That, my friends, was the greatest win in Philadelphia Eagles history, completing the greatest season in Philadelphia Eagles history.

Not only did the Birds defeat the Chiefs to avenge the heartbreaking Super Bowl 57 loss, but they ran Kansas City off the field entirely. Just totally whipped them, belt to ass. They jumped out to a 24-0 lead, bullied KC’s offensive line, and had Patrick Mahomes seeing ghosts. Sack after sack, with a pick-six and a strip sack thrown in for good measure. The league’s best defense somehow found an extra gear on the biggest stage of all.

It’s hard to put into words what we all just watched, and it’s definitely one of those things where the reality might not set in until some point in the future. Did that actually happen? Did they really throttle the Chiefs that badly? Yes. Yes, they did. Years from now we’ll ask each other where we were when the Eagles held Mahomes and the Chiefs to garbage time stat padding in the Super Bowl. You could sense the confidence in the fan base going into the week, and a lot of people predicted a Birds win, but no one predicted this.

What makes it especially enjoyable is the specific way they did it, juxtaposed with Super Bowls 52 and 57, in which Jim Schwartz and Jonathan Gannon’s defenses gave up almost 1,000 yards and 71 total points. The Brandon Graham strip sack won it 2018, in iconic fashion, but how many times did we talk about the 2022 team needing to make one play, just a single big play, to win a second Super Bowl in five seasons? They couldn’t do it, but this team did it, and more. They sacked Mahomes six times, picked him off twice, and forced a fumble as well.

What’s more is that Saquon Barkley didn’t even have his best game on Sunday night. He finished with 57 rushing yards on 25 carries and did more of his damage catching short passes. But Jalen Hurts did a job, coming up just shy of 300 total passing and rushing yards. It’s poetic considering how much criticism Hurts received this season, the constant doubting of his passing chops despite the reality that the Eagles were able to win games by running the ball and playing stout defense. To cap it off with big passing performances in the NFC title game and Super Bowl is a nice way to silence the haters forever.


It’s also funny to go back to the offseason and recall that the big question to begin training camp was whether or not Hurts and head coach Nick Sirianni hated each other’s guts. Then you had a bunch of people ready to fire Sirianni after the 2-2 start, and writers accusing him of bringing his kids to the podium for the purpose of a “human shield.” What happened next was a 10-game winning streak, a fluke loss to the Commanders in which Hurts was concussed, then a six-game winning streak to cap it off and lift the Lombardi Trophy. They really should have won 17 in a row after the Tampa loss. Throughout, Sirianni made the right decisions, Kellen Moore called the right plays, and Vic Fangio was damn near flawless, molding a young group of hungry dogs into the best Eagles defense of all time.

Enjoy it. It doesn’t get any better than this. We’ll tell stories about this game until we’re six feet under, or cremated.

To the observations:

1) There’s no reason the Super Bowl should played at 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday. Either play it at 3 p.m. or move it to Saturday. It was excruciating to wait all day long while fending off feral children.

2) Bryce Huff was inactive. It’s crazy enough to get $34 million guaranteed, only to be scratched in the Super Bowl, but it also shows how strong the team is, the fact that you can simply leave him out with no issues whatsoever. Obviously the EDGE group was fine without him.

3) New Orleans sounded like an Eagles home game. The Chiefs were basically booed out of the tunnel while it felt like the entire stadium joined in with Bradley Cooper’s intro. Then DMX started blaring. Beautiful.

4) Hated the score bug. Distracting and weird with those floating and disconnected boxes and numbers. Leave it to Fox to mess with something that isn’t broken.

5) It was super-ballsy to throw a deep shot on 4th and 2 from midfield on the first drive. That being said, this isn’t offensive pass interference:

A.J. Brown gets the slightest bit of facemask there. It’s not hand fighting, but it’s also not enough contact to warrant throwing a flag. There’s not really a push off and he’s not twisting and grabbing. Funny how there was all of this talk of the refs favoring the Chiefs coming into the game, and the refs came out and issued a statement defending their honor and all of that, then boom, first drive – controversial call.

