Welcome to Super Bowl LVII week at The Ringer! In the days ahead, we’ll cover every aspect of the Philadelphia Eagles–Kansas City Chiefs matchup in Glendale, Arizona. In the meantime, how about a table setter? I’ve watched the film, crunched the numbers, and sorted through the noise to identify the 25 things you need to know about this game. Let’s get to it!
Numbers are courtesy of TruMedia and Pro Football Focus unless otherwise noted.
1. I think Super Bowls can be weird, but all signs point to this being a close game that’s decided in the fourth quarter. Just look at the Chiefs’ résumé: They bring a 16-3 record into this game (including the playoffs) and their three losses have been by a combined 10 points. No team has beaten the Chiefs by more than four points this season. And they’re the underdogs!
If we zoom out, Patrick Mahomes has started 93 games in his career. In those games, the Chiefs have either held a lead or been within one score in the fourth quarter 90 times. What the Bucs did to the Chiefs in the Super Bowl two years ago (a 31-9 Tampa Bay win) is extremely rare. It is nearly impossible to put Mahomes away and blow out the Chiefs.
2. And then we have an Eagles team that has gone 16-1 with Jalen Hurts as its starter. Per Football Outsiders, the Eagles faced the easiest schedule in the NFL during the regular season (the Chiefs faced the fourth easiest). But when the Eagles faced playoff teams, they went 7-1 with a plus-115 point differential. That was 51 points better than any other team. And their one loss to a playoff team (to the Cowboys, in Week 16) came with Gardner Minshew at quarterback. Did the Eagles catch some breaks this season? Sure. They got to face Cooper Rush early in the year, Davis Webb in Week 18 when they needed a win to clinch the no. 1 seed, and a combo of Josh Johnson and an injured Brock Purdy in the NFC championship game. But this was mostly a dominant team from start to finish—especially with Hurts on the field. Going into the Super Bowl, the Eagles rank second in Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric, which accounts for schedule strength.
3. I think if I had to pick just one matchup that will determine which team wins, it’d be the Eagles pass rush against the Chiefs offensive line and Mahomes, who suffered an ankle injury in the divisional-round win against Jacksonville. The Eagles have sacked opposing quarterbacks on 11.5 percent of their pass plays—the highest mark of any defense since at least 2000. The difference in sack rate between the Eagles and no. 2 Patriots this season was the same as the difference between the Patriots and the no. 29 Bengals. And the Eagles do it, for the most part, without blitzing. Their sack rate actually increased (11.8 percent) when they rushed four or fewer defenders. The Chiefs have a very good offensive line, but their strength is the interior, with center Creed Humphrey and left guard Joe Thuney. It’ll likely be up to Eagles edge rushers Haason Reddick, Josh Sweat, and Brandon Graham to win their battles against Chiefs tackles Orlando Brown and Andrew Wylie.
4. But just winning those matchups won’t be enough for the Eagles. They need to finish. Mahomes, even with the injured ankle, is a wizard at avoiding sacks and negative plays. He’s been sacked on just 3.9 percent of his pass plays this season, the third-lowest rate among starting quarterbacks. PFF tracks a metric called pressure to sack percentage. It looks at how often a quarterback is pressured, and how often those pressures turn into sacks. Just 10.5 percent of pressures against Mahomes turned into sacks this year. That’s the lowest rate of any starting quarterback. Mahomes’s awareness might be his most underrated trait. He consistently has a feel for pressure and the instincts to know where to go to buy that extra half second needed to make a play.
5. I think the Chiefs have had the best offense in the NFL this season, and it hasn’t been particularly close. If we look at expected points added (EPA) per drive, the Chiefs are no. 1 and the Eagles are no. 2. But the difference between them is the same as the difference between the Eagles and the no. 17 Browns. The Chiefs accomplished the unthinkable: They traded Tyreek Hill and got more efficient on offense. Their performance (using EPA per drive) was actually better in 2022 than it was in 2021 or 2020 with Hill. If we use DVOA, this was the best Chiefs offense since 2018, when Mahomes won his first MVP award.
