Eagles quash Chiefs’ bid for Super Bowl three-peat

New Orleans • A more fragile team would have folded. It wouldn’t have made it back here, because it wouldn’t have been able to weather the series of storms this Philadelphia Eagles franchise faced along the way.

And it wouldn’t have halted history on the sport’s biggest stage.

But these Eagles were different — defiant, even. And on Sunday night in Super Bowl LIX, they were utterly dominant. Their reward is the franchise’s second Super Bowl win, a stunning 40-22 rout of the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs at Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, a resounding victory that avenges a gutting, last-second Super Bowl loss two years ago to these same Chiefs and returns the city of Brotherly Love to the top of the football world.

This time, the Philly Special wasn’t needed.

This time, the Eagles’ defense was so devastating that Patrick Mahomes — already a three-time Super Bowl MVP before the age of 30 — staggered through one of the worst games of his seven-year NFL career.

This time, Jalen Hurts left no doubt.

Mahomes, under heavy duress throughout, was sacked six times and hit 11 times. He finished 21-for-32 for 257 yards, three touchdowns, two interceptions and a lost fumble, though most of Mahomes’ production came well after the game had been decided. The Eagles led 34-0 before the Chiefs even crossed midfield.

Hurts, who was named Super Bowl MVP, shined, finishing with just five incompletions, 221 passing yards and a Super Bowl rushing record for quarterbacks (72 yards) to go with three total touchdowns.

Philly’s triumph also concluded one of the greatest seasons ever from a running back: With 57 yards Sunday, the Eagles’ Saquon Barkley surpassed Hall of Famer Terrell Davis for the most rushing yards in a single season in NFL history, including the playoffs. He finished with 2,504, further cementing the fact that his offseason signing last March was one of the shrewdest in league history.

Most impressive in the Eagles’ victory, though, was that they routed the mighty Chiefs without needing Barkley to take the game over. This win was a testament to the roster general manager Howie Roseman has constructed and the job coach Nick Sirianni has done guiding his team through a tumultuous two-year stretch.

Philadelphia owned the first half by owning the trenches; Mahomes was hit seven times, sacked twice and hurried on what seemed like every snap. The Eagles raced to a 24-0 lead after intercepting Mahomes twice; rookie cornerback Cooper DeJean — celebrating his 22nd birthday Sunday — took the first back for a 38-yard touchdown, then linebacker Zack Baun’s pick set up a 12-yard touchdown throw from Hurts to A.J. Brown.

Philadelphia enjoyed sizable first-half advantages in total yards (179-23), rushing yards (62-3) and first downs (13-1). Mahomes completed just six passes on 14 attempts for 33 yards; through two quarters, it was the worst EPA per dropback for a quarterback in a Super Bowl since 2000.

It was a rare sight at this stage of the playoffs: One of the all-time greats looked mortal.

Hurts connected with wideout DeVonta Smith for a 46-yard touchdown late in the third quarter, and from there, the decidedly pro-Eagles crowd at Caesars Superdome could start to smell another championship.

Philadelphia’s victory ended Kansas City’s season-long pursuit of history: With a win, the Chiefs would have become the first team in the 59-year Super Bowl era to win three in a row. Instead they finished as the ninth back-to-back champs to fall short. No team has won three straight NFL championships since Vince Lombardi’s 1965-67 Green Bay Packers.

It was just the fourth playoff loss of Mahomes’ seven-year career.

The Eagles’ second title in eight seasons capped a stunning reversal from where this team was a year ago, reeling from a late-season collapse rife with drama, a coach on the hot seat, two coordinators on the outs, a star player’s retirement and rumblings of an icy relationship between coach and quarterback.

This title sealed the Eagles’ status as one of the league’s most resilient teams.

It was just two years ago that Jalen Hurts sat in his postgame news conference following the Eagles’ Super Bowl LVII loss, sullen but not sulking, repeating the same phrase over and over.

“You either win or you learn,” he kept saying.

