If the ramp-up to the Super Bowl doesn’t get you jacked up, I don’t know what will. The top seed from each conference made it to this game, and with them come some of the best story lines a Super Bowl can offer.
The Kansas City Chiefs bring Patrick Mahomes back to the big stage for his third Super Bowl in just five seasons as a starter. Mahomes is looking for a second ring in the same season he secured a second league MVP award, all but completing a Hall of Fame résumé at age 27. His coach, the lovable wizard Andy Reid, faces the team he coached for so many years: the Philadelphia Eagles.
And how ’bout those Eagles? Jalen Hurts is a second-year starter, a former second-round pick, and perhaps the greatest example of grind and improvement in the league. Hurts completes the first pair of Black starting quarterbacks ever to compete in a Super Bowl against each other. Eagles center Jason Kelce and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce are the first pair of brothers to compete in a Super Bowl against each other. Also, A.J. Brown and Haason Reddick and Chris Jones are here.
What a game this will be! Here at The Ringer, resident filmheads Ben Solak and Steven Ruiz have spent the week leading up to the Super Bowl grinding the tape and the numbers not just on those incredible players, but on the schemes deployed by each coach, hunting for the particular matchups or tactics that might decide this incredible game.
Below are their biggest questions for the game, organized by which team has the ball. We start with the Philadelphia Eagles on offense. —Ben Solak
Scheme question: The Eagles might win a Super Bowl by spamming RPOs? Where have I heard that one before?
Solak: Any scheme war waged against the Eagles has to start with defending the QB run game—particularly the zone-read game. The Eagles are a pretty simple team in terms of personnel: 99 percent of their snaps have come in 11, 12, or 13 personnel, and players like A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Dallas Goedert rarely leave the field. They’re also simple in terms of formations: 90 percent of their snaps are from shotgun, and they’re second to last in the league in how much they utilize pre-snap motion.
Ruiz: Sounds pretty easy to defend, if you ask me.
Solak: It’s after the ball is snapped that they start trying to fool you. The Eagles are the most “option” heavy team in the league. They package almost every single run play with options for quarterback Jalen Hurts. The most common Eagles option run is a zone-read run, in which the offensive linemen all block in one direction for the running back, leaving an unblocked edge defender. If that edge defender chases the back, Hurts can keep the ball himself and run around that unblocked defender into the second level. If the defender goes after Hurts, he’ll give the ball to the back, and the Eagles will have a numbers advantage, with their incredible offensive line paving the way for a talented back such as Miles Sanders.
By using option runs, the Eagles gain a numerical advantage in the running game. They leave a defender unblocked, but still ensure he cannot affect the play, and they have an additional body to block the remaining defenders. This is a cheat code.
Ruiz: Zone read? If this was 2013, I might be scared. Not in 2023, though.
Solak: I didn’t say it was an uncommon cheat code. The zone read has been around for a while, and defenses have answers. That’s why the Eagles have continued to layer option after option after option onto this base concept. This is where the party starts.
First, the Eagles will run RPOs off of zone-read looks. Their most common RPO puts a curl/flat concept on the backside of the run. Now, when Hurts is looking toward the unblocked edge defender, he also sees a rub route from a wide receiver and a tight end releasing into the flat. Hurts can make the read and target that flat route in stride and get an athlete like Goedert one-on-one in space. That’s a win for the Eagles.
The Eagles also get that flat route on the move, sending the tight end across the formation as the ball is snapped. This wrinkle has the added benefit of initially looking like a split zone run: The tight end can either block the edge defender or slip right by him and look for the pass. You can see how those two looks appear similar here.
But the tight end moving at the snap doesn’t just block the edge defender or go on a route. Sometimes, he becomes a lead blocker for Hurts, who keeps the ball and outruns the unblocked edge defender to the sideline. The speedy-yet-sturdy Hurts running in space with a lead blocker is another huge win for the offense.
You can see how many options have been introduced into the simple zone read, just by the action of this tight end. The unblocked defender no longer has one thing to worry about—he has three. And behind him, the weakside linebacker and safety and corner all have to adjust their responsibilities as well. Watch this play, where the Eagles combine the threat of a split zone read with the curl/flat pass option to create an effortless first down against Washington.
All of that is at Philly’s disposal, and we haven’t even talked about the other pass concepts that the Eagles can tag onto their read-option running game: bubble screens to DeVonta Smith, who leads the league in screen yardage, per Next Gen Stats; slants to A.J. Brown, who leads the league in being awesome on slant routes (that’s from Next Ben Stats). So the big question here is: How do you stop the Eagles’ option game?