6) Really nice opening drive for the Eagles’ defense. The open field tackle from Cooper DeJean was the catalyst for the stop, because they forced a situation in which the front four was able to make Patrick Mahomes uncomfortable and get him moving backwards. That third down pass was dangerously close to being picked.

7) That penalty on Trent McDuffie was a make-up call. The contact to Dallas Goedert’s head was minimal, more awkward-looking than anything. Of course they’re trying to remove those kinds of plays from the game, but there really wasn’t much there.

8) The deep ball for Jahan Dotson was a thing of beauty. If you can get that kind of blitz pickup from Saquon, you’re going to have a chance to go 1v1 on the outside. The Eagles have loved that sideline deep shot ever since Hurts took the reins a few years back.

9) Jalen Hurts anytime touchdown was one of the best bets to make this season. It sat around -115 every time and it hit in 13 of the 21 games they played.

10) Early on, it was evident that the pass rush was benefiting from playing on a clean and consistent surface. That second Chiefs drive, Nolan Smith was able to detach and chase down Mahomes, and you know if this was Arizona two years ago, he would have lost his footing and found himself pancaked by a tackle. Then Mahomes is just running for the first down. It was like night and day watching the EDGE group against the KC tackles, and further confirmation that The Sod Father should be in jail.

11) No controversy on the Charles Omenihu offside. He lined up in the neutral zone and gave the Eagles a free set of downs. Big break, too, because Hurts would have taken a huge loss on the sack.

12) First quarter yards: Eagles 115, Chiefs 19.

13) The bad interception took a field goal attempt off the board. They let Nick Bolton right through, so some type of breakdown in assignment or protection there. That was only Hurts’ sixth interception of the year and his first in the postseason since 2021. Of course Fox made us wait until after a commercial break and Chiefs play before we got to see a replay.

You can see how early Hurts had to release the ball here, with the safety turned and seeing it the entire way:

14) Mahomes paying homage to Donovan McNabb with the worm burner? How often you see him throw it at some guy’s feet on 3rd and short? The KC offense was all out of whack early, because of the pressure.

15) It was good to see Hurts connect with Brown on the back-shoulder throw on the drive that followed the interception. Can’t turtle up after a bad play, just gotta keep slinging it. That connection moved the sticks on third down and allowed them to kick the field goal that made it 10-0.

16) The penalties on Rick Lovato – can anyone remember the last time he was flagged for anything? When they showed the replay of the first one, it looked like he was rocking just slightly before the Chiefs moved, but no movement into the neutral zone. Thankfully it didn’t matter because Jake Elliott just barely squeezed in a 48-yarder.

17) Shout out to the Fox producer who played The War on Drugs to commercial break. “Under the Pressure” is the name of the song.

18) That defensive sequence before halftime was amazing. Possibly one of the best in franchise history, and no exaggeration. Sack, sack, pick-six. Incredible. Recall, the Eagles didn’t sack Mahomes ONCE in Super Bowl 57. It took them only halfway through the second quarter to eclipse the sack+QB hit total they put up in the entirety of that game in Arizona.

Photo: Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

19) DeJean is so smooth. Even that punt where Tristin McCollum ran into him, he just catches it and takes the bump no problem. No worries, no nerves. He plays so calm for a rookie. It’s really incredible. He’s been that way all season.

20) Key play – Chiefs getting a stop on 2nd and 26 and Bolton committing a stupid penalty to give the Eagles an automatic first down. The Eagles weren’t able to do anything with it, but by the time KC got the ball back, they were on their own nine yard line with 1:49 on the clock and two timeouts.

21) Great stat:

22) “Taylor Swift is in attendance but she hasn’t had much to cheer about.” 

Can’t say the same for Birds fan Anne Hathaway.

23) Remember the complaints about the Brazil game and the Falcons game? The EDGE unit didn’t look very good and we thought it might be a concern this season. Fast forward to Super Bowl 59 and Josh Sweat pushing Joe Thuney into Mahomes for his second pick of the night:

24) Beautiful little design here on the Brown TD. It’s a drag across the middle and the traffic from the other side puts a screen on Bolton, who isn’t even close to being able to make a play.

