one guy is going inside shoulder and the rest of the pocket is still held intact, Jalen has a very obvious like escape answer and he did such a good job of taking those.

As a pastor, he mostly did well. Like obviously the interception happened, but Spags is probably going to get you most of the time, especially in the good games. If they get them once, right, once is fine. And we're talking about sacks and interceptions combined, that's fine. If you get one or two of those over the course of the entire game with everything else you got working on defense and offense, that's okay. It was a very good Jalen Hertz game. He deserves a lot of credit for the way that he played. He, and that's the thing. I criticized him for how he was playing for a majority of the season, to be honest.

But honestly, it wasn't his best season. But in the playoffs, he's been pretty dang good. It's like up to the level of what he was that got them here in 2022 and what they needed to obviously go in the Super Bowl. That's the exact way right way to frame. What do they need from him? What do they need him to be? He rose to that level in the biggest games of.

the season every single time they asked that of him. The other thing we mentioned a little bit before, the pass protection, you just have to talk about that in the overall consideration for how the passing game played. Hertz had a 3.3 second time to throw in the third quarter when I looked this up, about almost when the fourth quarter was over, at a 24% pressure rate through three and half quarters. They gave him all day to throw the football for a good majority of this game, and he consistently took advantage of it.

Perfect example. The ball he hits to Sequin down the right sideline. He's got that is a 5.6 second time to throw on that play. He has to see the lane to escape, but the initial protection, him making a play slightly off schedule, and one of his absolute monsters on the outside making something happen for him. And that was the other thing. Those guys, those receivers, we know how good they are.

Watching them win every single one-on-one opportunity presented to them, you notice that in this game. What A.J. Brown did to try McDuffie consistently in this game. What the other receivers did to J.1 Watson in this game? The Chief's secondary has carried them in a lot of big playoff moments over the last few years. And watching this group, the way they played against this Eagles group of weapons, compared to last year's Super Bowl, where they absolutely snuffed out what the Niners receivers were able to do. It was a drastic difference.

You felt how much better the Eagles pass catchers were today. AJ Brown on Trent McDuffie was like, I know we all want to say sometimes, you know, body types don't matter in the NFL. when it's AJ Brown and he is like six to rocked up. AJ Brown's body type matters. It absolutely matters, especially with like, Tren McDuffie is fantastic. He's very strong for his size.

He's incredibly willing to be very physical. But like at the end of the day, when AJ Brown is that physical, there's, even if they had Legerious need from last year, like peak Legerious need, who was a fantastic big long press corner. I don't even know if like he's the type of guy

who can take on AJ Brown because nobody can really bully AJ Brown off of his spot. And when so many of the Eagles is vertical throw, are just spot go balls. Like you're just, J.lyn Hertz is just trusting that A.J. Brown will be exactly 30 yards down the field at a certain time. When you can never disrupt him,

what you get is Trent McDuffie losing basically everyone on run route. They had plus 10 yards down the field. All right, guys, before we move on, we're going to take a quick break. Let's get into some of the other characters here for the Eagles who have reframed the way that we need to talk about them a little bit. Nick Siriani is now a Super Bowl winning coach and a Super Bowl winning coach who his team ran rough.

shot over people in the playoffs. Just a really impressive run. Obviously, the Rams game is a little bit ugly. It's a little bit dirty and poor conditions. But what they did to Washington and the NFC championship game, what they did to this chief's team and what this chief's team looked like all year. We talked about it a lot this week. It's like what to do with Siriani and like how we frame him and how much credit do we give

him as part of this. But what you do as a head coach getting your team ready to play is huge. The energy they play with, the attitude they play with. And this team had that. They had that, especially down the second half of the season when the defense really clicked in. That is what your job is as a head coach. There is a little bit of vibes manager here. And I think that Desiriani does deserve credit for what that element of this team looked like down the back half of the season.

