Takeaways from championship weekend
The Chiefs and the Eagles will play for the Super Bowl -- what did we learn?
By Matthew Coller
The Super Bowl matchup is set: The Eagles and Chiefs will go to battle again, just as they did two years ago. What did we learn from their wins over the Commanders and Bills? Let’s have a look…
Eagles-Chiefs is the best/worst matchup
If we are being objective about it, the 15-2 Chiefs with the greatest quarterback of a generation facing off with an Eagles team that clearly had the best roster (and healthiest) in the NFL is the best possible outcome from a competitiveness standpoint. With the state of Buffalo’s banged-up defense, it would have been hard to see them holding down Philly’s run game and Washington clearly did not have a complete enough squad to play for a ring just yet. If you are into true outcomes over randomness, it feels like Eagles-Chiefs is a true outcome. If you want the top two teams to play for Lombardi, you got it.
But from a storyline perspective: Snoooooooze. Did I really hear Jim Nantz and Tony Romo trying to make some sort of Chiefs-peat pun as KC was celebrating on the graves of Buffalo again? That’s pretty much the only juice in the game: Can this dynasty be the best dynasty or just a regular dynasty?
The Eagles won in 2017 and appeared in 2022, so it’s not exactly new and fresh. Also, based on the ESPN story about Daniel Snyder being a mad little hornet about the Commanders making it to NFC Championship week, it would have been nice to think about how infuriated he was seeing them in the Super Bowl. The turnaround of that franchise post-Snyder and the rookie QB wunderkind in the The Big Game would have made the entire lead-up really interesting.
Now the next two weeks are basically going to be filled with GOAT arguments and making fun of the Giants for getting rid of Saquon. Meh.
Hurts’s second Super Bowl appearance is a reminder of 2020 pivot point in Vikings history
Picture it: The Vikings come off a middling 2019 season where they pull off a surprising Wild Card weekend and disappear in San Francisco. There is drama with the head coach and GM, the quarterback has proven over two years that he isn’t good enough to get the team over the hump and a bunch of big pieces to the elite defense from 2017 are about to exit stage left.
So what do the Vikings do? Give the quarterback a massive contract extension.
Rather than letting Cousins go into the final season of his contract, the extended him for $33 million per year (at the time, around 15% of the cap) and did not look at the quarterback class.
Had they been picking a QB that year, presumably they still would have used one of their first-round picks on Justin Jefferson and the other on either Jordan Love or the best available QB with their other first-round pick: Jalen Hurts.
Now that Hurts is playing in his second Super Bowl, it’s a reminder that the Vikings and Eagles’ roster building traces back far before Kwesi Adofo-Mensah took over. The foundation was built by a desperate GM and coach who attempted to hang around “in the hunt” with Cousins while they patchworked the defense together. The Eagles moved on from a mediocre Carson Wentz and invested around Hurts.
Many, many things happened in the subsequent years that led Hurts to this moment, including an all-time heater in the draft by Howie Roseman of the Eagles and the Vikings going buck wild in free agency to make up for their draft misses. The Vikings are in a promising position with JJ McCarthy on the horizon and a coach/front office that have proven to be Eagles-like in their culture. But I’ll always wonder how it would have worked out if they had chosen in that moment in the 2020 offseason to walk away from Cousins and select Hurts.
Hey, remember when Hurts got asked at the NFL Combine if he was willing to play running back? Good times.
The Eagles are instructive, the Chiefs are not
How can you be like the Chiefs? Just draft the greatest quarterback of the last decade and land an incredible defensive coordinator and one of the best head coaches and play designers of all time…. and profit!
OK that’s tough to recreate. The Eagles, however, tell us something about roster builds. The fact that they are gargantuan on the interior of the offensive line and have deep and freakish defensive line talent is a great place to start. Kevin O’Connell has expressed a need for improvement on the interior and you can imagine he was watching in his Coach Cave thinking about how great life would be if he could call a toss play that picked up a 60-yard touchdown in an eyeblink rather than always relying on deep shots for explosive plays.
The Eagles might also tell us that if you have everything else — the line, weapons, QB — that the RB spot is enhanced. No matter how much the Giants are mocked, Barkley wasn’t doing this with New York this year. But when Emmitt Smith has Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin and Nate Newton and Larry Allen, his talent is fully realized and opponents have no other answer.
Does that mean the Vikings should draft a RB in the first round? Probably not. But they have to think about it (and the third round) way more than they would have before. Especially since Najee Harris and Rico Dowdle are the only other quality free agent RBs outside Aaron Jones.
The ‘Peanut Punch’ is changing the game
Fumbles, fumbles, fumbles.
I saw someone on Twitter/X suggest that eventually the league is going to try to ban the Peanut Punch, which caused the vast majority of the game-changing fumbles in the playoffs this year. I can’t remember another year where there were so many fumbles that massively swung games the way it did during this postseason. Washington lost three punch-outs and before things got out of hand, it was consistently a two or three possession game against the Eagles.
It is an interesting development considering how rarely quarterbacks throw interceptions these days. It’s another element of the cat-and-mouse game with offenses and defenses that makes football so great.
Jayden Daniels proved himself in defeat
Who was at fault for the Commanders losing to the Eagles? Everyone except the quarterback. Daniels got the ball out quickly, made plays with his legs, made good decisions with the ball, threw pretty accurately considering the competition and put enough points on the board to give his team a shot. His fumble-y receivers/returner and defense did not do him any favors.
But let’s be clear: Washington is now the future of the NFC. Even if Daniels doesn’t improve 1%, he’s already an elite quarterback who is capable of taking a solid roster to the NFC Championship. He’s going to be the type of player who free agents want to join and Washington has $87 million in cap space (third most). Watch out.
Quick passing, tight ends and running ruled the day
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