6. Great quarterbacks can problem-solve, and that’s what we’ve seen from Mahomes (with a big assist from Andy Reid) once again this season. Without Hill, the Chiefs more frequently attacked the short and intermediate parts of the field. Mahomes’s average pass traveled just 7.13 yards past the line of scrimmage, which ranked 23rd out of 33 qualifying quarterbacks. Just 8.6 percent of Mahomes’s passes traveled at least 20 yards downfield—easily a career low.
But the Chiefs still found ways to produce explosive plays. They piled up 2,850 yards after the catch in the regular season. That’s the most by any team in the last 15 years. Mahomes had 73 completions of 20-plus yards—16 more than any other quarterback and 15 more than he had last year with Hill on the roster. Completely revamping an offense from one year to the next and having this kind of success should not be possible, but Reid and Mahomes pulled it off.
7. Tight end Travis Kelce’s role has also changed within this version of the Chiefs offense. On average, he’s been targeted 6.89 yards past the line of scrimmage—the shortest target depth of his career. But just like Mahomes and Reid, Kelce has evolved brilliantly. It’s been more about volume and moving the chains than producing explosive plays. Kelce has been targeted 177 times this season, including playoff games (eight targets shy of his career high of 185 in 2020). He’s caught 74 percent of those targets, also a career high. Kelce’s 78 receiving first downs during the regular season were second to only Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson. Kelce and Mahomes have such a great feel for each other when plays break down and they need to improvise. Kelce has run 3,355 routes with Mahomes as his quarterback! And that’s not even counting practices. The value of those reps show up every game.
8. I think the way the Chiefs use Kelce makes it hard to game-plan for him. He’s logged more than 250 snaps as an in-line tight end, in the slot and out wide. The Chiefs will shift and motion him before the snap. The Eagles aren’t a high-percentage man team anyway (just 30.7 percent of the time on third down, 26th in the NFL), and it’s not like they have a tight end stopper, although safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson could get some looks against Kelce. They’ll try to disrupt Kelce’s timing at the line of scrimmage and take away some of the easy throws in the middle of the field. But for the most part, they’ll just need to account for him in their zone coverages. Kelce is on his own level, but it’s worth noting that the Eagles finished fourth in DVOA against tight ends this season.
9. I think we’ll get to see two of the best interior pass rushers in the NFL in this game. Everyone knows how good defensive tackle Chris Jones is for the Chiefs. He went full game-wrecker mode in the AFC championship game against the Bengals, with 10 pressures and two sacks on Joe Burrow. Jones lined up on the interior roughly 59 percent of the time this season. That will match him up often against Eagles guards Isaac Seumalo and Landon Dickerson. Both are fine players, but Jones can definitely give them problems in one-on-one pass protection. The Eagles have All-Pro center Jason Kelce to help them out, but look for Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo to walk his linebackers up to the line of scrimmage in obvious passing situations to try to occupy Kelce and get Jones into one-on-one situations.
10. The pass-rushing production from Eagles defensive tackle Javon Hargrave would probably surprise a lot of people. According to Next Gen Stats, Hargrave rushed the passer 432 times from a defensive tackle alignment, compared to 524 for Jones. Here’s how the two players compared on those interior pass rush snaps.
Javon Hargrave vs. Chris Jones
The Eagles defensive line is deeper and more talented than the Chiefs defensive line, so Jones draws more attention than Hargrave, but Hargrave had a career season and has developed into an excellent pass rusher. His ability to win against left guard Joe Thuney will be critical for the Eagles when Mahomes tries to climb the pocket.
11. Evaluating the state of the Eagles offense going into the Super Bowl is tricky. In general, large samples are more useful than small samples. In 17 games with Hurts, the Eagles ranked second in offensive DVOA, but they didn’t play their best down the stretch, including in their two postseason games. One metric I like to look at is success rate, because it filters out some of the randomness associated with a typical NFL game. It looks at each play and counts it as successful or not, based on EPA. But it doesn’t give extra weight to outliers. In other words, an 8-yard completion on third-and-7 is treated the same as a 50-yard completion. Both are considered successful.