He absolutely doesn't. Like there's a, with the last Eagles Super Bowl win with Doug Peterson, it all happened very fast. Obviously, it kind of collapsed, you know, for them pretty much immediately after that, or at least a couple years after that. With Siriani, now that we know that he's been here before, he was here two years ago and was able to do it with that team, you completely revamped the roster, you completely revamped the coaching staff,

and you're here with a completely different team to do it again and to actually get it over the finish line against the guy that you lost to last time. And obviously, I think this chief team is worse, but to still beat them in that way, any team that has Mahomes to beat them in that fashion, Siriani's done a really, really good job. I think, I really, I said this on,

I don't know if it was one of our live shows, or maybe the show where we were talking about Siriani, I think him getting a guy like Vic Fangio in the building who's done this for such a long time. He's seen what Super Bowl winning rosters look like. He's seen what Super Bowl losing rosters look like. And for him to kind of be around all of this and for Siriani to kind of take on

a slightly different, more mature personality this year, I think was not only good for him, but kind of what this team needed. And I think you really saw towards maybe the last five, six weeks of the regular season and then into the playoffs, what that's really done for them. I had a conversation with Nick Dern training camp this year, and it was all on background, and I haven't shared a lot of it, but I won't get into specifics. But it really was just an indication to me that he really sat with himself this offseason

and thought about what he needed to do differently to be there for his team in ways that maybe he wasn't last year, maybe ways he fell short. And I think that some of that was just a volatility that we felt from him and how that seeped into what that team felt like. And I think this year, there were some moments, right? some moments where he's chirping to people on the sideline and all that stuff. But for the most part, I do think that he was a more steadying hand in a way that this team needed. And like you mentioned, the coordinators are a huge part of this.

Being able to hand the offense off to Kellan Moore because he's done this before, being able to hand the defense to a guy like Vic Fangio, that changes the calculus for what is being asked of you as a head coach. And that kind of brings me just to the organizational elements of this, the thought to go get those guys. and what role Jeffrey Lurie and Howie Roseman play in what we've seen from the Eagles, not only this season, but what we've seen from the Eagles over the last decade, to get back here and win another Super Bowl with essentially two players from the roster in 2017 the first time that you won. For the entire team to change and for the makeup of the entire team to change.

And on defense, for the makeup of the entire team to change almost in a single offseason. Like if you look at what the Eagles off season was, Sequin, Zach Barclan, Zach Barrow. on, Cooper de Jean, Quignan Mitchell. The amount of moves that happened this spring that directly led to the Eagles being here, we talked about this a lot. This team is hell bent on winning. This team is hell bent on winning Super Bowls. That's what this organization is after every single year.

There's no, maybe let's sneak in and win nine or ten games. There's no lack of ambition at any moment. And I think that starts at the top, right? Like, there's something, K.1KR wrote that story about packaging coaches together and how we hire them. And one of the notes in that story that I thought was really telling is that there was a coach who had been interviewed for the Eagles head coach in Java for the Herit's Here at Syrian. And he said, the only owner I've ever talked to who had a vision for what he wanted in that interview, in those types of interviews, was Jeffrey Lurray. And that's not surprising to me. You know, some of it, they give themselves an advantage by the way that they spend cash and the way that they move their money around.

but it speaks to how proactive and creative and aggressive they are all the time. Like they are hungry for these moments in ways that every single franchise should be and not enough franchises are. And that's why they've been here three times in the last seven years. And that's why they've done it twice with two very different rosters, very different quarterbacks, very different coaches. At a certain point, the organization is where you derive your strength. And I think you can absolutely say that about the Eagles.

To me, the story that tells, like, what they've done as an organization. So in 2017, Jason Kelsey is leading one of the best offensive lines in football. Fast forward to 2022. It's still Jason Kelsey leading one of the most impressive offensive lines in football. And we went into this offseason knowing like, okay, Jason Kelsey's gone. They had drafted this guy, Cam Jergens, to be kind of his succession plan. But even if Jurgens was going to be good, it was like, man, you're losing maybe the best center I've seen in my lifetime, a very unique center that allowed them to do a lot of stuff. Yes. He allowed them to be who they wanted to be.

