Another Trophy in the Trenches.

The Chiefs lost at the line. It happens

The Philadelphia Eagles dominated the Kansas City Chiefs, but not all of the suggestions that flowed from that performance necessarily follow.

—No, Patrick Mahomes is not on the downslope of his career. He’s 29 and just completed his eighth NFL season.

—No, Travis Kelce isn’t as cooked as he looked Sunday in New Orleans. I would be less surprised to hear that he’s coming back for another season than that he’s retiring.

—No, the Chiefs weren’t out-coached. Not so much, at least. What they were was outplayed, which is a different pot of scalding oil. And the Chiefs’ players largely acknowledged as much after the Super Bowl. It wasn’t game plan, it was execution.

But one of the standard NFL post-mortem findings did apply — and totally.

“Defense wins championships,” said Eagles QB and Super Bowl Most Valuable Player Jalen Hurts.

That was it this year. Pretty simple.

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The Eagles absolutely manhandled Kansas City’s busted-up offensive line, and that was your ballgame. They hounded Mahomes into mistake after misfire after sack.

But here’s the amazing part: Philadelphia did it without blitzing.

Almost literally!

According to ESPN’s Bill Barnwell in this excellent analysis, the Eagles did not blitz one time on Mahomes’ 42 drop-backs. They did send a blitzer on a couple of other occasions, but each time they did so, they dropped a lineman off into pass coverage.

They crushed KC with a straight four-man front. Now that’s dominance.

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Rather astoundingly, the Chiefs operated for the vast majority of this 2024-25 campaign without the offensive line they needed, in part because they hadn’t really drafted for that need in the past couple of years.

Per Mike Sando at The Athletic, the Chiefs used first- or second-round picks over the last three drafts to grab receivers: Xavier Worthy, Skyy Moore, Rashee Rice. They also used some draft capital to aquire veteran DeAndre Hopkins. Giving Mahomes more targets is a great play, but you’ve got to keep him alive, too.

Instead, KC began this season with a rookie at left tackle, then replaced him early in the season with a second-year guy, all before eventually asking an All-Pro guard, Joe Thuney, to switch positions and protect Mahomes’ blind side. Over at right tackle, the Chiefs relied upon Jawaan Taylor, who is consistently one of the most-penalized offensive linemen in the NFL.

On Super Sunday, the Eagles’ front line, which has been trouble for everybody all season, just devoured both positions. Taylor looked overmatched all day, and Thuney, who’d been good down the stretch of the season and in the playoffs, got flat blistered. Philly ran out different combinations of its sensational defensive front — Josh Sweat, Milton Williams, Jalen Carter, Nolan Smith, Jordan Davis and others — and almost everybody got home.

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Mahomes threw two interceptions, including a pick-six, and was sacked six times, one of them a strip-sack fumble. The Eagles pounced on those opportunities en route to a 34-0 third-quarter lead. The game got over fast and just kept staying over.

“Those turnovers swung the momentum, and they capitalized on them,” Mahomes said afterward. “They scored on one and got a touchdown immediately after another. That’s 14 points I gave them. It’s hard to come back from that in the Super Bowl.”

In truth, Mahomes was scrambling and making plays with his feet for almost the entire regular season, which makes it all the more remarkable that KC went 15-2. But Philadelphia’s defense, and Eagles coordinator Vic Fangio’s deep understanding of what his unit could do to cut off Mahomes’ playmaking lanes, was completely effective on Sunday.

Kelce, Mahomes’ all-time favorite target but also his critical check-down target almost every time a Chiefs offensive play blows up, caught four balls for 39 yards, a couple of them in garbage time. He had a straight drop of one ball and was pretty much miserable throughout.

But any review of the game film will show that Kelce, a master at finding defensive gaps in coverage, was open on plenty of plays in this game. Mahomes simply never saw him, because Mahomes was too busy running for his life or going to the turf to avoid the most vicious of Philly’s hits.

"We saw the difference (the Eagles’ defense) made in the game,” Hurts said. “They gave us opportunities, gave us short fields. And we were able to do what we do."

No, Patrick Mahomes isn’t done. Yes, Philadelphia just exposed the Chiefs’ actual weakness, which in retrospect they were ingeniously able to hide for most of this season. It’s fixable, but it’s also the oldest story in football: If you can’t keep your QB upright, you’re eventually going down.