More technical breakdown of the Super Bowl.
 

Let's use this thread for more dispassionate observations about the game.

I love the rah rah, awesome positive energy stuff. But what did the Chiefs do? What did the Eagles fail to do?

What does this victory say about the Chiefs' present, and the Chiefs future? Is this Eagles team sustainable for another year?

Let's start with a question I've had trouble answering this morning: did the defense actually play a good game?

Obviously, the primary credit for this game goes to Mahomes and Reid/Bienemy.

Mahomes' second half is the stuff of legend. 93% completion rate and scoring every drive on a badly injured ankle? This wasn't Mahomes' "flu game" in Jordan lore. Jordan's flu game was his "ankle playoffs" in Mahomes lore. We've never seen anyone like him, and you could argue that he's on GOAT trajectory.

Personally, the way I see this team: there's going to be minimal free agency losses. Veach has 11 draft picks, and all the cap space he wants. He's almost certainly going to return Jones and Brown. This team, with the experience all these rookies have racked up, and let's just be negative and say Veach's next draft class is merely "above average": this team could potentially threepeat. It's ridiculous.

But Reid/Bienemy were gods. The last two touchdowns were scored by Reid/Bienemy. Bienemy needs to do the smart thing here and march on to Washington or Baltimore and run his own offense for a couple years and dunk on the NFL for passing him up. But he and Reid completely negated the passrush by flipping passes over their heads to wide open receivers. And then they ran the Alex Smith offense at the start of the 2nd half and let the OL lean into power and let Pacheco cook.

Veach's ability to make the passing attack flexible was his greatest accomplishment this offseason. He did great work in the 7th round, and of course he rebuilt the entire secondary in the draft.

But Toney was the WR1 against the Jags, MVS WR1 against the Bengals, JuJu the WR1 against the Eagles. Teams don't have a WR that they have to take away, because the Chiefs can just go somewhere else. Add in a psychopath at QB who works his fingers bloody getting every WR onboarded perfectly into the offense and you just have an unstoppable machine.

I am tempted for this team to trade for Hopkins, or go get this guy or that guy.

But Veach signed JuJu for $5m. I think MVS' cap hit this year was $3m. Skyy, Watson, Toney, Hardman, all on rookie contracts.

Maybe that's what Veach needs to do -- kind of what the Giants did with Eli Manning. Keep the cupboard stocked with 2nd round picks at WR.

2 sacks the entire game from the #1 and #2 passrushes: I think both OLs worked their ass off but for the most part, this was an absurdly slippery field and removed most of the sudden moves that beat bigger, slower OL like Brown and Wylie.

I think we all anticipated that Spags would clog the LOS, I didn't anticipate they'd play the read option so damn well. Bolton and Sneed were waiting for Hurts every single time he tucked it. Didn't always work, but Spags had them in position the entire time.

The thing that most surprised me was that Spags didn't blitz a ton. He bet on having the deep passes double-covered. Hurts still made some plays against that, particularly in the intermediary, but DBs were in position almost every single time. The tackling as well was stupendous from both teams: there was almost no RAC yards.

I also want to know the True Hollywood Story behind the Toney punt return.

There was no reason for him to run left. Why would he run left? There were four Eagles there, and all of his teammates were to the right.

Did Toney intentionally run the wrong way to set up the punt coverage? Or did he space out and then figure out what to do at the last moment?

My initial interpretation regarding the roster, draft picks, and cap space is to retain everyone we can and make a couple of targeted acquisitions via trade to take this team over the top. Our core team is a Super Bowl winning squad, I'd like to see us pkg those picks and maybe some of that cap space to take a shot at adding a couple impact players.

Example 1: Q Johnston falls past #15, Chiefs pkg picks to trade up and nab him.

Example 2: Chiefs pkg picks and cap space to trade for a star vet pass rusher like Brian Burns.

Pretty sure the ball carried him left.

He ran left! The entire ST blocking scheme was right.

It was bananas.

I'm saying the ball was kicked left. That's why he went that way.

Why is Bienemy on the field? I though OC normally were in the coaches box with a full view of the complete field. Seems like Naggy should be the one in Patrick's ear and Bienemy giving feedback with Andy over the headset.

The whole point of this offense at this point is that you can't gameplan to take away someone. That's the whole point. Spending a ton on a #1WR is counter to that. Draft and develop. Absolutely, spend those #2's for guys and develop them every year. Just keep stocking the cupboard.

I think I agree with a lot of this. For me Pacheco might have been the most impactful rookie this year. Just seemed to immediately make running the ball a more realistic and dangerous option and require teams to plan for it. Don't disagree entirely on the WRs nut i'd love us to keep stocking in the 1st 2 rounds.

Pretty amazing draft now that you take a moment to look back and realize how much these guys contributed to a Super Bowl this year:

Round 1: No. 21 (from NE) – Trent McDuffie, CB, Washington

Round 1: No. 30 – George Karlaftis, DE, Purdue

Round 2: No. 54 (from NE) – Skyy Moore, WR, Western Michigan

Round 2: No. 62 – Bryan Cook, S, Cincinnati

Round 3: No. 103 – Leo Chenal, LB, Wisconsin

Round 4: No. 135 – Joshua Williams, CB, Fayetteville State

Round 5: No. 145 (from SEA via DET via DEN) – Darian Kinnard, OT, Kentucky

Round 7: No. 243 (from LV via NE) – Jaylen Watson, CB, Washington State

Round 7: No. 251 – Isaih Pachecho, RB, Rutgers

Round 7: No. 259 – Nazeeh Johnson, S, Marshall

The most incredible thing is the room for growth. All of those guys at times played well, but there was also a lot of predictable rookie inconsistency and some poor play too.

