Eagles and Chiefs prove there’s more than one path to a Super Bowl

Glendale, Ariz. -- The point spread in this Super Bowl (Philadelphia -1.5 FanDuel) tells the story of how little there is to choose between the Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs.

But besides splitting the public vote on which team will win this game nearly evenly, there’s not much the Eagles and Chiefs have in common, at least when it comes to how they got here.

True, the Eagles and Chiefs both captured their respective conference top seeds for the playoffs. But that’s about it.

Two years ago, the Chiefs had just played in their second consecutive Super Bowl, falling to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but there was no doubt where supremacy in the AFC lived. Meanwhile, the Eagles were in the dumper, completing a four-win season in 2020 in which they benched quarterback Carson Wentz, despite signing him to a four-year $128 million deal before the 2019 season that included $107 million in guaranteed money.

Head coach Doug Pederson, who’d led the Eagles to a Super Bowl win just three years earlier, was fired and replaced with 39-year-old first-time head coach Nick Sirianni. 

So, the perspective of the Chiefs and Eagles couldn’t have been more different 24 months ago. While the Eagles were trying to find a way out of the basement, the Chiefs were trying to stay at the top.  

How Philadelphia got here is a study on the advantages a team gains when its starting quarterback is on his rookie contract. Not only is Jalen Hurts still on his rookie deal, and the fact he wasn’t selected until the 53rd pick of the 2020 Draft means his salary cap figure for this season is just over $1.6 million – less than one per cent of the Eagles' overall outlay.

That allowed the Eagles to be aggressive on the free-agent market last off-season and land outside linebacker Haason Reddick, one of the league’s premier pass rushers who had never played an NFL playoff game until three weeks ago.

The team also traded a first-round pick for receiver A.J. Brown and then inked him to a four-year, $100 million deal, a game-changing acquisition that allowed the Eagles to line up with Brown on one side and former first-round puck and Heisman Trophy winner DeVonta Smith on the other.

The Eagles have a similar luxury on defence with corners Darius Slay and James Bradbury, which is part of the reason they were able to set a franchise record for sacks (70) and become the first NFL team ever to have four players finish the regular season in double digits. 

The Eagles were 14-3 this season but are 16-1 (including playoffs) with Hurts as the quarterback. He has quickly matured into a refined dual-threat quarterback.

It’s easy to forget that quarterback was the biggest question around this team last summer, with many wondering whether Hurts could elevate his game to match the talent around him.

He not only did that, but he also helped turn the Eagles into a team that could deliver a dominating run-based offence one week and return the next with an aerial showcase and the same result.

The 2022 Eagles are the first NFL team in 35 years to have a game in which they rushed for more than 350 yards, followed by a game the very next week in which they threw for more than 350 yards.

They didn’t just beat teams most weeks, they dominated them.

By contrast, the Kansas City Chiefs began this season as a team trying to recapture the AFC supremacy it lost the previous January when Cincinnati knocked them off to secure a Super Bowl berth.

The sense around the NFL was that the Bengals and the Buffalo Bills had passed the Chiefs in the AFC, a notion backed up when both of those teams handed Kansas City losses during the regular season.

The Chiefs saw this season as a retooling more than a rebuild, precipitated by the economics of star quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ salary ($35.8 million cap hit) and the need to pay others around him. In essence, the Chiefs’ accountants experienced the opposite of what was occurring in Philadelphia last off-season.

That necessitated trading star wideout Tyreek Hill to Miami where he topped the market on a four-year deal with the Dolphins worth $120 million – a figure that would have restricted the Chiefs' ability to build around Mahomes.

From there, they overhauled the receiver position further by signing veterans Juju Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling.

The retooling would also have to involve playing more rookies than most teams. However, with 12 draft picks and a proven history of finding talent in the draft, Kansas City was able to find pro-ready players, led by cornerback Trent McDuffie and defensive end George Karlaftis, who became impactful starters.

While all these changes managed to help keep the Chiefs competitive, they were no longer dominant. K.C. often found themselves on the wrong end of mid-game scores before Mahomes would produce some magic to squeak out a win.

The storyline for the Chiefs this summer was about whether the supporting cast could keep up with Mahomes — the exact opposite of the storyline in Philly.

While the Chiefs managed to keep winning week after week, so many close games against perceived lesser opponents contributed to the notion that the Chiefs were beatable – even with Mahomes in full form.

When he suffered a high ankle sprain in the divisional playoff game against Jacksonville, there was reason to believe that might be the difference in the AFC Championship Game. Instead, with his best playmakers around him dropping with injuries, Mahomes simply gutted out a performance in a rematch win over the Bengals that immediately added to his legacy.

Now they’re here in Arizona, two teams with recent Super Bowl wins in the rear-view mirror, one having executed an accelerated rebuild and the other reloading on the fly.

It’s a long road for any two teams to get to the Super Bowl. These two teams have proven there’s more than one way to get there.