This is something they’d typically get Goedert on, but what’s really cool this time around is they go 12 personnel and use the tight ends to run the picks instead:

25) DeAndre Hopkins just dropping a wide-open pass? In what world? This world. The Eagles’ world.

26) Halftime stats:

  • Eagles: 179 yards, 24 points, 19:59 of possession, 13 first downs, 2-6 on 3rd down, one turnover
  • Chiefs: 23 yards, 0 points, 10:01 of possession, one first down, 0-6 on 3rd down, two turnovers

Best half of football in franchise history. They held Mahomes to 6-14 and two picks. Gave up three yards on three runs between Kareem Hunt and Isiah Pacheco.

27) At some point along the way, Saquon set the record:

28) Kendrick Lamar is a good rapper but never in my life have I wanted someone to get off a stage more quickly.

29) At halftime, by the way, each team’s leading receiver was JuJu Smith-Schuster and Jahan Dotson. Just like we all drew it up.

30) Pagan noticing the important things:

31) You always look at the first series of the third quarter as a tone setter. Are the Chiefs going to put up a fight? What kind of adjustments do they make? They did a good job initially of speeding things up, and playing with tempo, then sack, sack, 3rd and 17, punt. That’s what we call BELT TO ASS.

32) Tom Brady calling Mahomes “Patrick” over and over again was annoying. Call the dude by his last name. This isn’t the NBA.

33) Josh Sweat had 2.5 sacks just one series into the third quarter. That is a single-game high for him. What a performance.

34) Another amazing stat:

35) The Birds only got three on their opening drive of the second half, but they went 11 plays and took almost seven minutes off the clock. Kansas City got the ball back down 27 points with about five minutes remaining in the quarter. The Hurts scrambles were total backbreakers, once to move the sticks on 3rd and 5 and a second time on 2nd and 7.

36)

37) AVONTE MADDOX?! EVERYBODY MAKES A BIG PLAY!

38) DeVonta Smith dagger. Even before that, he was playing well, couple of clutch grabs to move the sticks. He always seems to rise to the occasion against Kansas City.

39) Kansas City didn’t get into the Eagles’ side of the field until 2:05 in the third quarter.

40) Nitpicking – Brandon Graham was being held on the Mahomes touchdown pass to Xavier Worthy.

41) To be completely honest with you, I started to abandon the observations list at the start of the fourth quarter to work on the opening paragraphs.

42) Jake Elliott was perfect. 8/8 combined on field goals and extra points, hitting from 48 yards twice and 50 once. They didn’t need him, but he finished on the highest of notes after an up and down season.

43) The number of defensive guys who made plays in this game really tells the story. Maddox had the big PBU. Sweat wrecked shop. DeJean pick six and Zack Baun an interception as well. Moro Ojomo and Jordan Davis had tackles for loss and rookie Jalyx Hunt got a half sack. A brilliant job across the board, with contributions from everyone.

44) Not sure about you, but I loved the shot of Vic Fangio dialed the fuck in, even up 37-6 with less than 10 minutes remaining in the game. Immediately after that camera shot, Milton Williams with the strip sack to more or less end it. Incredible.

45) Brady stinks. Put Greg Olsen in the booth.

46) There was talk about Fangio being 0-8 against Mahomes and Andy Reid coming into this game, but it would seem the reason for that is because the Broncos and Dolphins weren’t very good.

47) Irony – Saquon had the most Eagles receptions in this game. The one down the sideline in the third quarter was a killer.

48) Sure sounded like Birds fans were trolling with the Tomahawk Chop in the fourth quarter. Brilliant.

49) Was hoping we’d get to see the backups a little earlier than we did, but the Chiefs went on an annoying late drive. Kenny Pickett sighting! Who would have thought?

50) There is no observation 50. I just want to say thank you to everyone who read this column in 2024 and 2025. Go Birds and enjoy the championship. Best fans in the world, best readers in the world.