The average success rate for an offense in a game this year was 41.9 percent. In Hurts’s 17 starts, there were only four games when the Eagles finished below that number. But three of those games came in his four most recent games. One of the below-average performances came against the Bears in Week 15, when Hurts injured his shoulder. Another came in Week 18 when the Eagles essentially employed a preseason game plan against the Giants’ backups. The third came in the NFC championship, when they were going against the 49ers, who boast the league’s best defense.
So it’s true that the Eagles offense wasn’t quite as sharp down the stretch as it had been earlier in the season, even if there are specific, valid reasons that could explain why. The numbers could mean nothing as it pertains to the Super Bowl matchup, or they could mean something. I just thought they were worth pointing out.
12. While the Eagles are considered more of a running team, they generally pass to get the lead and run to stay ahead. They passed the ball 58.6 percent of the time on early downs in score-neutral situations, which ranked fifth in the NFL. To be fair, those numbers are a bit skewed, given how often the Eagles use run-pass options. Those are run plays on the call sheet, but depending on Hurts’s read, he might choose to throw it. The Eagles have a mantra: Never run into a bad look. Sometimes, that means calling specific schemes or using specific blocking techniques, based on the defense’s alignment. But it also means that if the defense is going to load up to stop the run, don’t bang your head into a wall. Instead, take advantage of the numbers and let Hurts make plays with his arm.
13. This is where the Chiefs’ defensive strategy comes into play, because on paper, the Eagles run game against the Chiefs run defense should be a mismatch. The Eagles have been the best rushing team in the NFL, and it hasn’t been close. The difference in DVOA between them and no. 2 was roughly the same as the difference between no. 2 and no. 9. There’s a dream scenario for Eagles fans where they just gash the Chiefs on the ground over and over again. Eagles offensive line coach and run game coordinator Jeff Stoutland is the team’s secret weapon. He is a master of in-game adjustments and he always seems to find ways to counter what the opponent is doing. The Eagles offensive line has been at the core of everything they’ve done this season, and if the passing game isn’t working, they know they can just line up and run the ball to get settled.
The Chiefs defense, meanwhile, ranks 18th against the run. They can choose to commit more resources to stopping the Eagles’ run game, but that will mean one-on-one opportunities for Eagles pass-catchers. But if they decide they can live with the Eagles running the ball, they risk giving up long drives, which could limit possessions for Mahomes. This is the bind that the Eagles offense has put opponents in all season long.
14. I think the Chiefs have experienced a bit of a shift in how they play defense under Steve Spagnuolo. They’ve played man coverage on just 28.6 percent of opponents’ pass plays this season. That marked the Chiefs’ lowest percentage in any season under Spagnuolo. The numbers suggest that playing zone is the way to go against Hurts. Here are his splits versus man and zone.
Jalen Hurts Against Man and Zone Coverage
Playing man against the Eagles is tough. They have receiving options A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Dallas Goedert who can win one-on-one matchups. The Eagles coaching staff does a good job of scheming guys open. And Hurts’s scrambling becomes a major factor when opposing defenders have their backs to the line of scrimmage. We know that the Chiefs aren’t going to do just one thing all game long, but it seems likely that they’ll stick to the zone-heavy approach we’ve seen all season.
15. Having said that, we know it’s not in Spagnuolo’s DNA to be conservative, and he’ll pick his spots to go after Hurts. The Chiefs have blitzed 24.7 percent of the time this season—their lowest rate in a season under Spagnuolo—but they have been successful when sending five or more rushers, ranking ninth in EPA per pass play on those snaps. On pass plays when the Chiefs rushed four or fewer defenders, they ranked 23rd in EPA per pass play.
What about when Hurts is blitzed? Here are his splits:
Hurts Against the Blitz and No Blitz
Hurts was up and down against the blitz for most of the season. Given how good the Eagles offensive line has been, getting to Hurts with four or fewer pass rushers has proved difficult. Defenses, for the most part, realized that and blitzed Hurts 34.3 percent of the time, which was the fourth-highest rate among starting quarterbacks. Spagnuolo’s ability to get to Hurts with his blitz schemes in high-leverage situations could go a long way in determining who wins this game.