Scheme question: Does Hurts have a Kryptonite?
Ruiz: We’re gonna cheat.
Solak: Hello, Ben Solak for Roger Goodell? Yes, I’ll hold.
Ruiz: No rules will be broken, but to mitigate the numbers advantage created by Hurts and the schematic constraints created by Nick Sirianni’s staff, Kansas City will have to get crafty. That means movement before and after the snap. Blitzing linebackers trying to blow up run gaps from unexpected places, and stunting defensive linemen. The Chiefs need Hurts and the Eagles blockers to be chasing ghosts.
Kansas City defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo knows he won’t be able to cover everything on a given play. If he commits too many bodies to the run box, Brown and Smith will run wild in the defensive secondary. If he keeps the box light, that will just make things easier for Philly’s dominant ground game. This is where the cheating comes in. In last season’s game between these teams, the Chiefs pushed their second-level run defenders to the opposite side of the running back, because in shotgun formations—which the Eagles use a lot of—that’s typically where runs are designed to hit.
Now, this would be a far more effective strategy if the Eagles majored in two or three run concepts from the gun. But that isn’t the case.
“This offense can really do it all [in the run game],” Chiefs defensive end George Karlaftis told me this week. “They can do the traditional NFL runs: stretch, powers, counters, whatever it is. But they can also mix that in with the college game. Have those [read] options, stuff like that.”
Karlaftis also mentioned the “eye candy” of tight ends slicing across the formation after the snap, which was a big factor in last year’s game. The Eagles lost 42-30, but the offense was hardly to blame. It averaged 0.25 expected points added per play with a 51 percent success rate, gained a first down on 41 percent of snaps, and did that by running misdirection plays designed to hit on the opposite side of where the Chiefs were aligning their run defenders.
If that’s not annoying enough, they’d sometimes run a misdirection play off another misdirection play.
The Chiefs will have to do something different this time. And a higher blitz rate on early downs would be a good start.
Last year, the Chiefs sent five or more players after the quarterback on 24.4 percent of first- and second-down snaps. That number should be in the high 30s this time around. That’s obviously a risky thing to do against a receiving corps that has two star receivers, but Kansas City doesn’t have to try to man those guys up with its young secondary. Instead, they can play zone coverage behind those five-man rushes. That way, they have the numbers to defend the run, and, if Philly wants to throw on them, they can force Hurts to read a defense that shifts its shape after the snap. Hurts has been phenomenal this year, but he hasn’t been so good against those looks.
Solak: Yeah, we try to keep it a secret in Philadelphia, but Hurts against the zone blitz is a bit worrisome. Here’s a graph of every quarterback’s EPA per play and success rate against zone blitzes, with Hurts highlighted in red. Hurts, for perspective, has faced the third-most zone blitzes among all quarterbacks this year:
The zone blitz works well against Hurts because he often bails out of the pocket against blitzes, as he doesn’t like to check down or throw hot routes. Instead, he thinks he can outrun blitzers and punish the defense’s aggression with long scrambles. But zone-dropping defenders keep eyes on Hurts, whereas man coverage defenders stare at the receivers that they’re covering. So once Hurts leaves the pocket against zone pressure, he has a harder time ripping off explosive runs.
There are non-Hurts reasons the Eagles struggle against zone blitzes, too—for one, they don’t have great pass-protecting backs. And they rarely leave any additional players in the formation to help in pass protection anyway. But this is something Kansas City does deploy—they have the 11th-most zone blitz snaps this season as a team defense. And doing so on third downs in this game could be their secret weapon.
Personnel question: Can A.J. Brown win this game single-handedly?
Solak: Now that we’ve discussed Hurts’s shakiness against zone blitz looks, I’m not feeling as confident in the Eagles offense as I once was. But no matter—Philly has perhaps the biggest mismatch in this game, with A.J. Brown going up against … well, whoever A.J. Brown lines up against.
Let me toss some Next Gen Stats at you, Steve.
Ruiz: Nerd.
Solak: Brown averaged a whopping 4.5 yards per route run against press coverage this year—that’s the highest number of the entire NGS era. The Chiefs rank second in the league in usage of press coverage; cornerback Jaylen Watson, a rookie, has more snaps in press coverage than any other player this season.
Even if you cover Brown well when he’s pressed, it doesn’t really matter. He leads the league in receiving yards on tight-window throws this season with 441; the Chiefs defense ranks last in the league in yardage given up on tight-window throws, at 605.
