Chiefs Make History with 3rd Trophy – The Shocking Secret Weapon That Took Down the Eagles!

If the Kansas City Chiefs want their three-peat, they’re going to have to beat the best team they’ve played in a Super Bowl in the Patrick Mahomes era. The Philadelphia Eagles have lost three games all season, two of them after their receivers dropped passes that would have clinched victories. Since their Week 5 bye, the Eagles have gone 15-1, posted a plus-27 turnover margin and won their games by an average of 13.8 points.

This Eagles team is better than the one the Chiefs beat two years ago in Super Bowl LVII and better than either of the San Francisco 49ers teams Kansas City topped in Super Bowls LIV and LVIII. Philadelphia is even scarier than the Tom Brady-led Tampa Bay Buccaneers who managed to give Mahomes his only championship game defeat in Super Bowl LV.

I wouldn’t say this is the best Chiefs team we’ve seen, but it might be the wiliest. Rarely dominant but never out of it, the Chiefs put together a series of spectacularly close victories. Holding on to a victory against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 1 by the length of Isaiah Likely‘s toenail portended what was to come all season. The Chiefs won games with fourth-down stops, field goals bouncing off uprights, kicks getting blocked and snaps being dropped. They found a way to sprinkle just enough magic dust into each victory. Their win over the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championship Game, a measure of revenge for Buffalo costing the Chiefs a chance at an undefeated regular season in November, was their 15th consecutive victory in games decided by seven or fewer points.

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The Eagles want their own revenge. If the team from two years ago knew it would get a 304-yard passing day with four touchdowns from Jalen Hurts, it would have liked its chances. Instead, the league’s most fearsome pass rush failed to sack Mahomes, the Chiefs went 4-for-5 in the red zone and the Eagles were denied their second title in six seasons.

One of the biggest differences between the Eagles squad that came up short against the Chiefs two years ago and the one that will attempt to win the Super Bowl this Sunday is what it has at running back. In 2022, the Eagles got solid work out of Miles Sanders and Boston Scott during the regular season but most of their rushing success in the Super Bowl came from Jalen Hurts. Three Philadelphia halfbacks combined to carry the ball 17 times for 45 yards and two first downs in that game, generating minus-27 rushing yards over expectation (RYOE) in the process.

Their new lead running back seems to average 45 yards per carry at times. Barkley is in the middle of what might go down as the best season ever produced by an NFL running back. He’s 30 yards from breaking Terrell Davis‘ single-season record for combined rushing yards in the regular season and playoffs (2,476) while having carried the ball 59 fewer times than the legendary Broncos back did during that 1998 campaign.

We don’t have RYOE numbers for Davis’ era, but Barkley generated 549 RYOE during the regular season and has 172 more during the postseason. That latter figure would have been the 10th-highest mark for any back during the regular season. Barkley has done that in three games, and that’s with a reduced workload in the conference title game against the Commanders as he battled a calf injury. All he did that game was score three touchdowns and come up with a series of key blocks for Hurts.

The scores against the Commanders summed up the differences between Barkley and the less spectacular backs who graced the Eagles’ backfield over the past decade. The hole on the 60-yard touchdown that opened up the game was initially sprung when Washington lineman Dante Fowler Jr. tried to spin away from a block attempt and both fell over and tripped up linebacker Bobby Wagner in the process, but there were still two Commanders defensive backs in position to slow down Barkley. He ran through both of their tackle attempts and then accelerated away from another would-be tackler for the score. For Sanders, that’s probably a 15-yard gain. It was 60 and a touchdown for Barkley.

Both of his other scores came in short-yardage situations on plays that were seemingly designed to land inside, only for him to cut them outside into open space for a score. He has benefited from playing behind a great offensive line, but his ability to set up defenders before breaking them down and getting outside to torch them with his acceleration has created so many big runs this season. It feels like a miracle for the defense any time he ends up one-on-one against a defender at the second or third level and doesn’t turn that opportunity into a touchdown.

Barkley has 13 runs of at least 30 yards this season, and they’ve come on all kinds of concepts. The long touchdown against the Commanders came on a crack toss, where A.J. Brown blocked down against Fowler and the Eagles got left tackle Jordan Mailata and tight end Dallas Goedert out into the alley against smaller defensive backs. They love these pin-and-pull run concepts, where they can take advantage of the athleticism of their offensive linemen and tight ends in open space.

There’s the pin-and-pull run game, sure. But Barkley has produced long runs on outside zone. And inside zone. And split zone. And counter. And an iso run. The Eagles are capable of running both zone and gap schemes at a high level, and Barkley excels both within those concepts and in the open field. And all of that comes without considering the impact Hurts has, both as a runner and in creating doubt as a potential ball carrier for opposing defenders on plays in which Barkley gets the ball.

Even beyond Barkley’s innate ability, the diversity of run schemes and potential ball carriers makes the Philadelphia run game extremely difficult to stop. It’s a quintessential 2024 rush attack. Go back six years ago to Super Bowl LIII between the Patriots and Rams. While the Rams came into the game with one of the league’s best rushing attacks, their scheme was almost entirely built around zone-running concepts from the Mike Shanahan/Alex Gibbs tree.

The Patriots, with some help from Vic Fangio, found a way to suffocate those zone runs. Following the lead of the then-Bears defensive coordinator and what he did to hold the Rams to six points in a December victory, the Pats played a 6-1 front on early downs, with six players on the line of scrimmage to prevent the Rams from getting any double-teams on defenders and a linebacker to clean up and make tackles against the running back. The Rams mustered only 62 yards on 18 carries, and the inability to run out with their core zone concepts got the offense off schedule and took away the bones of the play-action game that helped fuel quarterback Jared Goff‘s success. Sean McVay is a genius, but he wasn’t able to find a counterpunch to get the offense going, and it eventually led the Rams to totally reenvision their offensive architecture and move toward more gap schemes in 2023 and beyond.

Because Philly’s run game is diverse and its offensive line is so impressive, there’s no single schematic solution capable of taking away Barkley and the rushing attack like there was for the Patriots six years ago. The Chiefs have to be gap-sound, have to win as many one-on-one battles as possible and have to tackle Barkley in confined quarters before he can get into the open field.

The Chiefs prioritize tackling from their linebackers and defensive backs, and they’re generally good at preventing opposing teams from generating big plays on the ground. They allowed only one run of 30 or more yards during the regular season, and that came on a second-and-23 draw by Jerome Ford with a lopsided lead over the Browns. The Bills’ James Cook added a second big run in the postseason when he went for 33 yards in the AFC Championship Game.