Growth isn't linear, one or two of these guys probably won't amount to much more than depth guys. But it feels completely plausible that 3-4 also improve, 1-2 maybe very significantly. Obvious candidates for me are Karlaftis, who I think has a lot of room for growth, Skyy Moore who I felt was held back by his understanding rather than athletic limitations, and Chenal, LB is a haaard position to come in and dominate straight away, but he flashed enough to think he could be very, very good at least as a run-stuffing pass-rushing type. At least one of those DBs is going to improve too.

If you rewatch the punt was a short line drive and he caught it around his knees and his momentum took him left.

Sorry for the lack of formatting. Here are the offense snap counts: (Here's the link.)

Orlando Brown Jr. T 55 100% 0 0% 7 24%
Creed Humphrey C 55 100% 0 0% 7 24%
Trey Smith G 55 100% 0 0% 7 24%
Patrick Mahomes QB 55 100% 0 0% 0 0%
Joe Thuney G 55 100% 0 0% 0 0%
Andrew Wylie G 54 98% 0 0% 7 24%
Travis Kelce TE 43 78% 0 0% 0 0%
JuJu Smith-Schuster WR 38 69% 0 0% 0 0%
Marquez Valdes-Scantling WR 35 64% 0 0% 0 0%
Noah Gray TE 34 62% 0 0% 17 59%
Justin Watson WR 33 60% 0 0% 0 0%
Jerick McKinnon RB 30 55% 0 0% 8 28%
Isiah Pacheco RB 26 47% 0 0% 6 21%
Skyy Moore WR 14 25% 0 0% 1 3%
Jody Fortson TE 13 24% 0 0% 8 28%
Kadarius Toney WR 6 11% 0 0% 2 7%
Michael Burton FB 2 4% 0 0% 15 52%
Lucas Niang T 1 2% 0 0% 7 24%
Nick Allegretti G 1 2% 0 0% 7 24%

Defense snapcounts:

Nick Bolton LB 0 0% 75 100% 5 17%
Trent McDuffie CB 0 0% 75 100% 0 0%
Juan Thornhill FS 0 0% 75 100% 0 0%
L'Jarius Sneed CB 0 0% 75 100% 0 0%
Justin Reid SS 0 0% 74 99% 5 17%
Willie Gay Jr. LB 0 0% 66 88% 0 0%
Chris Jones DT 0 0% 61 81% 0 0%
Frank Clark DE 0 0% 59 79% 0 0%
Carlos Dunlap LB 0 0% 39 52% 5 17%
Khalen Saunders DT 0 0% 39 52% 0 0%
George Karlaftis III DE 0 0% 38 51% 5 17%
Jaylen Watson CB 0 0% 31 41% 6 21%
Joshua Williams CB 0 0% 27 36% 14 48%
Michael Danna DE 0 0% 26 35% 5 17%
Derrick Nnadi DT 0 0% 20 27% 5 17%
Leo Chenal LB 0 0% 18 24% 22 76%
Brandon Williams NT 0 0% 14 19% 0 0%
Bryan Cook SS 0 0% 10 13% 22 76%
Darius Harris LB 0 0% 2 3% 16 55%
Deon Bush SS 0 0% 1 1% 20 69%

Here's the players who only played special teams:

Jack Cochrane LB 0 0% 0 0% 17 59%
Nazeeh Johnson DB 0 0% 0 0% 17 59%
Marcus Kemp WR 0 0% 0 0% 17 59%
Harrison Butker K 0 0% 0 0% 14 48%
Tommy Townsend P 0 0% 0 0% 9 31%
James Winchester LS 0 0% 0 0% 9 31%
Prince Tega Wanogho T 0 0% 0 0% 7 24%

Depending on what they do with Thornhill.....I think Johnson has a shot at that 3rd or 4th safety spot.

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At 6:34, Mahomes describes the Allegretti-in-the-snowglobe play.

As you can see from the play, Allegretti then runs to Orlando Brown's shoulder, Wylie is eligible and runs a route, and the entire line is supposed to shift over, so it's Smith (RT), Humphrey (RG), Thuney (C), Brown (LG), and Allegretti (LT). Wylie splinters off, and the defense is supposed to be so confused Mahomes hits Wylie for a pass.

Since Wylie is an avid Pokemon collector, they called the play "Pikachu Gotta Catch 'Em All." LMAO

The Eagles not only diagnosed the play properly (Mahomes calls out S Marcus Epps), they also rushed five, making it hard for the entire OL to shift over. You see Humphrey in the play try to overtake Smith's guy, but Smith can't get off him and get to the rusher on the right edge in time.

Wylie is actually covered, Mahomes throws it away.

Incredible work by Epps in diagnosing a goofball play he's probably never seen before.

"Pikachu Gotta Catch 'Em All." lololol

If you take a look at McAfee's breakdown of the punt return, he shows an angle from directly behind Toney as he fields the ball, and it does look like the field is wide open in front of him, to the left side of the field. Everyone for PHI obviously thought the punt would go to the right (their left), but it seems obvious now that the punter shanked it. Anyway, the whole punting team starts running towards the wrong side of the field, including the gunner on that side, which created a huge but very temporary hole on that side of the field. But that closes up really quick, and then Toney does what he does.