The Super Bowl of the 2024-2025 NFL season ended 40-22 in favor of the Philadelphia Eagles.
It never even felt close.
To summarize the factors that led to the outcome. A polished, well oiled defense, highlight-reel producing offense and photogenic football product™ (now sponsored by DraftKings) took the field against a real, NFC East-grown, football team that got there by playing some real ground game-based, pound-the-rock-football. Thank you, by the way, New York Giants, I’m sure you had a great season with Daniel Jones this year.
The scorecard at the end said “40-22,” but I think the score most viewers remember is “40-6,” the score the Eagles led by as the fourth quarter began. The Kansas City Chiefs, 1.5 point favorites, had less yardage to that point than Kendrick Lamar. The Chiefs were penalized multiple times, had no answer to the Eagles offense and could not stop Patrick Mahomes from being pressured.
Mahomes was sacked six times, pressured constantly and all without the Eagles calling a single blitz all night. The Eagles only had to put four guys up front, and Mahomes folded like a bag under actual D-line pressure. Eagles Defensive Coordinator Vic Fangio put up a defensive masterclass, due in large part to never needing to stock more than four guys in the trenches. The Eagles leaned on Cover 4 in the secondary for the entire game to completely shut down any air offensives. The plan was to never let Mahomes throw the deep ball, entirely deny the splash plays and leave two guys up close and personal in the secondary to make interceptions happen or bat down balls. The Eagles kept a 38.1% pressure rate on Mahomes without blitzing a single time. The secondary coverage, the run game prevent, the core of this game was decided in the trenches like most football should be.
Mahomes, welcome to the Sam Howell experience buddy. Being intercepted twice and run over in the Super Bowl is a rough way to lose the three-peat. Unfortunately, a meteor did not hit the field and someone had to win so, the Eagles had to. Theoretically, this would put the Eagles in the “hero” role of the story, but no, “protagonist” will do fine. I’m a Commanders fan so I know for most people the Eagles are just a random team, but I’m not rooting for them, end of story. I mean, credit where credit’s due, they’re better than the Dallas Cowboys, but that’s because, one, it’s the Cowboys, and two, the Eagles can respect a union and I got standards.
I don’t have that much commentary for the Eagles offense or the Kansas City defense, because that’s not where the game was decided. It was pivotal — Kansas City got out-coached, out-played and out-footballed on both sides of the ball — but the real fact of the matter is that the Eagles won because they have the best defense in the league.
The Eagles of course, participated in their ritual of recreating the street safety record of Jin Roh regardless of winning or losing in the playoffs. It is a time-honored tradition for the city of Philadelphia to riot, win or lose. I respect it; I really do think American football needs that kind of culture in more places.
The Eagles took a great victory against the corporate empire. Really, if anything convinced me why I should root for the Chiefs to lose this year, it was seeing Mahomes’ and Andy Reid’s faces literally everywhere. Bundleruuuuwwsskiiiiii bundleruskiiiiii. Mahomes was in literally hundreds of ads on official NFL broadcasts. According to iSpot, Mahomes was in 423 ads, literally double the amount of some entire team’s players. The representative avatar of State Farm and nine other brands got run over for sixty minutes on the field this Super Bowl, that’s why I can deal with the Eagles winning the thing. The most-sponsored player in the league, the most shoved in the audience’s face. With the NFL pushing sports gambling and private equity ownership while refusing to fix basic officiating and league office issues, the choice to root against Patrick Ma(mmon)homes was pretty easy.
In short, a great evil was felled by the hands of another great evil. But the Eagles are a homegrown kind of evil. An earnest evil. A plague upon America that smiles with glee. When push comes to shove, I’d rather have the Super Bowl winners be the guys who eat horse feces than lawyers, sponsors and bandwagoners.
Thank you, Eagles. Now respectfully, never win another game again.