Patrick Mahomes was chasing Super Bowl history. He left humbled and harassed
The Chiefs may well contend for the championship again next season.But Sunday’s loss to the Eagles exposed problems that had been there all yearSome losses sting.Others echo throughout a career.The Philadelphia Eagles pummeled the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, ending any hope of a historic three-peat.It was a humbling.
A humiliation,A beatdown for the ages,Most jarring of all, the Chiefs didn’t threaten for a moment,Even the final score is misleading,Late in the third quarter, the Eagles held a 34-0 lead, the largest lead in a Super Bowl since 2014.
The Eagles were dunking Gatorade on their head coach Nick Sirianni while the Chiefs were still trying to find a way into the game.By the fourth quarter, there was a sighting of Eagles backup quarterback Kenny Pickett, the human victory cigar.The Chiefs entered the game chasing history.They left with their heads spinning, having been outplayed, outcoached and, most surprising of all, outclassed at quarterback.There was a moment late in the second quarter when the Chiefs looked to Patrick Mahomes to make anything happen.
The quarterback who routinely pulls off the unthinkable had led his team into a 10-0 ditch,He had been harassed, dropped and rocked early in the game, with the Eagles’ four-man defensive line dominating the Chiefs’ woeful offensive line,But with Mahomes, it always feels like you’re one play away from the Chiefs finding a spark,If anyone could conjure a moment of magic, you felt, it was Mahomes,In each of their three Super Bowl wins with Mahomes at the helm, the Chiefs have trailed by 10 at some point in the game.
But this time was different.After being sacked on back-to-back plays, staring down a two-score deficit, Mahomes faced a third-and-17.He took the snap, scrambled to his right to evade pressure, and then threw across his body into the waiting hands of Eagles corner Cooper DeJean, who returned the ball for a touchdown.That made it 17-0 to the Eagles; the refs may as well have called ballgame.The Chiefs could never get rolling on offense.
By the end of the first half, they had run only 20 plays and gained 23 yards – the kind of distance Mahomes usually gets on a single throw.Mahomes hit on just six of his 14 pass attempts, and the team struggled to cross midfield.The Eagles drained the clock, put together long scoring drives, then quickly won the ball back as the Chiefs offense imploded.As Kendrick Lamar was taking a dig at Drake, the Chiefs were less concerned with their three-peat as scraping together three points.This was a game decided in the trenches, as Super Bowls often are.
The Eagles shattered the Chiefs’ offensive line and the ripple effect swallowed everyone and everything in Andy Reid’s offense, including Mahomes.Scared of running the ball against Philly’s enormous defensive front, Reid bailed on the rushing game altogether.That left the ball in Mahomes’ hands, facing a hellacious Eagles pass rush that sacked the quarterback six times and pressured him on over half of his dropbacks.The pressure came quickly and was sustained.On every play, it felt like two or three Eagles were greeting Mahomes in the backfield.
For large chunks of the game, it was as if the Eagles’ defense had 15 players on the field.The pass-rushers came in all shapes and attacked from all angles, forcing Mahomes to scramble around for his life.The Eagles pass-rush was the story of the game, but Mahomes should not be absolved of blame.He turned down throws, moved into pressure and made panicked decisions in key spots.From the first drive, he looked skittish, as though he knew his offensive line wouldn’t be able to hold.
By the second quarter, his fears confirmed, he looked downright lost, tossing up wayward picks to Zack Baun and DeJean.Rarely has Mahomes, typically the coolest guy in the building on the biggest stage, looked so frazzled.He ended the game with three turnovers, including a strip-sack on the first play after the Chiefs had scored their first touchdown to cut the Eagles lead to 37-6.The seeds for this defeat were planted all year.When they needed to raise their game most, season-long concerns came back to bite the Chiefs: the flaky offensive line, the one-dimensional offense, the lack of a vertical passing game and a slow, ineffective Travis Kelce.
And it’s not as if the team’s defense did not hold their side of the bargain,They slowed Saquon Barkley and the Eagles all-conquering run game down early and often, forcing quarterback Jalen Hurts into tough, clutch third-down throws to keep the Eagles ticking along,It was the Chiefs’ offense that was their undoing – for what is only the second time during their five Super Bowl trips in six seasons,They could not put sustained drives together or bank on Mahomes to cover up for struggles elsewhere, as he has so often before,Entering Sunday, the Chiefs were hardly a free-rolling contender.
Of all their Super Bowl teams, this was the most flawed,But they were able to cover up deficiencies with masterful coaching, high-end talent and their quarterback always finding a way,The Chiefs relied on eking out tight, one-score games this season,They entered Sunday winning 17 one-score games in a row and had ripped off 12 come-from-behind, one-score wins,Was it skill or luck? When teams close out tight victories, we like to ascribe them all kinds of virtues.