I’m never one to boil down a game plan to one sentence, but tell me why the Eagles’ offensive coaching staff shouldn’t just have their game plan be: “Let’s throw it at A.J. Brown every time they try to press him and see what happens.”
Ruiz: This is where Spagnuolo’s deep bag of disguises will come in handy. He has so many different ways to get into similar coverage looks.
He can’t have his defense line up in a way that gives Hurts a good idea of what coverage he’s getting before the ball is even snapped. The Chiefs press a lot, and if Hurts sees that KC is leaving a pressed corner on an island, Hurts will give Brown a chance to make a play downfield. If Spagnuolo can bait him into one of those throws when the Chiefs are playing a two-deep coverage with a safety rotating over the top, Hurts could be tempted into throwing a pick. Spagnuolo is one of the most important people involved in this game. If he calls a good one, the Chiefs should roll.
Personnel question: What if Chris Jones wins it single-handedly?
Ruiz: I’d feel a lot worse about Kansas City’s chances if Chris Jones didn’t exist. Fortunately, he does, and he’s really freaking good. One way to mitigate a numbers advantage for the offense is to have a guy who can be two players at once. No, I’m not saying Jones is capable of cloning himself, but he can take on and beat a double-team on his own.
And when offenses try to block him with only one poor soul, Jones can win fast enough to get into the backfield and stop a running back from exploiting any open run gaps. This is why he makes $20 million a year.
Jones will also have to be dominant as a pass rusher. Spagnuolo was able to create one-on-one mismatches against Cincinnati’s backup right tackle, Hakeem Adeniji, in the AFC championship game. Philly has an All-Pro at that spot in Lane Johnson, so the pass rush plan will have to be altered for the Super Bowl—and while the Eagles line doesn’t really have obvious weak points, the interior is more exploitable than the tackle spots. In last year’s Eagles-Chiefs game, Jones had success against right guard Isaac Seumalo, who is one of the weaker pass blockers on the line. I’d hammer that matchup again in obvious passing situations, but Kansas City will need to present threats to the opposite sides to prevent all-world center Jason Kelce from offering help. If the Eagles want to shift their protections in order to get two guys on Jones at all times, the Chiefs can gain an advantage with blitzes coming from the opposite side.
Spagnuolo has a deep bag of blitz designs and will not hesitate to pull some whacky shit if the Eagles try to take Jones out of the game. Every time that Philly attempts to block him one-on-one will be a win for Kansas City. Maybe this is a bit reductive, but if Jones and Spags both have good games, the Chiefs aren’t losing this game.
Solak: It does kind of feel like the answer to all of this is, “So long as Mahomes is good and Jones is good, the Chiefs are probably going to win.” Which is wild, given how many stars the Eagles have. That’s how impactful each of these players has been: Mahomes is the MVP, and Chris Jones had a legit Defensive Player of the Year case. I think the Eagles will have a much easier time neutralizing Jones than Mahomes, though—their offensive line is great, and Kelce will be around to help out on many of those interior one-on-ones.
Neutralizing Mahomes, on the other hand? That’s a different conversation. Time to punt the ball to the Chiefs.
Scheme question: Will this be the Jody Fortson Game?
Ruiz: Close your eyes and visualize the Chiefs offense during the Patrick Mahomes era. You’re probably seeing Mahomes in the shotgun formation. There are speedy receivers spread out across the field with Travis Kelce either attached to the offensive line or isolated on the back of a trips formation. Something that looks like this:
Kansas City still does plenty of that, but the offense also has gotten a lot heavier with tight ends getting more snaps in place of wide receivers. It’s also more condensed this season. The Chiefs deploy multiple tight ends on the field at the sixth-highest rate in the NFL, per Next Gen Stats, and their usage rate has jumped nearly 11 percentage points since last season. Kansas City’s average formation width is the lowest it’s been in seven years. The changes to this offense go far beyond the loss of Tyreek Hill and the receivers who have replaced him by committee. This offense is just different.
In past seasons, Andy Reid and Co. would stress defenses with talent. They’d put Kelce on one side and Hill in the slot to the other. The speedster would run some sort of deep route—usually a deep crosser—while Kelce would go underneath, on an option route that allowed him to break inside or out based on the coverage. If defenses wanted to take away Kelce, they were left with a pretty open crosser by Hill. And if they sold out to stop Hill, Kelce would have plenty of space to exploit underneath.
