Without question, the one matchup in Super Bowl LVII that seemed to favor one team at the expense of the other was the Philadelphia Eagles’ outside pass rush against Kansas City Chiefs offensive tackles Orlando Brown Jr. and Andrew Wylie. The Eagles had three different edge-rushers (Haason Reddick, Brandon Graham, Josh Sweat) with more than 10 sacks on the season, and no tackles had allowed more total pressures on the season than Brown with 56, and Wylie with 53.
But in this 38-35 Chiefs win, Mahomes wasn’t sacked once on 27 passing attempts. The Eagles had five quarterback hits, and there were pressures that ended Kansas City drives, but this was one of just six games this season that Mahomes was not sacked.
“It’s historical,” Brown said after the game. “What we’ve been able to do is historical. “Credit to [head] Coach [Andy] Reid, credit to [offensive line] Coach [Andy] Heck, Pat, all the receivers in hand-to-hand, it’s historical what this front five was able to do. Pat winning MVP, and I’m standing here as a Super Bowl champion… I mean, it’s the work we put in.”
Historical might be a bit of a stretch, but it was undeniably impressive. How did it happen? Mahomes’ clean jersey resulted from a combination of the Chiefs doing things the right way, and the Eagles’ defense, led by defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon, going away from the things that made them so effective all season long.
The Eagles went away from their vaunted five-man fronts.
Coming into this game, the Eagles had amassed 18.0 combined sacks with five rushers, third-best in the NFL behind the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (23.0), and the Baltimore Ravens (19.0). Most of those particular sacks didn’t come from four-man pressures with a blitzer; they came out of the Eagles’ preferred five-man fronts, which create one-on-ones by design, and force opposing offenses to think about committing additional resources (skill players) to deal with those specific fronts.
So, it was striking to me that, by my count, the Eagles used a five-man front just twice on Mahomes’ dropbacks outside of the red zone. One of the Eagles’ best pass-rushing concepts all season out of those five-man fronts has Reddick stunting multiple gaps and looking for the opening. Reddick did just that on this Mahomes incompletion to JuJu Smith-Schuster with 13:35 left in the first half.
The Chiefs had third-and-3 there from their own 27-yard line, and that was the end of that drive.
The other five-man front came with 13:20 left in the third quarter. The Eagles collapsed the line, Mahomes had to get out of the pocket, and he just barely got the pass off to Travis Kelce
There was this four-man front with 10:13 left in the third quarter with Reddick starting off-ball and throwing a delayed blitz at the Chiefs, which Mahomes countered with a pass to Kelce behind the line of scrimmage… I mean, if you want to count that as a five-man rush, the result was similar (Mahomes forced to get the ball out quickly), and I remain confused as to why the Eagles didn’t use them more when they worked so well throughout the season, and in this game.
Letting Travis Kelce run unobstructed.
One matchup that favored the Chiefs all along was Travis Kelce against the Eagles’ linebackers. Kelce is a master of finding open space in the short and intermediate areas of the field, which put the onus on Philly’s linebackers to bump Kelce off the line of scrimmage and either take him all the way through his route, or hand him off to defensive backs.
For whatever reason, the Eagles did not do this as they did to San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle in the NFC Championship game. Then, linebacker Kyzir White was expert and gumming up the works for Kelce, which affected the timing of his routes, and would automatically give the fronts more time to get home.
This sack of 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy with 7:03 left in the first quarter was one example of how the Eagles can make things tough for a quarterback by sticking their talons in your Hall of Fame tight end. Kittle tried to run what looked like a skinny post against Cover-3, but he had White handing Kittle to Slay, and all the way up the route, Kittle just couldn’t get free. The result? Purdy tried to hit receiver Brandon Aiyuk to the other side, but the pressure was coming. The Eagles are usually very good at taking away your first read, and depositing you on your butt before you can get to anything else.
But from the start of the Super Bowl, the Eagles were — for whatever reason — letting Kelce roam free through their backyard. Mahomes’ first completion of the day came with 9:33 left in the first quarter. It was to Kelce, who ran right behind linebacker T.J. Edwards, who was trying and failing to get depth.
Mahomes’ second completion was this 18-yard touchdown to Kelce with 7:03 left in the first quarter. Here, Kelce motioned inside of receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling, which took Kelce’s coverage away from cornerback Darius Slay, and to safety Marcus Epps. Epps tried to bump Kelce, but it was a mismatch from the start.
When you give Mahomes’ primary target free release after free release, he’s going to demolish your defense. Again, a head-scratching series of schematic decisions by Gannon and his staff.
Winning the one-on-ones.
So, the Eagles gifted the Chiefs all kinds of opportunities, but it was still on Brown and Wylie to win those one-on-ones on the outside. And they did that to a higher degree than just about anybody could have expected.
NFL Network and FOX Sports analyst Brian Baldinger, who knows more about offensive line play than most (he played tackle, guard, and center for the Cowboys, Colts, and Eagles from 1982 through 1993) put up an outstanding sizzle reel with multiple instances in which Kansas City’s outside guys just got it done, over and over, without help.
.@Chiefs offensive line with a masterpiece performance protecting the MVP #Chiefskingdom #BaldysBreakdowns pic.twitter.com/RaKvVtvY2O
— Brian Baldinger (@BaldyNFL) February 13, 2023
“I don’t want to hear about it anymore,” Wylie said after the game of the challenge presented by the Eagles’ pass-rush. “The O-line knew it was going to be our responsibility to win this game, and we came out in the second half and took it into our own hands and did the damn thing. We had a hell of an offensive scheme going, and they were dialing it up, and it was working.”
No question about that. The Chiefs had a lot of help in erasing the biggest possible threat to their quest for the Lombardi Trophy, but when it was time for them to fill in the picture, it was Brown and Wylie who played as well as they possibly could.