He allowed them to be different than a lot of other offensive lines were allowed to be. And so for them to have those runs with that guy being at the centerpiece of it all for multiple different offenses, replace him and immediately be fine with that and somehow get back to the Super Bowl anyway and kind of retool the offensive line. Next to him, obviously Jergin steps into its center. And then you go and get Mackay Beckton and take the dice roll there. And that works out for you. Like, to me, having the succession plan to replace. Maybe the best guy who has played his position for the last decade or so,

it's just unbelievably phenomenal. The other thing, it's just that what they focus on and who they're trying to be, it's the same sort of model, right? Like where they spend their resources and where they want to be good. It's up front. It's up front on both sides of the ball. It's always been up front on both sides of the ball. Like you said, football's simple sometimes.

And they try to make it as simple as possible. And it's kind of funny because, you know, you know how it looks like. You know, you've heard how he talk. How he's a business guy, he's a cap guy, he's not a scout, he's not like a died-in-the-wolf football guy, but the fact that he's the one who's like, fuck it, I'm drafting an offensive or defensive lineman every year in the first round. I do not care. That is what we are going to consistently try to do.

You feel that, you're right? Jalen Carter steps in for Fletcher Cox. Milton Williams steps in for Timmy Jernigan. You look at what they have on the offensive line. Cam Juergen steps in for Jason Kelsey. Landon Dickerson, a first-round pick at left guard, Brandon Books was a guy they spent an unbelievable amount of money on. These 330-pound, $20 million guards,

they're just fixtures on this team, and then Lane Johnson is just going to play for the next 30 years. Even like they had an aging Zach Ertz, and they go and draft Dallas Goddard and play them both together, and then Dallas Goddard just takes over, and he remains one of the top five or six tight ends in the NFL. That's the thing is when you talk about organizational stuff, obviously the way they're allowed to spend money and spend cap.

one, there are a number of other teams that have that flexibility and just aren't as good as using it. And so you have to give them credit for being able to do it. But to me, it's just their consistent ability to have, like you said, with Jeffrey Lurie, a vision. Like, what is the team supposed to look like in two and three years? And I think in a lot of cases, teams delude themselves as to what that's supposed to look like. Whereas with, I think the Eagles, they do a lot of making sure the foundation is going to be very, very solid. So that when they have a little bit money to play with in free agency, they can go, and make the right pivots,

and I think they just do a really, really good job of setting themselves up in that way. It's also important to mention when they spend that money in free agency. They print money. The way that they've structured these contracts, I'm telling you guys right now, if you're interested in this,

go look at the over-the-cat page for the Philadelphia Eagles for 2025 and go look at the base salaries of all of their big-time players. They have pre-restructured every single one of these things into oblivion. And listen, is that a cheat code in a way?

Yes. it's available to everyone. And if you keep winning, it's available to everyone. If you want to spend the cash, that is available to you. And one of the reasons that they've been able to do that

is because they've offset it with patience and dice rolls in the draft. Where this becomes a problem, a real big problem, is when you do it like the Browns and the Saints have done, where you trade away all of your draft picks while also paying against the credit card

for as long as you're doing it. That's the problem with like the... Because even when you're doing it, even when you theoretically draft a good player, like Chris Olav. Chris Oliva, Chris Oliva is a great example. They go up and try to trade for him and he ends up being a good player. He's like a B plus player. For the middle of the first round, that is a hit for almost any team.

But because of what you had to give up to go get him, it becomes a lot less valuable. Whereas like with the Eagles, they consistently have more bites at the apple and they are typically typically better at using those bites than a lot of other teams. I mean, this past draft class is obviously insane, but for the most part, they've also drafted consistently well. And we've even seen this year, I've said this a number of times in the show, guys that they drafted two and three years before are now finally starting to pay off for them.