16. I think I would not want to be an analytics staffer trying to identify a Mahomes weakness, because there really isn’t one. He’s first in EPA per pass play against all of the following:
- Man coverage
- Zone coverage
- Blitz
- No blitz (four or fewer pass rushers)
- Split-safety coverages
If you’re wondering why I didn’t include single-high coverages above, well, that’s because he’s all the way down at no. 2 against that coverage. There’s no single area to target against Mahomes. Defenses have to try different things, and the best-case scenario is you force him to play an average game.
There have been 535 games this year in which a quarterback has had at least 20 dropbacks. Among that sample, Mahomes had just one game that qualified as below league average in terms of EPA per pass play—Week 16 against the Seahawks. And even that game was just barely below average (and the Chiefs won, 24-10). Mahomes gets attention for all the high-level plays he makes, and rightfully so. But a big part of his greatness is that he quite literally does not have bad games.
17. I think for the Eagles to win, A.J. Brown has to have a big game. He has just seven catches for 50 yards on 14 targets through two playoff games. He’s had a couple of opportunities deep, but Hurts hasn’t been able to hit him. The Chiefs like to play press coverage with their corners, and statistically, Brown is the best wide receiver in the NFL at beating press coverage.
The Chiefs ranked 31st in DVOA against no. 1 wide receivers this season. And as of this writing, it’s unclear whether they will get corner L’Jarius Sneed back for this game after he suffered a concussion in the AFC championship game win against Cincinnati. If the Chiefs don’t have Sneed, they’ll be starting three rookies, Trent McDuffie, Jaylen Watson, and Joshua Williams, at cornerback. Those guys held up well for the most part against the Bengals, but Hurts will be aggressive in targeting Brown and DeVonta Smith on the outside if he feels like he has favorable matchups.
18. I think an under-the-radar Eagle who could play a big role is running back Kenneth Gainwell. Gainwell has come on strong late in the season and in the playoffs, and he had 16 touches for 74 yards in the NFC championship game against San Francisco. On third downs this season, Gainwell has played 167 snaps, compared to 52 for starter Miles Sanders.
The Chiefs pass defense ranks 28th in DVOA against running backs this season. Gainwell could get some looks if Hurts is trying to get rid of the ball quickly. The Eagles are also not afraid to run on third down if they’re in a spot where they know they’ll go for it on fourth down anyway. Gainwell will have chances to make plays in this game.
19. The Eagles’ most common offensive personnel groupings are: 11 (one RB, one TE, three WRs), 12 (one RB, two TEs, two WRs), and 13 (one RB, three TEs, one WR). There were 99 personnel groupings leaguewide that were used for at least 50 offensive snaps this season. Among that sample, the Eagles’ 12 personnel (most often with tight ends Goedert and Jack Stoll) ranked third in EPA per play.
The Chiefs will have to decide how they’ll want to play when the Eagles use multiple tight ends. This season, against 12 personnel, the Chiefs have stayed in their base defense nearly 70 percent of the time. If that’s how they decide to play in the Super Bowl, look for the Eagles to pass when they have those two tight ends on the field. If the Chiefs play nickel (five defensive backs) against 12 personnel, the Eagles’ decision will be easy: They’ll lean on the run game.
20. The Chiefs have also had success with their multiple tight end sets. Last year, they lined up in 11 personnel 67 percent of the time, but that number dipped to 55.7 percent this season. The Chiefs lined up in 13 personnel, with three tight ends, on 9.9 percent of their offensive snaps—the third-highest rate in the NFL. Traditionally, lining up in heavy sets meant the offense was turning to a physical run game, but that’s not the case with the Chiefs. Mahomes was lethal passing the ball out of 13 personnel. He completed 77.4 percent of his passes and averaged 11.2 YPA with nine touchdowns and no interceptions out of that alignment.
This could be a nice option for Andy Reid, especially if the Chiefs go into the game with injuries at wide receiver. Reid doesn’t want to be in obvious passing situations where the Eagles’ best pass rushers can pin their ears back. The Eagles faced 13 personnel on only 36 snaps this season, so we don’t really know how they’ll counter. Most teams stay in base, but there’s a chance the Eagles view every Mahomes handoff as a victory, so maybe they’d trust their sub packages to hold up.
