Merciless Philadelphia Eagles dismantle Kansas City Chiefs to win Super Bowl

Seven years after winning their first Vince Lombardi trophy, the Philadelphia Eagles are back on top of the NFL summit. Behind a MVP performance from quarterback Jalen Hurts and a defensive masterclass that harried, hit and harassed Patrick Mahomes into one of the worst games of his career, the Eagles steamrolled to a 40-22 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night in New Orleans that wasn't as narrow as the scoreline suggests.

The 59th Super Bowl was the second meeting in three years between Philadelphia and Kansas City on the NFL's biggest stage, with the Eagles still nursing the scars of the first installment: a heart-stopping 38-35 Chiefs win in Arizona in which a hobbled Mahomes orchestrated a near-perfect second half to overturn a 10-point deficit that erased Hurts' career-best performance. This one went the other way - and wasn't nearly as close.

Hurts threw for 221 yards and two touchdowns, running for 72 yards and adding a third score on a Tush Push - the result more than making up for a stat line that wasn't quite as flashy as two years ago. But it was a commanding defensive performance including a pick-six by rookie cornerback Cooper DeJean on his 22nd birthday and six sacks from the ravenous Josh Sweat, Milton Williams, Jordan Davis and Jalyx Hunt that sparked a first-half avalanche and helped ensure Philadelphia could weather a rare ordinary day from star running back Saquon Barkley.

"We had a special group this year, we were able to learn from the past," said Hurts. “Defense wins championships. We saw how [our defense] played today. We saw the difference they made in the game. They gave us opportunities, gave us short fields. And we're able to do what we do."

A mere 13 months after the wildest in-season unravelling in NFL history, Nick Sirianni's team, built on physicality, a relentless ground attack and a swarming defense, finally delivered the knockout blow to a Kansas City dynasty that had been eyeing an unprecedented third straight Super Bowl title. It was a milestone so difficult that no team had managed to even come within 60 minutes of it until Kansas City this year. Maybe the weight was too much for these Chiefs, who looked mentally and physically taxed from as early as the first quarter while making one uncharacteristically wasteful mistake after another. Or Vic Fangio's defense was just that good. Whatever the case, Sunday's game was effectively put to bed long before Kendrick Lamar took the stage for the half-time show.

“This is the ultimate team game. You can't be great without the greatness of others. Great performance by everybody - offense, defense, special teams," Sirianni said. “We didn't really ever care what anyone thought about how we won, or their opinions. All we want to do is win."

The Eagles' gameplan was simple: pound the rock with Barkley, keep things simple for Hurts and shut down Travis Kelce, Mahomes' favorite target. They achieved them all. Barkley was denied the home-run touchdown burst he'd become expected to break but kept the Kansas City defense honest with 25 carries for 57 yards, enough to eclipse Terrell Davis's record for yards rushing in a season including the playoffs. Hurts ran Kellen Moore's offense to near-perfection. And by the time Kelce made his first catch, the Eagles led by 31 points with three minutes left in the third quarter.

Ahead by 10-0 after Jake Elliott's 48-yard field goal, Sweat and Hunt sacked Mahomes on consecutive plays - the first time Philadelphia managed to bring him down in five and a half quarters of Super Bowl gameplay stretching back to the start of their first meeting. Mahomes then rolled out and misfired on a throw that was picked by DeJean, who curled across the field and ran it back 38 yards for a 17-0 lead. The surprise All-Pro linebacker Zack Baun made a lunging interception of Mahomes late in the second quarter and Hurts connected with AJ Brown on a 12-yard touchdown pass for a 24-0 lead. The Eagles made it 34-0 late in the third when Hurts fired a note-perfect 46-yard pass to DeVonta Smith, who became the fifth player to win a national championship, a Heisman Trophy and a Super Bowl.

But it was a Philadelphia defense completely reinvented under Fangio, including eight new starters from the 2022 team, that turned Sunday's game into a laugher. Mahomes was sacked a career-high six times by the first Eagles team to rank No 1 in total defense since Bud Carson's epochal 1991 unit.

On Sunday, they delivered their masterpiece as Fangio broke an 0-8 hoodoo against Mahomes, the gifted 29-year-old quarterback who had already been crowned the NFL's best ever. Two years after becoming only the second Super Bowl team in history (along with the 1974 Steelers) to lead the NFL in sacks but fail to record one in the big game, Fangio all but copied the blueprint of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' win over Mahomes and the Chiefs in Super Bowl LV, leaning on their defensive line for constant four-man rushes while maintaining max coverage behind them.

There have been seven comeback wins from double-digit deficits and Mahomes was responsible for three of them, but the Chiefs' nightmarish first half was a bridge too far. When Kansas City's drive to open the second half quickly stalled and the Eagles responded with a 12-play, 69-yard scoring drive capped by an Elliott field goal, even the most fatalistic Philadelphia fan could finally exhale.

“Today was a rough day all around. Nothing went right. I didn't coach well. Proud of our guys for fighting. We will learn from this," the Chiefs head coach, Andy Reid, said. “Too many turnovers, too many penalties. Against a good football team, can't do that."

By the time Mahomes found DeAndre Hopkins and Xavier Worthy for a couple of cosmetic touchdowns in the final three minutes that made it 44-20, steady trickles of Kansas City fans were making beelines for the concourses while chants of E-A-G-L-E-S cascaded down from the mezzanine. Before long, Philadelphia and their rabid supporters were NFL champions for a fifth time - and the second in the Super Bowl era - after previous wins in 1948, 1949, 1960 and 2017.

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