Like, Nicobi Dean being what he was for a lot of this year. Jordan Davis, like, I know there's a lot of other flashier names that are on that defensive line now, but like Jordan Davis actually finally did step up to be a really good player for them this year. No one Smith. No one Smith. Didn't do anything last year. He's just waiting in the wings.

Yep. They had these first round picks either waiting in the wings as a developmental plan or they just have first round picks, draft picks, waiting in their back pocket so they can use one to trade for A.J. Brown. I mean, that's kind of how the last five or so years have gone for this team. All right, guys, before we move on, we're going to take one more quick break. But first, I want to tell you about Connections Sports Edition, a new game for sports fans from The Athletic. It's basically a daily dose of trivia, and it's so satisfying to solve. I have to say, I've done a few puzzles already, and I'm already hooked. The first one is football theme,

so I encourage you guys to check it out. Play now at theathletic.com slash connections. So let's get to the Chief's side of all of this, okay? The Chiefs have $11 million in Cap Space before heading into next year. They would save $17 million if they move on from Travis Kelsey. So just one of the things to mention. They have $53 million tied up and actually goes to $63 million when you include Creed Humphrey and three offensive linemen. I assume that means they will be moving on from Trey Smith this offseason.

Justin Reed, Charles Menahue, also free agents. So are Hollywood Brown and Nick Bolton. do we learn anything about the chiefs as part of this process that you think is actually a long-term concern? Or do you think this is a moment where you got jumped on by a team that was ready for this, that was building to this, that was strong enough in the areas you were weakest, that this is probably not something we're going to see again? I think this is three and four years of buildup of just not drafting well on the offensive side of the ball. Like they're just not an explosive team on that side of the ball. Travis Kelsey is obviously getting older, so that was kind of part of it, and that's not a drafting issue.

That's just you had a fixture of the offense finally start to, you know, it's been a couple of years now where he's kind of played okay, whatever in the regular season and turned it off in the playoffs. This year, I think that. That also runs out of steam. Right. That also eventually runs out of steam. And I think this was the year where it fully ran out of steam. And then with all of the skill players, like, they've had to fix their inability to draft good wide receivers with moves. like going out and getting D'Andre Hopkins and going out and getting Hollywood. The Rishie Rice injury is also worth mentioning here. Rishie Rice looked incredible for the first few weeks of the season.

And I think that's part of it. But think of how many picks they spent before Rishie Rice. Of course. If they hit on any of those guys. It's absolutely worth mentioning. But if Rish Rye stays healthy and Hollywood Brown stays relatively healthy for the course of the season, the entire makeup of what the receiver room in the passing game was supposed to look like changes a little bit.

I don't think that would have made a difference tonight. Yeah. But when you think about how their receiver room is built specifically, I think you could talk yourself into an offense where next year you're walking into it with Xavier Worthy, the version of Xavier Worthy we saw in the playoffs, Rashy Rice coming back relatively healthy and Noah Gray and however else you want to piece it together. That's a decent starting point if you're trying to put together a group that you think is worthy of the quarterback you're playing with here. It's at least more explosive, but I still have a lot of question, Mars, about it.

They need at least one more. I do need at least one more guy. And I think that's the thing is that even with Rishi Rice and Worthy being a fairly gadget player is probably too mean at this point. He's probably like slightly graduated above that. I think he's definitely graduated above that. But he still is a specific type of player. I think that's my problem is that even for as good as Rishie Rice is, he's kind of a specific type of player. And I think, I like how they work together.

So I just, I like Worthy as like kind of like a movable piece and a space creator and Rice working underneath. We never got to see that version of the offense. Because for the most part, we got C. Rice for like two weeks. And Worthy was getting his feet wet. I just think that there's a version of this later down the road that actually does work. And we just never really got a window into what that would look like. It looks much different if Kelsey isn't a part of it. And there's part of me that thinks he won't be.

