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Your Kansas City Chiefs are taking part in the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII on Sunday evening.
We spoke with Brandon Lee Gowton at Bleeding Green Nation — our SBNation sister website overlaying the Eagles — asking for his high three explanation why Philadelphia might lose Sunday’s recreation. Within the spirit of goodwill, we reciprocated. I gave BGN three reasons why the Chiefs could lose.
Here’s what Brandon needed to say.
1. Protection: Jonathan Gannon can have no reply for Patrick Mahomes.
Everybody is aware of the Chiefs have the higher quarterback on this matchup. That’s fairly invaluable.
The final time Mahomes went up towards the Eagles’ defensive coordinator, he accomplished 80% of his makes an attempt for 278 yards (8.6 common), 5 touchdowns, one interception, and a 131.0 passer score.
After all, much has changed since these two teams met in Week 4 of the 2021 season.
That stated, there’s a fixed that is still. And that’s the query: how will Gannon’s protection maintain up towards a top-tier quarterback?
In 2021, Mahomes was considered one of 5 completely different quarterbacks to finish not less than 80% of his passes towards the Eagles. Between 1950 and 2020, Philadelphia had solely allowed six quarterbacks to finish not less than 80% of their passes. Fairly wild.
Once more, there’s cause to consider Gannon has improved since final 12 months. He’s overseeing a unit that ranks first in sacks, first in opponent yards per play, first in Professional Soccer Focus defensive grading, tied for second in opponent offensive factors per recreation (17.8), tied for fourth in takeaways, fourth in EPA per play, sixth in DVOA, and many others. The Eagles have clearly allowed simply 14 factors by way of two playoff video games up to now. And 7 of these got here on a drive that began on a brief area on the Eagles’ 46-yard line.
But it surely’s solely honest to level out the extent of competitors that Gannon has gone up towards. Listed below are the quarterbacks the Eagles have confronted this season:
Jared Goff
Kirk Cousins
Carson Wentz
Trevor Lawrence
Kyler Murray
Cooper Rush
Kenny Pickett
Davis Mills
Taylor Heinicke
Matt Ryan
Aaron Rodgers
Ryan Tannehill
Daniel Jones (x3)
Justin Fields
Dak Prescott
Andy Dalton
Davis Webb
Brock Purdy/Josh Johnson/no quarterback
Not precisely a assassin’s row.
Most would say the most effective two quarterbacks from that checklist are Rodgers and Prescott.
Rodgers, whereas taking part in by way of an injured thumb earlier than leaving the sport with one other damage — and his backup Jordan Love — had been capable of put 33 factors on Philadelphia’s protection.
Prescott accomplished 77% of his makes an attempt for 347 yards (9.9 common), three touchdowns, one interception and a 124.3 passer score — along with dashing six instances for 41 yards.
And so there’s worry that Mahomes will thrive towards Gannon’s most popular technique of protection, which is to sit down again, take away the massive play and drive the opponent to maintain lengthy drives. The Chiefs, who generated probably the most yards-after-catch within the final 15 years (h/t Sheil Kapadia) might be able to actually make the most of an Eagles’ protection that’s struggled with tackling at instances. Look no additional than Christian McCaffrey breaking by way of contact to search out his approach to the tip zone within the NFC Championship recreation.
Actually, even when Gannon does provide you with an amazing plan of assault towards Mahomes, it merely won’t be sufficient. There’s solely a lot one can do towards a participant who is anticipated to go down as the most effective quarterback to ever play the sport.
2. Offense: Jalen Hurts will go away too many performs on the sphere.
Hurts appears to be working at lower than 100%. He’s usually a reasonably efficient deep passer who throws with good contact. Since getting back from the damage, although, he’s solely accomplished three of his 10 makes an attempt of 20 or extra yards. And a kind of completions was the DeVonta Smith one-handed seize that might’ve been dominated incomplete if Kyle Shanahan challenged the play.
Hurts bought away with overthrowing an open A.J. Brown for a landing towards the New York Giants within the Divisional Spherical. Hurts bought away with overthrowing an open A.J. Brown for a landing towards the San Francisco 49ers.
Hurts will most likely not get away with the same mistake this time round. The margin for error towards the Chiefs goes to be a lot smaller than it was in the course of the Eagles’ first two playoff video games.
As is the case with Mahomes recovering from his ankle damage, It’s attainable that Hurts shall be more practical after having two weeks to relaxation. Tremendous Bowl Sunday marks 66 days faraway from when he first sprained his shoulder. It’s exhausting to consider that he’ll be sharp as a downfield passer till we actually see it occur, although.
3. X-Issue: This can be a coin-flip recreation.
As I kind this on Wednesday afternoon, there’s an enormous a part of me that actually needs Sunday was right here already. To not completely invalidate all of our exhausting work as content material creators… however to do precisely that… I can’t assist however really feel a number of this preview materials is simply going to exit of the window as soon as kickoff arrives.
The way in which I see it, these are the most effective two groups within the NFL. If this was a sequence of 10 video games as a substitute of only one, I really feel like they’d every win 5 instances. This recreation goes to come back all the way down to the wire and the outcome might be the matter of the ball bouncing in a single crew’s favor. It’s attainable the Eagles are that lucky crew. It’s additionally fully attainable it’ll be the Chiefs as a substitute.
And if the sport performs out like I anticipate, there’s actually no disgrace in being on the dropping aspect. The Eagles can have misplaced to arguably the most effective head coach and quarterback mixture of all time. The Chiefs can have misplaced to an extremely gifted roster that’s particularly sturdy and deep within the trenches.
Click on right here to see the three reasons the Eagles could win the Super Bowl.
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