The Kansas City Chiefs stand on the brink of history. With one more victory, they’ll become the first team in NFL history to win three straight Super Bowls.
It’s a feat that would cement Kansas City’s place among the upper crust of NFL dynasties and move Patrick Mahomes one step closer to greatest of all time status. But it won’t be easy. The Chiefs will take on a Philadelphia Eagles team loaded with offensive weapons and a defense that’s been an absolute wrecking ball to close out 2024.
So how can Kansas City rise up to its destiny and claim its place in NFL history with a 2025 Super Bowl win?
SUPER BOWL PREDICTIONS: How the 2025 Super Bowl could go terribly wrong for Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs
1. Stop Saquon Barkley
Simple, right? Just do the thing that two teams have done all season (in games the Eagles won anyway). Leave him a light box, and he thrives. Put eight-plus defenders near the line of scrimmage (something he faced more often than anyone but Derrick Henry in 2024), and he still averages 4.5 yards per carry
You know what? By those powers combined, let’s push through to something more manageable and impactful. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo will have something in store for Barkley. But his most important job may come in the passing game.
ACTUAL 1. Stop Jalen Hurts
Limiting Barkley hasn’t put the clamps on the Eagles’ ability to win. Knocking Hurts off his game has. There were six games in 2024 in which Philadelphia’s quarterbacks recorded a passer rating below 90.0. Philly was 3-3 in those situations and undefeated otherwise.
Stopping Barkley puts the onus on Hurts’s capable-but-inconsistent shoulder. At face value, this is also a rough bet for Kansas City. His 103.7 passer rating is a career high, and his average pass attempt resulted in an eight-yard gain — fourth-best in the NFL. He thrived in the space Barkley created, throwing over brought-in safeties in the deep game and utilizing elite wideouts in one-on-one coverage for easy wins.
He’s also been pretty good even without a top-notch rushing threat. Barkley has had three games where he averaged fewer than 4.5 yards per carry in 2024. Hurts is 2-1 in those games with a 73.5 percent completion rate, 8.5 yards per attempt, five touchdowns and a 113.1 rating.
Blitzing him on passing downs isn’t a fix; he was more valuable with an extra defender in the pocket than when opponents dropped heavily into coverage. He threw longer passes, on average, despite this limited time to throw (8.2 yards downfield to 7.9). His deep ball rate rose 150 percent when pressured and his expected points added (EPA) per dropback quintupled when blitzed (from 0.05 to 0.25).
Pressure Hurts and he’s likely to escape and make you pay downfield. That means Coach Spags is going to have to pick his spots wisely and default to a situation where he’s trusting his linebackers mightily to:
a) fill run gaps against one of the best run-blocking teams in the world and an All-Pro tailback
b) double back into coverage to clog passing lanes when the Eagles drop back to pass, and
c) spy on Hurts, who ran for a career-best 9.4 yards per scramble this season.
That’s a lot to ask of Nick Bolton, Drue Tranquill and Leo Chenal! It also means getting the most out of young defensive backs like Trent McDuffie (who is awesome), Chamarri Conner, Jaylen Watson, Nazeeh Johnson and Joshua Williams (who are good, but not on McDuffie’s level). They’ll be tasked with winning one-on-one against two different top 10 wideouts when it comes to EPA per target, AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith.
This is all a lot to plan against and we haven’t yet gotten to Dallas Goedert’s inevitable moose run that turns a four-yard pass into a 20-yard gain. Fortunately, Spagnuolo has proven himself a versatile adjuster through the course of the game.
2. Incorporate Xavier Worthy as a game-changing threat (and let him create space for their veteran targets)
The Chiefs’ most valuable player in the AFC title game, on a per-play basis, wasn’t Patrick Mahomes or Travis Kelce. It was rookie wideout Xavier Worthy. His 1.21 EPA per touch or target (seven passes thrown his way, two carries) made him last Sunday’s most impactful player (minimum five plays).
Worthy’s record-setting 4.21-second 40-yard dash speed was supposed to make him a deep threat akin to Tyreek Hill’s track-and-dash era in Kansas City. While he’s been used as a big throw game-breaker in spurts, Andy Reid has instead deployed him to great effect close to Mahomes. More than two-thirds of his targets have come within 10 yards of the line of scrimmage. His average catch comes 3.9 yards downfield.
Despite that, his average reception results in just under 11 yards of offense. There’s much more to his game than that, however. Reid lines up Worthy wherever he thinks he’ll sew the most chaos, because that is the luxury of having one of the NFL’s fastest players. You can have a corner dedicated to pressing him and shutting him down, only to have said corner eliminated from the play via jet sweep.
Chiefs Offense All22 thread. I'll update this as I watch more. The more Chiefs film I watch, the more I think Xavier Worthy is their X-factor in this game. There's barely a snap when he's not shifting, in motion, or trying to cause confusion. The Chiefs are masters at… pic.twitter.com/mgUaacIxKA
— Jonny Page (@JonnyPage9) February 2, 2025
Thus, you’ve got a burner who doesn’t need to go deep to routinely burn you for 20-plus yards.
There’s not a lot to complain about with Xavier Worthy. He’s becoming a real weapon and maybe with his size, going out of bounds is the right play.
But I’d like to see him fight for more yards. We saw it a lot this season and I thought he had a chance to score here if he cut in. pic.twitter.com/cehI69luPA
— Foh Nem 🏆🏆🏆🏆 (@BurlyboyRig) February 1, 2025
While Worthy didn’t catch a ton of deep balls, those fly routes are still an important part of his game. He’s proven just reliable enough to be a headache, keeping safeties leaning toward his side of the field and opening up space for the rest of the offense to thrive. If JuJu Smith-Schuster makes a catch in the wide-open middle of the field, there’s a good chance Worthy created the space he needed for a big gain.
3. Dip back into the magic
Look, this has been an incredibly Chiefs season. They’re 12-0 in one-possession games. They’ve won on blocked field goals, botched snaps and clutch drops. For anyone else this would feel unsustainable. For a quarterback and coach who haven’t lost a playoff game in their last nine tries, it feels inevitable.
This means elevating someone unexpected in a game-deciding moment. Kadarius Toney, before he became a punchline (or perhaps in the process of it), found the end zone the last time Kansas City saw Philadelphia with a world title on the line. Mecole Hardman scored 2024’s game-winning touchdown. What about a lead-taking deep ball to Justin Watson in 2025? A vital fourth down throw to Noah Gray? A Samaje Perine MVP award?
All of these things feel possible because the Chiefs pull big performances out of the ether. Success is contagious and the heroics that start at the top of the team’s depth chart filter through the rest of the lineup. If Kansas City becomes the first NFL team to win three straight Super Bowls, it will be because someone stepped up — a name that will be uttered derisively across Broad Street and eastern Pennsylvania for years to come.
