The Philadelphia Eagles have a chance to rewrite history. With one more win, they can avenge their Super Bowl 57 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2023.
Patrick Mahomes ultimately earned his second world title thanks in part to a late holding call and a game-winning Harrison Butker field goal with eight seconds remaining. Super Bowl 59 will be their chance to prove a rebuilt secondary and revamped offense is truly championship caliber.
Or it could be the backdrop for disaster.
There are several ways the biggest season of the year could go wrong for a team that opened as a betting underdog in New Orleans. Let’s break down the three most likely ways the Eagles could struggle in Super Bowl 59.
SUPER BOWL PREDICTIONS: How the 2025 Super Bowl could go terribly wrong for Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs
1. Jalen Hurts shrinks when forced into too many clear passing downs
Hurts’s inconsistency has dogged him since the Eagles’ 2022 Super Bowl run. While capable of dizzying highs, he’s also prone to frustrating lapses that blank easy opportunities and cost his team points. See his safety against the Los Angeles Rams in the divisional round for recent evidence.
🚨 SAFETY ALERT 🚨
📺: @NFLonNBC | #RamsHouse pic.twitter.com/qGobKx6PNL
— Los Angeles Rams (@RamsNFL) January 19, 2025
Dallas Goedert is open for an easy checkdown to set up third and short and provide some relief from the Philadelphia goal line. Hurts even appears to be staring right at him!
Philadelphia understands this and has planned around it. A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith and Saquon Barkley all arrived to make Hurts’s life easier. As such, the Eagles have the league’s leading rusher AND are the only team in the NFL with two players in the top 10 when it comes to expected points added (EPA) when targeted (Brown and Smith combined for 109.4 EPA in 2024. The entire New England Patriots offense clocked in at 67.6).
But Hurts is a glitchy quarterback facing a defense that prides itself in creating lapses in judgment through disguised pressures. Take the fourth-and-five play that ended the Buffalo Bills’ season in the AFC title game. Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo disguised his intentions so well Tony Romo, adding play-by-play for CBS, told viewers at home Josh Allen would have plenty of time to throw as Kansas City dropped seven men into coverage.
Whoops!
Spags sends the corner blitz, Josh Allen has to backpedal 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage, still manages to get a back-foot throw to Dalton Kincaid annnnnnd he can’t finish the miracle
— Christian D’Andrea (@trainisland.bsky.social) January 26, 2025 at 8:45 PM
This is why head coach Nick Sirianni is going to ride Barkley heavily early in drives to avoid obvious passing situations against a defense that does a great job looking innocuous before unleashing hell. There are worse strategies than seeing pressure and chucking the ball in Brown’s direction, but it’s possible Hurts doesn’t even get to that point.
Philly would certainly hope it doesn’t come to that; there were 10 games this season in which Hurts played a full 60 minutes and threw 25 or fewer passes — a number well below the NFL midpoint of 32.7 attempts per game. It went 10-0 in those contests.
As such, an early Chiefs lead and some stuffed Barkley runs would be anathema to Sirianni’s winning strategy. Kansas City can’t afford to sell out and stop the run thanks to the receiving talent in the Eagles’ lineup, but well timed blitzes could create the margin of error that swings a Super Bowl.
2. Philadelphia’s defensive backs fall short against the Chiefs’ non-stars
Super Bowl 59 may be a rough day for Travis Kelce; the future Hall of Famer is up against the league’s stingiest defense when it comes to covering tight ends. The Eagles were the only team in the NFL to allow fewer than 600 receiving yards to opposing TEs in 2024.
Focusing on Kelce, however, is a part of how the Chiefs have opened up their passing game beyond the veteran game-changer. When he’s been bottled up, Kansas City elevates other targets. Kelce had four games this season in which he was held to fewer than 20 receiving yards. If we include games in which he had fewer than five targets, you get five total contests — against the Bengals, Ravens, 49ers and Bills (twice). The Chiefs went 4-1 versus that pretty good competition!
Here are Kansas City’s leading receivers from those wins:
- Rashee Rice (75 yards vs. Cincinnati, 103 vs. Baltimore)
- Noah Gray (66 vs. San Francisco)
- Xavier Worthy (85 vs. Buffalo in the AFC championship)
Philadelphia won’t have to worry about Rice, who has been injured since Week 4. It will have to worry about Hollywood Brown, who garnered 15 targets in two regular season games after coming off injured reserve but has played a limited role in the postseason.
If Brown were the only concern this would be babytown frolics for the Eagles secondary. Except Kansas City always seems to pull big performances from overlooked players. JuJu Smith-Schuster and DeAndre Hopkins remain savvy veteran route runners capable of stepping up in big moments. Guys like Grey and Justin Watson are always good for a couple “Wait, Mahomes found WHO?” catches per playoff run.
But at face value, Philadelphia’s biggest concern may be the highly touted rookie who’ll put the Eagles’ highly touted rookies to the test.
On a per-play basis, Worthy’s 1.21 EPA per touch or target made him the most valuable player in the AFC title game. His 3.9 yards of separation per target and stupefying run-after-catch speed suggest he can be a game-breaker on short targets near the sideline. While he may seem like a tailor-made deep threat, he and Kelce instead provide the presence that keeps Philadelphia’s safeties creeping toward the snap and cornerbacks leaving little cushion off the line.
Which is where Watson comes in. While Mahomes’s deep ball rate and average target distances are at a career low, Watson has been the most likely recipient of his long throws. His 14.7 air yards per target are most among KC’s regulars and nearly four yards more than second place Hopkins. His 6.6 percent catch rate over expected (CROE) is second only to Hopkins. He’s only used sparingly, but when the Chiefs dial his number, it’s for a big play.
It would be an extremely Chiefs experience to have its stars and first-round draft picks bottled up only to torch an opponent with Justin by-god Watson. But that’s exactly what could happen in Super Bowl 59.
3. A bunch of Chiefs magic happens
Let’s finish with a quality that’s impossible to quantify; Kansas City’s ability to create magic from thin air.
Some of it is coaching. Some of it is execution. At least a little bit will come from a 50-50 penalty flag that sets social media on fire (well, more on fire).
Calling it luck is an insult. The Chiefs thrive in these moments. They emerge from shipwrecks riding dolphins back to shore. 2024 alone saw upset bids denied by blocked field goals, botched snaps and, most notably, a near-miracle bouncing out of the hands of Dalton Kincaid at the end of the AFC title game. I’m gonna repeat this, because it bears repeating.
Spags sends the corner blitz, Josh Allen has to backpedal 15 yards behind the line of scrimmage, still manages to get a back-foot throw to Dalton Kincaid annnnnnd he can’t finish the miracle
— Christian D’Andrea (@trainisland.bsky.social) January 26, 2025 at 8:45 PM
None of these things happen in a vacuum. They’re the product of sustained success. Kansas City has had so many reps — 61 games in three seasons, the most in NFL history — that it understands how to open a portal and pull something tangible from a screaming vortex. The Chiefs see order amidst a dropped jar of Superballs. They create architecture from an earthquake.
Something stupid will happen in Super Bowl 59, because this is a feature and not a bug of football. It will most likely benefit Kansas City, not because of the refs or any billionaire conspiracy, but because the Chiefs have learned to ride the chaos eight seconds at a time unlike any other team in the NFL.
