Why can’t the Monday after the Super Bowl be a national holiday?
That’s my primary thought as I sit here writing this piece. I’m hungover. Not on alcohol, but by how good the football was yesterday.
A masterclass in clutch-game performances by Jalen Hurts. A gutsy comeback from Patrick Mahomes. A coaching masterpiece by Andy Reid. An admirable performance from Rihanna.
All within a few hours.
Both offenses were at the top of their respective games, leading to an all-time entertaining Super Bowl. Hurts put together one of the best individual performances we’ve seen in a game of that magnitude, but don’t get me wrong. Last night was all about Patrick Mahomes.
He was playing injured and wasn’t fantastic, but greatness makes things happen when they need to happen. Mahomes made big plays over and over again, finding Travis Kelce, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and more for big late-game receptions. His long scramble in the fourth quarter was massive and as gutsy as they come.
He finished with only 182 passing yards, but he still had a 21/27 completion ratio, no turnovers, and a 131.8 passer rating. Simply put, he didn’t make any mistakes.
Hurts, for how good he was, made a huge mistake, fumbling in the second quarter; Nick Bolton scooped it and returned it for a touchdown. If the Eagles go down and score there and make it 21-7, they are pretty close to putting the game to bed.
The Eagles still went into halftime up 10, but that was never going to be enough to stop Mahomes last night. The Chiefs scored 24 points in the second half on only four possessions. The vaunted Philadelphia defense, out of nowhere, had no answer.
To me, that’s the story of the game. Sure, Hurts made a huge mistake with that fumble, but the Eagles’ defense, which had been so good all year, decided to lay an egg in the second half of the most important game of the year.
Four drives. Three touchdowns and a field goal. That kind of defense certainly doesn’t win championships.
Now, it could be that Andy Reid and Eric Bienemy just schemed so well that even a defense as good as Philadelphia couldn’t stop it. The lengthened halftime probably helped matters, to be fair. The Rihanna performance and set-up/tear down added a substantial amount of time which can be used to make real, tangible adjustments.
It could be that Reid and Bienemy got extremely busy at the break and cooked up the perfect game plan. If so, kudos to them.
That would help explain why a guy like Travis Kelce, whom defenses should know to triple or quadruple team at this point, still gets wide open all the time. It’s probably related to the offensive scheme. As a result, huge credit should go to Andy Reid and co. for calling such a great game. It won them the championship.
Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least mention the game’s ending. It is incredibly disappointing that such a good game had to end with all the talk being about the officiating rather than the fantastic duel itself.
If you somehow missed it, the Chiefs were about to be forced to kick a field goal and give the ball back to the Eagles with a decent amount of time left on the clock, only to be bailed out by a (borderline, to say the least) defensive holding call. The automatic first down allowed Kansas City to run the clock out and kick a game-ending field goal. The call effectively decided who won the game.
No game should ever be decided by a referee’s flag, especially the Super Bowl. If the Chiefs get that field goal and stop the Eagles fair-and-square, good for them! But time and time again, especially in the playoffs, the referees take the result out of the players’ hands.
That can’t happen.
I was fuming about that call in the moment, and I texted, tweeted, and retweeted to reflect how I felt, but now that I’ve had time to reflect, I’m disappointed more than anything else. Mahomes and Hurts had an all-time QB Super Bowl duel, but because of that referee’s call, we’re not talking about it. All we’re discussing is the officiating.
The attention is on the referees, not the Chiefs. The NFL can’t have seasons end that way.
Mahomes deserves better. Hurts deserves better. The players, coaches, and fans all… deserve… better! Enough on that.
What a game for Mahomes. It isn’t his fault that he got that big call. Plain and simple, he made so many big plays when it mattered. He ripped up the Philadelphia defense and made it look like a high school team. Helpless. Clueless. Whatever negative term you want to use, it applies to the Eagles’ defense in that game.
But that’s all due to Mahomes and Reid and how great they are. Greatness does that to inferiority. It rips its heart out, chews it up, and shits it right out.
Last night, I guess the Eagles were just the aforementioned shit, weren’t they?