Reid hasn’t had that field-stretching piece this season. So to create space and matchup advantages, he’s using his non-Kelce tight ends a lot more. Now, the question isn’t, “How are we going to stop these two superstars?” It’s, “When the Chiefs go with big personnel, do we match with bigger bodies or stick with smaller, faster guys to help out against the pass?” If teams go big, they risk ending up with a linebacker covering Kelce in space. If defenses match with smaller personnel, the Chiefs will just use running back Isiah Pacheco as a battering ram against the lighter front.
Reid uses the first few drives of a game as a discovery phase. The “opening script” of plays is more like a survey of the defense. He’ll send out various personnel groupings and receiver alignments to figure out how the opponent is going to respond, and then he uses that information to exploit their tactics later in the game.
Solak: I couldn’t agree more with this. Discovery phase is such a cool way of saying it, too. Please stop being such a good writer.
Ruiz: How Philly will match up when Kansas City trots Noah Gray and/or Jody Fortson out on the field will dictate a lot about the matchup on this side of the ball. And that’s because the Eagles essentially have two different defenses depending on the personnel they use. If they’re in a front with five defenders on the line of scrimmage, they’ll typically rush all five of those guys and play man behind it or a zone coverage. As you can probably imagine, having just six players back creates a lot of open grass for the offense. You don’t want to give Mahomes wide-open throwing windows, or this will happen:
Mahomes has been nuking defenses that dare to put big bodies out on the field—especially on play-action fakes. On those plays, the MVP is averaging 14.7 yards per dropback (LOL) and 0.89 EPA per play (LMAO) with a success rate of 69.2 percent (LMFAO). You don’t need to work for Pro Football Focus to know those numbers are outstanding.
Here’s the dilemma for the Eagles: They obviously want to avoid those chunk plays, but the run defense has been awful on early downs when they match bigger personnel groupings with nickel (five defensive backs). They’re giving up 5.2 yards per run (rank: 26th) and offenses are averaging 0.04 EPA (25th) per attempt against them. When they match with base personnel, however, they hold up much better, allowing just 3.4 yards and minus-0.2 EPA per run.
So, Ben, what are your Birds going to do when they see Bell and Fortson out there?
Solak: This is such a huge part of the game. It sounds dumb to say, but the game is going to come down to Jimmies and Joes, as it always does. And that’s especially true in such a star-studded Super Bowl.
But fundamentally, this is the first and most visible tug-of-war in the tactical aspect of this game. The Chiefs are going to put multiple tight ends on the field. I anticipate the Eagles will initially match those tight ends with 5-2 personnel—five down defensive linemen and two linebackers—which is their default against heavy sets.
But that’s a run-defending personnel set, and if Mahomes starts shredding them from the play-action passing game, the Eagles will quickly reassess.
Ruiz: “If.”
Solak: Yeah, yeah. When Mahomes starts shredding them, they’ll have to take the nose tackle off the field (Jordan Davis, Linval Joseph) and put the nickel back on the field (Avonte Maddox). Then, they’ll be trying to defend the run against potentially eight blockers (five offensive linemen and three tight ends) with four defensive linemen, two linebackers, and two (!!!!!) defensive backs. And those defensive backs (Maddox, Marcus Epps) are not very big.
It sounds ridiculous to say, but the Chiefs might win this game by being able to run the football against that light defensive personnel. In Pacheco, they’ve landed on a between-the-tackles bruiser they can trust. In Orlando Brown and Joe Thuney and Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith, they have a retooled offensive line. For quite some time, the Chiefs have been trying to figure out how to support Mahomes with a running game that’s just functional enough to punish defenses that sell out to stop the pass. In this era of unprecedented air power, the Super Bowl championship may come down to just running the dang ball.
Dads across the country: This section was for you.
Scheme question: How is this not just the Buccaneers-Chiefs Super Bowl all over again?
Solak: Let’s talk about the last Super Bowl the Chiefs were in—the one they lost. It was probably the worst game of Mahomes’s career, and it came on that big stage against the Buccaneers at the end of the 2020 season. You remember: The Chiefs had basically no offensive line, Mahomes had a toe injury, and the Bucs defense was still good. Mahomes was pressured on 55 percent of his dropbacks in that game, took three sacks, threw two picks, and scored nine points. I’m wondering whether the Eagles defense has a chance to create a repeat of that performance.
The 2022 Eagles defensive line is a shrine to the gods of the pass rush. They lead the league in both pressure rate and sack rate on plays without blitzes; they have five players with at least 35 pressures and four players with at least 11 sacks. And because they’re so deep, they can close out games—Brandon Graham, a rotational rusher, leads the league in pressure rate in the fourth quarter. Starters Haason Reddick and Josh Sweat are third and fourth, respectively.
