Super Bowl Football 301 Playbook: Film study reveals almost every Eagle dominated in beatdown of Chiefs
Essentially every player made their mark on this game, including some Philadelphia Eagles having the game of their lives.
Blowouts in sports feel like a dam breaking. The cracks, both apparent and hidden to the naked eye, become larger. The weaknesses even weaker. Until they cripple under the unyielding pressure of water flow and the cracks become gaps, gaps become holes, holes become chasms, and everything is caught in the path of now-freed water. Itās such an apt descriptor that I donāt even know why Iām wasting digital ink on it. Even Radioactive Manās goggles do nothing.
Pressure was the word to describe Super Bowl LIX. Whether it was the Eagles' defensive line overwhelming the Chiefs' blockers (offensive line and other positions included here) and QB Patrick Mahomes (who had a higher pressure rate than completion percentage in the first half), or the Chiefs' defense attempting to survive Jalen Hurts' repeated haymakers through the air (and with his legs). The Eagles took the fight to the back-to-back champs and pressured them into executing. Philadelphia sports fans may use Rocky Balboa as their avatar, but the Eagles were more like Ivan Drago facing Apollo Creed in Sunday's Super Bowl victory.
Coordinator Vic Fangio and the Eagles' defense delivered a performance for the ages. Essentially every player made their mark on this game, including some having the game of their lives. Everyone from Josh Sweat to Cooper DeJean to Nolan Smith to Isaiah Rodgers to Zack Baun. Every level and every position group either showed up on the box score or was part of the production of this slasher flick.
Nine different Eagles defenders recorded a pressure. Six defenders recorded multiple pressures. Sweat recorded six by himself, more than Kansas City stars George Karlaftis and Chris Jones had combined.
The Chiefs tried a variety of different protections to change up the angle of attack on the Eagles, to no avail. The left side of the Chiefs' offensive line was a question mark, with Joe Thuney playing out of position at left tackle and Mike Caliendo doing his best impression of a left guard. But it felt like the onslaught was from every direction. Caliendo allowed seven pressures on the evening, Thuney allowed six, Jawaan Taylor allowed six at right tackle, and right guard Trey Smith allowed four and had several rough moments in the run game, too. Even tight end Travis Kelce was part of allowing pressures on back-to-back plays, including one where he was receiving a double-team from running back Isiah Pacheco.
No one had a good, or really even a solid night for the Chiefs. Kelce especially had one of the worst games I can remember, as a receiver, route-runner and blocker. And the Eagles feasted on it.
Even when Sweat or the earth-moving Jalen Carter were out of the game, the Eagles' young rotation of linemen had moments when they flashed and impacted the game. Rookie Jalyx Hunt really started to put it together in the back half of the season and it culminated in another impressive stint in the Super Bowl.
Same with Moro Ojomo (97), a former seventh-round selection who finished with four pressures and a tackle for loss on limited reps.
(Make sure to also check out No. 3 Nolan Smith detonating Smith on this play).
The Eagles' coverage defenders took advantage of the quick operating clock that Mahomes had to work with, aggressively playing routes and constantly coming downhill. That especially came into play in the second quarter when DeJean stepped in front of a Mahomes throw and sprinted to the end zone at a stunningly fast top speed of 21.31 mph.
On plays like that, when the Chiefs tried to attack downfield, desperately trying to create space in this suffocating environment that the Eagles were creating, Philadelphia's defensive backs were essentially running the routes for the Chiefs' receivers. Look at the swarm of players around Kelce and Eagles cornerback Quinyon Mitchell running step-for-step with Xavier Worthy.
The Chiefs have feasted on underneath throws this season, which puts the onus on the defense to consistently tackle. And Eagles defensive backs, just like they have all season, constantly delivered. Look at DeJean wiping out Worthy on a bubble on the first Chiefs drive of the game.
Creating pressure gets the ball out of the quarterbackās hand early. And astute defenders who tackle well take advantage of that by squeezing up every particle of space in coverage, or at the very least being around the receiver to bring him down immediately. Thatās what the Eagles have done time and time again this season, and the Super Bowl was no different.
While the Eagles played almost exclusively zone coverage throughout the game, Fangio threw a change-up on the first third down of the game. He ran Cover 1 Robber, which is man coverage with one safety deep and the other safeties lurking over the middle of the field to ārobā middle routes and/or read the QBās eyes (legs if he becomes a scrambler).
What made this play-call interesting and why it ended up being such a change-up was:
1. It was the Eagles' only snap of dime personnel (six defensive backs) in the game.2. How they disguised the coverage just enough before the snap to not make the read entirely easy, with safety Reed Blankenship first splitting out over the running back (and not Baun, a linebacker) before working his way back deep after the RB motions back into the backfield.
(Super Bowl LIX screen grab)
The Eagles are trying to give some zone indicators on this look. Even DeJean starts moving backward with the RBās shift to give another zone tell.
(Super Bowl LIX screen grab)
Instead, the Eagles are in man coverage, with Blankenship as the robber. The Eagles play the Chiefs' pass concept, which has Hollywood Brown on a man-beating route working through the muck of the other Chiefs' routes. But Rodgers, who was in there only because the Eagles were in dime personnel, ends up doing a tremendous job of staying with Brown and forces Mahomes to find an auxiliary answer. That's a lot easier said than done when no one is consistently getting open and the blockers arenāt able to hold up for more than 3 seconds.