21. I think it’s fair to point out that the Eagles pass defense, which finished first in DVOA, didn’t exactly face a murderers’ row of opposing quarterbacks. Among the quarterbacks who finished top 10 in EPA per pass play this season, just three were on the Eagles’ schedule: Jared Goff, Trevor Lawrence, and Dak Prescott (whom the Eagles faced in only one of their two matchups against Dallas).
Goff and the Lions scored 35 points against the Eagles in Week 1. Lawrence and the Jaguars managed just 219 total yards, but bad weather was a big factor in that game. Prescott and the Cowboys totaled 419 yards and 40 points in Week 16.
Overall, the Eagles defense faced the second-easiest schedule of opposing offenses in the NFL. They destroyed mediocre and bad quarterbacks all season long. Now, in the Super Bowl, they get a measuring-stick game against the best quarterback and the best offense in the NFL.
22. I’m expecting the Chiefs to throw to their running backs early and often. One, that’s just what they normally do. Chiefs running backs, led by Jerick McKinnon, had 826 receiving yards in the regular season—the second most of any team. Their 12 first downs on running back screens in the regular season were tops in the NFL.
The other factor here is that Reid will want to attack where the Eagles are vulnerable. As of this writing, we don’t know exactly which wide receivers will be healthy and available for the Chiefs. But Eagles outside corners Darius Slay and James Bradberry have played at an elite level all season. Meanwhile, Philadelphia was 24th in DVOA against opposing running backs in the passing game. The Eagles are going to want their second-level defenders to play with depth. Checkdowns will be available for Mahomes. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see Reid call a screen pass on the first possession to try to slow down the Eagles’ pass rush.
23. If I’m handicapping this coaching matchup, I want Reid for the two weeks leading up to the game, and I want Nick Sirianni for the three-plus hours during the game. Their résumés aren’t comparable. Reid is a sure-fire Hall of Famer. Sirianni is in his second year. Reid will have a plan to not let the Eagles pass rush wreck the game. He’ll devise wrinkles in the red zone to position the Chiefs for success. And he’ll have his team prepared. During Reid’s coaching career, his teams are 23-6 with at least 10 days of rest.
But I’ll give Sirianni and the Eagles coaching staff an edge with in-game decision-making and adjustments. Sirianni gave up play-calling duties in the middle of the 2021 season. That allowed him to focus on managing the game—timeouts, challenges, when to go for it on fourth down, etc. This has been a real strength. You rarely see the Eagles caught in a situation where the play call is coming in late or they’re mismanaging the clock. Sirianni has embraced an aggressive approach, and look for that to continue through the Super Bowl.
24. The Eagles are experiencing near unprecedented injury luck going into this game. They have some guys dealing with injuries—including Hurts, right tackle Lane Johnson, left guard Landon Dickerson, and slot corner Avonte Maddox. But the expectation (barring an injury during practice or something unforeseen in the days leading up to the game) is that come Super Bowl Sunday, all 22 of their regular starters will be healthy and available.
The Chiefs aren’t quite in the same boat. Reid told reporters last week that wide receiver Mecole Hardman is doubtful for the Super Bowl. Sneed, wide receivers JuJu Smith-Schuster and Kadarius Toney, and linebacker Willie Gay Jr. all remain questionable. We’ll learn more about the status of those players throughout the week.
25. I think it’s pretty wild how much the Chiefs have leaned on their rookies this year, compared to the Eagles. Chiefs rookies have piled up 4,087 snaps on offense and defense through 19 games—that’s more than four times as many snaps as Eagles rookies (989)! Part of that has to do with the injury luck mentioned above.
Experience can sometimes be overrated. Coaches often point to the “they don’t know what they don’t know” theory when describing young players in big games. And the Chiefs rookies have come through in big spots. But the disparity is interesting nonetheless. The makeup of the two rosters that will be competing for the Lombardi Trophy is very different.