Reddick is supernaturally gifted at surviving contact, staying upright at weird angles, and getting to the quarterback. On many of Reddick’s sacks, the league’s other elite pass rushers would have fallen over. Reddick, on the other hand, has a unique blend of balance and explosiveness that allows him to finish.
The other thing that’s important to note is how disciplined the Eagles pass rush is—how they keep a quarterback like Mahomes, the best at escaping pressure, in the pocket. This Week 3 sack is a great example of a “high-low” game between the two defensive ends, Reddick and Graham. Reddick is a high-side rusher—he’s going to take the outside track and end up beyond the quarterback’s back shoulder. Graham is the low-side rusher—he’s going to go through the offensive tackle and end up on the quarterback’s front shoulder.
This management of pass rush lanes clamps down on Carson Wentz, such that when he tries to leave the pocket, there’s an Eagle at every turn. Run forward? Fletcher Cox. Run to his right? Graham. So he runs to his left, where he feels there is the most space—but Reddick is waiting in the shadows.
Mahomes may avoid sacks like no other quarterback, but the Eagles turn pressures into sacks better than any other defense. It’s strength against strength here, and if I had to pick one defining matchup of the entire Super Bowl, it feels like this is the one.
Ruiz: I’ll see your “shrine to the gods of pass rush” and raise you one sack-avoiding god. Mahomes was sacked on only 11.9 percent of his pressured dropbacks this season. That was lowest in the league, per TruMedia. He also ranked second in both EPA per dropback and success rate, trailing only Josh Allen in both stats.
Mahomes is getting rid of the ball quicker than he ever has, so sacks may be hard to come by for Philly. And I’m not too concerned about the Eagles keeping Mahomes in the pocket, where he’s improved tremendously over the past year. No quarterback generated more EPA from the pocket in 2022—and it wasn’t close. If you doubled Hurts’s EPA from the pocket, he would still have a ways to go to catch Mahomes.
If the Eagles are banking on Mahomes playing poorly, I’ve got bad news for you, Ben. The previous Super Bowl that really applies to this matchup is Patriots-Eagles from the 2017 season. Philadelphia will need a similar scoring output if they’re going to keep up with this evolved version of Mahomes.
Personnel question: Is Travis Kelce in for another quiet game?
Solak: Last year against the Eagles, Travis Kelce had four catches on six targets for only 23 yards. Meanwhile, Tyreek Hill had 11 catches for 186 yards and three touchdowns. If the Eagles could have picked one of the two stars of the 2021 Chiefs to be traded away before the 2022 Super Bowl … yeah, I’m guessing they would have picked Hill.
So are the Eagles going to be able to just do the same thing against Kelce that they did last year? Yes and no. The Eagles played more true Cover 2 zone against the Chiefs last year than they have in any other game under defensive coordinator Jon Gannon. Cover 2 was the coverage du jour against Kansas City last season, but it was also something the Eagles relied on more in 2021 overall, to protect their weaker coverage players.
In their zones, the Eagles were cognizant of where Kelce lined up and the routes he typically runs from those alignments. On these plays, don’t watch where the ball goes—watch Kelce, and how the Eagles’ zone coverage is drawn to him like bugs to a lamp.
This year, the same basic principles will apply: Play zone coverage, and get eyes on Kelce. The Eagles have played far more quarters coverage this year than Cover 2, and in quarters, they have the bodies necessary to bracket routes from Kelce whenever he’s lined up as a true tight end or slot receiver.
But when Kelce is lined up outside, the cornerbacks will play Kelce in isolation. That’s not the worst matchup when you have Darius Slay and James Bradberry. But if the Eagles want to double-team Kelce when he’s lined up wide, they will go back to their Cover 2 family, playing with a squat corner underneath and a deep half safety over the top. This may leave them in danger of losing numbers to the strong side, but if Kelce’s beating them, they don’t have much of a choice.
This is actually ideal for the Eagles. Last year, focusing on Kelce cost them a lot—Mahomes and the Chiefs scored 42 points. But because Gannon and the Eagles have better personnel now, they can call a wider variety of coverages to match up with Kelce. They can play man coverage and feel strong with Chauncey Gardner-Johnson over Kelce in the slot, or Slay and Bradberry over him on the outside. They can also get double-teams no matter where he lines up, borrowing concepts from the Cover 2 and quarters families.