The result was an incomplete pass into traffic after Mahomes scrambled for several seconds.
That third down was the harbinger of what was to come from the Eagles. Not just one player dominating or one position group playing with a high-level awareness. But an entire unit, down to the teamās sixth defensive back, playing at the top of their game and completely taking it to the defending champs.
The Eagles' offense was applying pressure, too! And that was despite the Chiefs selling out against the run game and limiting Saquon Barkley to only four successful runs and zero explosive rushes the entire game. This was only the fifth time a team recorded a sub-20% rushing success rate and won a playoff game since 2012. It truly didnāt matter, though, both watching in real-time and upon review. That was because the Eagles were able to generate more than enough explosive plays through the air. Two passing plays in particular felt like the āahaā moments for QB Jalen Hurts and the Eagles' offense for going against an aggressive defense like the Steve Spagnuolo-coached Chiefs.
First was the 27-yard Jahan Dotson completion that came on second-and-11 and set up the first Eagles score on the following play.
This play was really about the entire execution of the offense. From the pre-snap recognition by the Eagles' offensive line, Barkley, and Hurts to the post-snap execution from the blockers, Hurts, and Dotson to win on his route.
This was one of those plays that indicated not only did the Eagles have answers for the Chiefs' blitzes, but they were confident about those answers. There is zero fat by anyone on this play. From Hurts' operation, to how quickly Dotson is working, to Barkley working across the backfield to cross-protect against the blitzer. Look at the pocket created by the Eagles' offensive line against a blitz that should be, in theory, making Hurts feel pressure into making a hasty decision (which, in fairness, is exactly what happened on the Hurts interception a drive later).
But time and time again, the Eagles' offensive line was able to block Jones and the various Chiefs blitzes. Even on things like creeper pressures, which brings four non-traditional pass rushers and will have defensive linemen slanting and twisting every which way, the Eagles' offensive line kept the pocket nice and spacious for Hurts to step up and deliver another explosive pass.
The next play is a Hurts third-down scramble. And itās not the scramble itself thatās significant, it was where he scrambled. Instead of looping outside and drifting outside the tackles, a habit of Hurts that can create artificial limitations on the final result of the play, I thought Hurts did a great job of stepping up and choosing scramble lanes between the tackles.
This 16-yard scramble on third-and-5 really showed that. The Chiefs are in an Odd Mirror front that is designed to bait Hurts into bailing out of the pocket with man coverage and two de facto spy players on him. This gives both defensive ends, in this case Jones and Karlaftis, free rein to rush inside. In theory, the QB should feel the edge collapse and look to break out of the pocket, which then allows one of the mirror defenders to run the QB down for a pressure or sack.
Before Chiefs LB Leo Chenal is even recognizing that he is now the mirror/spy player, Hurts is gone and moving the chains on another third down and taking the last remnants of wind out of the Chiefs' sails.
When you make decisions fast in sports, even if they arenāt the ideal decisions, doing so creates pressure on opponents to have the proper responses. By attacking aggressively and quickly with his arm and making snap decisions as a runner, Hurts put the onus on the Chiefs to respond and make a play. And the Chiefs werenāt able to keep up, despite their efforts in the run game and the early turnover. And even when they did make plays, they were tarnished by the pressure of the moment, leading to the final aspect of a blowout.
The hidden cracks can have as much of an impact as the more visual ones. The Chiefs committed penalties, especially ones in high-leverage situations, gifting the Eagles first downs and more bites at the apple. Kansas City LB Nick Bolton had a late hit penalty on Barkley that turned a third-and-26 into a first down for the Eagles. Charles Omenihu was flagged for being offsides on a third-down sack by Karlaftis. Even the unnecessary roughness penalty on Trent McDuffie was on third-and-5 and led to the Eagles' first touchdown. That McDuffie penalty was especially devastating because it came on a play where the Chiefs expected to hold an advantage. It was a āpalmsā coverage that reads the No. 2 receiverās route (in this case Dallas Goedertās corner), in which the outside cornerback (McDuffie) can fall off his outside route and bait the quarterback into throwing that exact outbreaking route. A.J. Brown gets McDuffie off balance, and he ends up having to recover late to the outbreaking route. Because heās a half-second late, heās slightly out of position and doesnāt get the interception on a huge opportunity. Instead, he ends up slightly too high and gets flagged.
Those cracks can show up in the hidden yards that happen on special teams, too. The Eagles' average starting field position was their own 42 in this game. The Chiefs' was their 24. Chiefs punter Matt Araiza was especially mediocre Sunday, with his boom-only punting style and lack of finesse showing up early (including a touchback from his own 40 that landed on the opposing goal line and inside the numbers, giving his teammates no shot to field the ball and pin the Eagles early). He was Nerfing his own kicks when attempting to flip field position, with four of his six punts resulting in negative EPA for the Chiefs.
After the Eagles' opening drive stalled, they essentially dominated the rest of the game. Penalties and special teams only greased the steamroll.
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