Hurts had just thrown for 304 yards and piled up four total touchdowns, only to watch Mahomes lead four straight second-half-scoring drives and hand the Eagles a gutting, last-second 38-35 loss. Before meeting with reporters that night in Glendale, Ariz., Hurts tried to apologize to his teammates in a despondent locker room, wanting to shoulder the blame for a critical first-half fumble. The quarterback was quickly rebuffed.

“Nah man, we’re all together,” they assured him.

At his postgame news conference, Hurts kept leaning on the lessons that would linger. That night undoubtedly stung. But Hurts knew, even with the wound still so fresh, it would make him better.

“It’s something that I know will motivate me,” Hurts said. “I been here (now) … That’s the beautiful thing about it.”

Two years later Hurts and the Eagles made it back — but not without first overcoming the hurdles they confronted along the way. That’s perhaps the most impressive layer to this championship: Plenty of teams would’ve fallen apart.

The Eagles never did.

“A great driving force,” Hurts called that Super Bowl loss. “It lit a flame, lit a fire in me.”

But first came the drama and disappointment of 2023; Philadelphia started 10-1 but cratered down the stretch, dropping six of its final seven, including a 23-point loss to the Bucs in the wild-card round. “We didn’t know how to handle adversity,” tight end Dallas Goedert admitted this week.

More was on the way. Both coordinators from last season, Brian Johnson and Sean Desai, were fired. At least a part of Sirianni’s offensive authority was stripped away; new coordinator Kellen Moore would be “in charge” of the unit, Sirianni admitted after the season. Vic Fangio, one of the best defensive minds in league history, signed on to coordinate a unit that finished 30th in points allowed last season. Longtime center Jason Kelce, a backbone of the organization and six-time All-Pro, retired.

“We’re thankful for that,” the coach said in New Orleans this week, reflecting on the team’s stunning collapse and its aftermath. “As bad as it sucked at the time, I know I’m grateful for that … it shaped us into who we are and it’s a big reason why we’re back here.”

But make no mistake, the heat on Sirianni was intense, both before the 2024 season and a few weeks in.

The 2024 campaign opened with Hurts and Sirianni fielding questions about “a disconnect” in their relationship — it was clear, amid last year’s offensive regression, that the two were not always on the same page. A stumbling 2-2 start did little to ease concerns, and Sirianni — despite being 36-19 in three-plus seasons in Philadelphia — was under fire, and according to various sportsbooks, among the five or six coaches most likely to get fired after the season.

Or potentially even during it.

Then something changed. At the insistence of a few of the team’s top offensive linemen, Sirianni and Moore leaned into their prized offseason acquisition, Barkley. “We wanted to find out how we could become a better offense,” right tackle Lane Johnson said.

The coaching staff listened. Barkley took off. So did the Eagles. Philly ripped off 10 straight wins, claimed the NFC East title and started to resemble a Super Bowl contender. By year’s end, Barkley had put together one of the finest seasons in league history, becoming the ninth player ever to eclipse 2,000 rushing yards. His 46 runs of 10-plus yards were an NFL-best, and he was named the league’s Offensive Player of the Year last week.

Barkley was just as explosive in playoff wins over the Packers, Rams and Commanders. His three touchdown runs of 60 yards or more set a new playoff record.

But there was more to the Eagles’ revival than just Barkley. Nearly every one of the team’s offseason moves paid off in a big way. Moore and Fangio remade their units. Behind the league’s best offensive line, Hurts finished with a career high in completion percentage (68.7) and piled up 32 total touchdowns, 14 of which came on the ground.

Fangio’s defense climbed from 26th in yards allowed to first. Draft picks DeJean and Quinyon Mitchell had stellar rookie seasons in the secondary. Baun, another offseason addition, was a revelation at linebacker. Defensive tackle Jalen Carter, the anchor of a much younger front four, has grown into one of the best game-wreckers in the league.

Carter’s unit dominated Sunday night. The Chiefs’ shaky offensive line — which had shuffled through lineup changes all season — had no answer.

It was the latest reminder that Roseman remains the best roster builder in football. This Eagles team was stacked. On Sunday night, on the game’s biggest stage, they played like it, spoiling the Chiefs’ pursuit of history and knocking the kings of the sport off their throne.

Now there’s a new champ.