Kelce is still going to get his—he gets too many targets and is just too talented. But the Eagles can force the Chiefs to need more than just Kelce to beat them.
Ruiz: If the Eagles want to target Kelce, the Chiefs are going to make sure he’s a moving target. He’s constantly in motion before the snap, which will make it hard to double him—good luck communicating who’s providing the help when Kelce starts on one side of the field and ends up on the other.
Kelce leads the NFL in basically every stat over the last few years when put into motion before the snap. He’s racked up 1,025 receiving yards since 2020 (no other player has more than 800, per Next Gen Stats). And he’s first in routes, targets, and receptions, too.
The Chiefs also align him in stacks and bunches to protect him from double-teams, and they keep him off the line of scrimmage so defensive backs can’t get hands on him before he gets into his routes. And, oh yeah, he’s also just really freaking hard to cover, whether it’s a corner, a safety, or a linebacker.
Personnel question: Could this game actually be decided by a seventh-round rookie running back?
Ruiz: The Chiefs have spent the last two offseasons building a roster that can punish defenses trying to slow down Kelce. The investment in the offensive line during the 2021 offseason laid the foundation, and a not-so-expensive addition on the third day of last year’s draft was the finishing piece. I’m talking about Isiah Pacheco, a seventh-round rookie out of Rutgers, who has emerged as a key contributor in this year’s league-leading offense.
Pacheco isn’t like the backs you typically find in a Reid offense. Reid prefers shiftier backs who can contribute in the passing game. He used a first-round pick on Clyde Edwards-Helaire, a talented but small back who was basically an auxiliary receiver during his time at LSU. He re-signed Jerick McKinnon this past offseason because of his chops as a receiver and a blocker in pass protection. But while Pacheco is no slouch in the passing game, it’s his punishing run style that has added a new layer to this offense.
Pacheco is particularly effective when defenses want to play with two safeties deep, as the Eagles did often when these teams played a season ago. Against light boxes, Pacheco led the NFL in carries, yards, and rushing yards over expected, per Next Gen Stats. He was second in total EPA.
Solak: That’s worrisome.
Ruiz: Yeah. In last year’s game, Philly stacked the box (meaning they had more run defenders than the offense had blockers) on only 6.3 percent of snaps. The Chiefs ran for 200 yards on 32 runs. Solak and I could have gone for 100 ourselves with some of those holes.
The Eagles defense doesn’t really defend the run now in the same way it did last year, though. Vic Fangio joined the staff as a senior defensive consultant this past offseason, and his influence has been significant. Philadelphia uses more five-man fronts, which allows them to clog the interior run games that Kansas City attacked relentlessly in 2021. They’ve nearly doubled their snaps with a nose tackle (an interior defender who lines up directly across the center), going from 196 such snaps on run downs in 2021 to 347 snaps this season, per TruMedia.
That’s why Pacheco’s presence in the backfield will be so important in this matchup. Edwards-Helaire had one of the best games of his career against Philly, but the holes won’t be so wide this time around. In Pacheco, the Chiefs now have a back who is capable of bursting through even the tiniest slivers of daylight. And his impressive ability to fall forward whenever he’s tackled should help keep Kansas City ahead of the chains and limit the opportunities for the Eagles to pin their ears back and get after Mahomes.
Solak: I love the idea that, coming off Mahomes’s MVP season, and with all the discourse about Hill and Brown and the offensive lines and the pass rush, this game might boil down to a running back mattering. And I think that’s what the Chiefs anticipated way back when they took Edwards-Helaire in the first round a few drafts ago. Of course, this isn’t Edwards-Helaire, it’s Pacheco—but the theory still applies. The Chiefs become that much harder to defend with the additional layer of the running game.
The big question: Who wins?
Solak: This is going to be a special game. I believe that in my bones. I think we see everything under the sun, and I think we get a tight fourth quarter and some game-winning plays and some immortal moments—I’m praying for it, man. And if it is going to be a tight, high-scoring game, I trust the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes just a little bit more than all the star power of the Eagles. Give me Kansas City 34-31.
Ruiz: I’m with Solak. I’m picking the Chiefs to win a high-scoring game. I do not, however, expect the ending to be very tense. As good as Hurts has been this season and as stacked as the offense is, I don’t believe they have a passing game capable of keeping up with Mahomes. Spagnuolo will throw just enough curveballs at the Eagles quarterback to make the difference. The Chiefs just need him to chase one or two of them, and that will be enough cushion for Reid’s offense. I’ll go Kansas City 34-27, with Philly scoring a meaningless touchdown in garbage time.
