The Philadelphia Eagles hoped to make up for their 2023 Super Bowl defeat when they took the field against the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night. They did more than that. Behind an efficient day from the offense and a suffocating one from the defense, the Birds rolled to one of the more decisive championship victories in recent memory, blanking the reigning champion Chiefs for a 40-22 win in New Orleans.
Here are three of the biggest surprises from the Eagles’ rout of the Chiefs to claim Super Bowl LIX:
To be clear, the Chiefs’ ugly defeat isn’t entirely the quarterback’s fault. Protection was not sturdy up front, where Pro Bowlers like Joe Thuney and Creed Humphrey couldn’t slow the Eagles’ persistent rush. But this was easily Mahomes’ worst outing since his Super Bowl LV loss to the Tom Brady-led Tampa Bay Buccaneers. That was a half-decade ago. And it wasn’t just the tight pockets this time; Mahomes was genuinely off target on several cross-body darts, including two picks that kept the Eagles in front. He remains the standard-setter for title contention, but he hurt rather than helped K.C. this time around.
It’s true that the longtime tight end looked a step slower in 2024, averaging a career-low 8.5 yards per catch. Still, he’s often saved his best work for the biggest moments. That was definitely not the case on Sunday, two years after he helped the Chiefs edge his brother, Jason Kelce, in Super Bowl LVII. Travis Kelce was held without a single catch before halftime, and even when he finally got some successful looks after the break, he mustered just 39 total yards, finishing as a non-factor for an unusually listless Andy Reid attack.
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The Chiefs entered Super Bowl LIX with a sturdy run defense, but all year, Barkley had broken loose as the NFL’s top big-play artist, racking up 20-, 40- and even 60-yard bursts as the Eagles’ MVP. Still, he was kept in check for basically the entirety of Sunday’s championship tilt. The best part for Philadelphia: It didn’t matter. The mere threat of his explosion kept the Chiefs so occupied that DeVonta Smith and A.J. Brown each slipped past the secondary for key scores, allowing the Eagles to cruise to victory.
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