Sometimes the old reference points still work in sports, and so it is with this Super Bowl game between the Chiefs and the Eagles. This one is like a great heavyweight fight out of the past, when styles made fights like that great, and when you were lucky enough to have the No. 1 contender going up against the champ. And that is absolutely what we have with this one, a football version of Ali vs. Frazier.
It is a dazzling team like the Chiefs, led by Patrick Mahomes, one of the most singular and dazzling talents in the history of the quarterback position. They now go up against a left hook of a team in the Eagles, a Frazier left hook, and maybe that figures for a team of Philly fighters like this.
Mahomes wants to run all over the field and throw the ball all over, and so often do both on the same play. The Eagles? They want to hammer you on the ground with Saquon Barkley, like they really want to hammer the Chiefs with body punches on Sunday night in New Orleans, when once again the whole country will go to a football game.
The qualifier, as always, is that you never know how these things will go, no matter how sweet that matchup looks going in. We may end up with a ball in the air at the end, the way we did in another Super Bowl in New Orleans, when Colin Kaepernick and the 49ers were trying to beat the Ravens when it was Jim Harbaugh vs. his brother, John.
Or there could be bad early mistakes, like the Broncos made against the Seahawks when we had our one Super Bowl in Jersey, and somebody will run away with the thing — and fast — the way the Seahawks did that day.
But going in, this one looks like a beauty, because the Eagles have fully established themselves as the No. 1 contender out of the NFC. It looked for so much of the season as if the last two teams standing would be the Chiefs and the Lions. But then too many of the Lions were hurt on defense, and in the end they looked helpless against a kid, Jayden Daniels, who seems to have a lot of Mahomes in him already.
It was the Eagles who just kept coming, with an underrated coach in Nick Sirianni and a vastly underrated quarterback in Jalen Hurts, and with Saquon, one of the most important free agent acquisitions in pro football history — where did Saquon play before he got to Philly, I forget? — running past people and around them and over them on his way to 2000 regular season yards, and to a night like this in New Orleans.
So this is the title fight and dream rematch we get: Chiefs-Eagles II. Two years ago the Eagles nearly played the Chiefs to their team bus before losing, 38-35; really didn’t lose that game until the refs correctly called defensive holding on defensive back James Bradberry on what would have been a third-and-8 incompletion by Mahomes. The first down, with under two minutes left, enabled Mahomes and the Chiefs to run out the clock.
People wrung their hands and clutched their pearls about that call the way they’re doing the same thing now, ad nauseum, about all the calls they say always go the Chiefs’ way. There may be a dumber narrative in sports these days, but if you come up with one before I can, please send up a flare.
And of course what people who are only focusing on that play conveniently forget, because it doesn’t fit the cockeyed narrative about the refs somehow being in the tank for the Chiefs, is that this was another Super Bowl in which Mahomes brought his team from behind, 10 points behind at halftime that night, to win the big game. It’s the way he brought them from behind against the 49ers twice in Super Bowl games, first when the Chiefs were 10 points behind in the fourth quarter, and last year when they were down a touchdown at the half.
It wasn’t Tom Brady bringing the Patriots all the way back from 28-3 that time against the Falcons. But this was another chance for Mahomes to truly play his position like Ali fought, floating and stinging in all the big moments.
It doesn’t matter how many close games the Chiefs have played to get here, and whether they needed a botched snap against the Raiders and a blocked kick against the Broncos in the regular season. They have played 19 football games this season and lost one of them when they had all their best players on the field. Did they roll through everybody the way the Patriots did on their way to 18-0 before the Giants clipped them in Super Bowl XLII? They did not.
But if they close the deal in New Orleans, if they become the first team in history to win three Super Bowls in a row — and the first team since Vince Lombardi’s Packers of the 1960s — to win three NFL titles in a row – this will go down, because of the stakes, as one of the most remarkable seasons in the history of the sport, and that very much includes the 17-0 Dolphins of 1972.
But now they must close the deal against the Eagles, who do just keep coming, and that doesn’t just mean Saquon. Their defensive coordinator, Vic Fangio, doesn’t have the rings that Steve Spagnuolo does, now that Spags has taken his place with Bill Belichick as a defensive immortal. But Fangio’s defense has been as impressive as Spags’ as the Eagles have made their run to this rematch.
Here is what Andy Reid, head coaching immortal, said about Fangio the other day in New Orleans:
“Oh, man, that guy. I can’t get rid of that guy. He’s everywhere. He’s tough. He knows what’s coming at him. And [our] offense knows what’s coming at them.”
Still: The Chiefs offense will be going at the Eagles’ defense with Mahomes, and Travis Kelce, and so many secondary receivers to Kelce that you sometimes lose track of them, Xavier Worthy and DeAndre Hopkins and Kareem Hunt, all of them seemingly able to make big catches from Mahomes at the biggest possible moments. They will once again try to fly around the field and the Eagles will be chasing them when they’re not chasing Mahomes, who’s chasing his fourth Super Bowl title before he even gets to the age of 30.
The Chiefs are the ones who are everywhere. Now they’re in New Orleans, and the Eagles are waiting for them, and laying for them. Maybe Chiefs-Eagles II won’t be Ali-Frazier III. Maybe it won’t be the Thrilla in Manila. That’s just the way to root.