That's honestly probably fair. There probably is more potential here than I'm leading on. I think part of the problem, too, is like, Hollywood Brown and Worthy. They're just like not my type of receiver. And so I struggle seeing the vision a little bit. I need you to go back like two years ago and remember that, we were looking at like juju smith schuster mvess and justin watson this feels they won that super this feels a little bit different than that this feels slightly different than that at least three

year like whatever the projection forward is feels slightly different than whatever that group of past catchers looked like it certainly does it certainly does um i think the question now is like you mentioned how much money they have tied into the offensive line it's kind of concerning that they have that much money tied into the offensive line not as like a general thing but like their tackle situation is still not very good. And I know they kind of made bets. They tried to make the bet this offseason with King Lysu of Mataya, but I think what we've seen is that I think the offensive line for Patrick Mahomes is a lot more valuable than whatever

you're getting out of these receivers. And I still would like them to hit on these receiver picks at a certain point, but you've mentioned it earlier in the season, like what Josh Allen was able to do with an actual offensive line around it. And kind of piece it together with this other stuff. And so I guess I'm talking out of like both sides of my mouth is that I want them to fix both around him. I don't know.

I guess it's hard to like... You spent a second round pick on Kings and Sue, I'll tell you. Yeah. If that doesn't work into next year, if you don't get... I think everyone kind of understood it. It might be a process with him. He was raw coming in. You thrust him into the starting lineup immediately.

You would hope with another offseason of development. He gets to a place where he's at least playable. And then you get to move to Tuney back to the left guard. You still have Humphrey. You still have Taylor. Now you're just figuring out what the right guard situation is. I would hope that's how... they can walk into next year.

If it's not, we're having a very different conversation about a misallocation of resources in last year's draft. Yeah, that's a really good point. And I think, too, the last thing I would say is like, for as much as I've loved that Patrick Mahomes was able to become the, I throw underneath all the time, I get the ball out, I turned into Alex Smith. I think this game and really a lot of this season in particular was a measure of like, it's cool that we know that he can do that now and we'll be able to pull that out.

in specific game samples down the line, I think what we've learned now is like the offense just can't function this way. Like this is, we need to get back to a world where Mahomes is allowed to let loose a little bit more because for as good as he is at doing some of this stuff and playing a little bit more like Brady, what you drafted Mahomes to be and what you got out of him the first handful of years in his career,

where you were kind of a record setting offense, was him allowed to tap into a little bit of the insanity. And the fact that we've kind of gone on for too long, kind of caging him a little bit, I think that to me is probably the biggest lesson coming out of this game is that we might need to let Mahomes, you know, let him sling it a little bit more. It really does feel like this might be it for Kelsey. And part of me thinks it should be.

Which is like that's a good starting point to go back to some of the old stuff. It's like we're entering a new era probably. Again, they save $17 million if they move on from him. He might not want to with this being the last moment of his career. But the guy's walking into the Hall of Fame, he's won three Super Bowls. he's arguably the greatest tight end of all time. And I don't know, it would be a difficult conversation, but I think it might be a worthwhile conversation if you're the chiefs and just be like,

listen, we appreciate it. Like it's probably time for you to explore something else. It's probably time for us to explore something else. He's been making a lot of money next year. And the impact he's having just isn't the same. You don't feel him in these games anymore. And I think that is really telling. He had a couple moments in the Texans game,

but, I mean, for multiple multi-game stretches during this season, he disappeared, and that includes tonight when I thought he might have a big impact in the game. And even the Texan's game was like multiple blown coverages. Obviously, the touchdown that he scores where he's kind of over the middle, that's just a good play by him in Mahomes. Obviously, Mahomes made a ridiculous start on that play. But the one where Aziz al-Shahir just kind of blows the coverage, like that's not Kelsey doing any of the magic that we saw three years ago in any of those Super Bowl runs.

That's just like, that could have been Noah Gray theoretically. And that I think is the difference is that a lot of Kelsey's best moment. not all of them, obviously. There's still a special connection between him and Holmes. But at a certain point, it's like a number of the moments that they could have had or that Kelsey did have over this stretch. Like, it may well have just been Noah Gray, which is pretty concerning if you're moving forward as the Kansas City Chiefs.

I was going to do a little projection forward for the Eagles that I pulled up the over the cab page for the Eagles. I would like to just do this very quickly. J.1 Hertz 1.2 million. A.J. Brown, 1.2 million. Lane Johnson, 1.3 million. Jordan Milato, 1.2 million. Darius Slay, 1.3 million.

Dallas Godder, 1. million. James Bradbury 1.3 million. Devante Smith, 1.2 million. Bryce Hoff 1.2 million. Sequin Barclay, 1.7 million. He's getting paid next year. Glennon Dickerson, 1.2 million. Those are all the veteran contracts that they have. Every single one of them. I can't imagine the Chiefs over the cap looks anything like that. I want to, well, we can just project it forward. J-1 Hertz in 2029 has a $98 million cap hit. So eventually, you do have to pay all of these, but the way- But if you win a couple Super Bowls on the way.

None of it matters. You're willing to drive off the cliff at some point. If you look at it, you know, guys we already mentioned, Milton Williams is a free agent. Josh Sweat's contract is voided. He's hitting free agency. Brandon Graham, like, God bless Brandon Graham. I remember having actual debates with Barnwell in 2013 or 2014 about whether the Eagles should trade Brandon Graham to the bucks because he wasn't getting enough playing time.

And now he's one of the most beloved athletes in the history of Philadelphia. justifiably so. He had to play today. The fact that he even came back and played in this game is ridiculous. I didn't even realize that was on the table, by the way. And then I saw it, I was scrolling like, I think he was like after I got out of the shower this morning, I saw Brandon Graham was available to play. And I'm like, I thought he was done for this season.

So the fact that he was able to come back to play was pretty special. The Eagles have $18 million in Caval Space. Most of this team is coming back. So I had no reason to think that they won't feel like the word I use this, the phrase I used this week was the tsunami of talent. And that's exactly what happened again tonight. You're talking about not being able to feel Kelsey play to play. You felt so many guys

on the Eagles roster as the season went along. And tonight was the best possible example of that. Up and down the roster. You felt all of the stars in the way that you would imagine the stars, but like Jalix Hunt had, I think, the second sack in this game. And that's why I can hit free agency, by the way. Exactly, because they always

have a guy like Jalick's Hunt. There was a play. And Ojomo is your guy that's going to allow that to the Lajum Williams. Hey man, Ajoimo. He's going to be good when he gets napsed. And that's the thing. They always have these contingency plans. But then even a guy like Avanti Maddox, who has started for them before, they replace him with Dijin, who was fantastic. DeGine goes off the field for, I think it was a fourth and five that the Chiefs had and makes an awesome drive on the ball and like a speed out that the chiefs were trying to hit. The fact that it's every single guy up and down the roster is just that you can feel the swell of talent. It's an organizational victory. And it has been an organizational run of real. just impressive football from this team for a very long time. And, you know, the 2017 moment, I'll never forget it. It was a magical season. I was at a lot of those games.

I was at the NFC championship game. I spent some time with that team. It really felt special. And for the fact, for them to get back here and play like this with an entirely different roster speaks to who is in charge in that building and what they're capable of. Yeah, absolutely. All right, guys. That is all we've got for our Super Bowl recap.

Sincerely appreciating everyone who listened throughout the entire season. I get really emotional on this day every single year, being able to go to this game. I think back to what I would have thought about if I were 15, 16 years old, the fact that I would get to be here. It's a privilege. I have an unbelievable amount of gratitude, and that is only possible because of you guys. So thank you very much for listening all year. Thank you to Derek for joining us this year. I sincerely appreciate it.

I've had so much fun. And we're not going away. We're going to be back with three podcasts this week. We're going to be back with multiple podcasts every week. this entire offseason. So please be on the lookout for way more athletic football show for now. That is all we've got. Appreciate you guys listening.

We'll talk to you very soon.