They wanted it more.They’re smarter.Mahomes is magic in the clutch.Two of those, with the Chiefs at least, are true.But there was plenty of luck along the way for the Chiefs this year: A blocked punt to end a game against the Denver Broncos, some favorable flags against the Cincinnati Bengals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The talent and luck ran out in Louisiana,This, ultimately, will be remembered as Mahomes’ most significant defeat,It feels almost cruel that one game will take on such outsized importance in the arc of his career,But when you’re chasing the ghost of Tom Brady, being waxed in a Super Bowl matters,This isn’t Mahomes’ first blowout defeat in the final game of the season; he has now quarterbacked two teams in the last five years to lose by more than 20 points.
The defeat on Sunday was shockingly similar to the defeat to Tampa in Super Bowl LV.In both a four-man pass-rush smothered Mahomes, he panicked, and made ill-considered decisions.Mahomes has three rings to Brady’s seven.But Brady, calling the game rather than playing it these days has opened up further distance on his chief rival for GOAT status.Brady’s three Super Bowl losses with the Patriots came by a combined losing margin of 16 points.
Mahomes is up to a combined losing margin of 40 in his two defeats,After Mahomes got clobbered in the Chiefs’ first Super Bowl loss, general manager Brett Veach raced down to the field to tell Mahomes he would not let the quarterback get wrecked in a pivotal game again,He asked Mahomes to trust him, that he would rebuild the team’s offensive line so that the quarterback always had a chance,That rebuild lasted for two seasons,Now, Mahomes will have to trust Veach to again reboot his offensive line in the offseason, to give the Chiefs and their quarterback a chance to put right a crushing loss.
And the Chiefs should expect to be back.For all the concerns along the offensive line and offense in general, the Chiefs have a ton of young talent.Outside Kelce, all the key architects of their dynastic run are expected to return.They still have the best coaching staff in the league.They defense is still loaded with talent.
And they still have Mahomes.So, the Chiefs and Mahomes may well make it back to the big dance next season.But this loss will be etched into their legacy.The potential three-peaters did clinch immortality, in a sense, but in a way that will scar their dynastic run.
Nicky Henderson dealt Cheltenham blow as Sir Gino ruled out for season
Sir Gino, who had been the odds-on favourite for the Arkle Trophy at Cheltenham next month since his brilliant chasing debut at Kempton’s Christmas meeting, has been ruled out for the remainder of the National Hunt season with an infection following a minor leg injury sustained during a routine piece of exercise last week.Nicky Henderson’s five-year-old beat Ballyburn, one of the top novice hurdlers last season and a Grade One winner over fences since, with ease in December, prompting immediate comparisons with previous Arkle winners from the yard including Sprinter Sacre, Altior and Shishkin.He missed an intended prep run for Cheltenham in the Game Spirit Chase on Saturday, however, and his price for the Arkle started to drift ominously on the Betfair betting exchange on Monday morning before a statement from Henderson’s stable confirmed the news that his ante-post backers had been dreading.“Unfortunately, Sir Gino’s situation has deteriorated somewhat and he has been admitted to the equine hospital,” Henderson said in a statement on X. “As a result of initial examinations … an infection has invaded the ligaments in his near-hind leg
Ben Duckett would accept 3-0 series defeat if England beat India in Champions Trophy final
Ben Duckett does not care if England endure a series whitewash in India, so long as he and his teammates beat the same opponents in the final of the Champions Trophy.England lost their fourth consecutive one-day international series on Sunday as India went 2-0 up with a four-wicket win in Cuttack, Rohit Sharma the headliner with a 90-ball 119. One game remains in Ahmedabad on Wednesday before the focus turns to the Champions Trophy in Pakistan, with England’s campaign beginning against Australia on 22 February.“We have come here for one thing, and that is to win the Champions Trophy,” Duckett said. “We still believe we can do that
Tom Brady, TV’s No 1 jaw, oozed stagnant charisma in Fox’s Super Bowl broadcast
This was the biggest test yet in the former New England Patriots quarterback’s fledgling television career, and the results were not prettyThe weeks leading up to this Super Bowl saw a predictable swirl of questions about the on- and off-field direction of America’s big game. Could the Philadelphia Eagles neutralize the golden arm of Patrick Mahomes? Would Travis Kelce commit elder abuse against Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid again? How would the crowd react to the presence of the first sitting president to attend a Super Bowl? Might half-time show headliner Kendrick Lamar use the big stage to provide further insight into the content of Drake’s character? And would Sunday night cap the successful conclusion of Tom Brady’s years-long search for a personality, or would he remain the same on-screen plank who’s shout-talked his way through his first season as Fox’s top football analyst?As ever, however, a bigger question hung over these small opportunities for speculation: would it be any good? As a game, as a spectacle, as a raw demonstration of American ingenuity and might, would Super Bowl LIX have the juice?Well, now we have the answer: it would not. A non-entity as a contest and a televisual flop, this Super Bowl will live long in the memory of no one but fans of the Eagles. This was a Super Bowl so galactically bad that even Donald Trump – whose appearance at the event took on the sheen of a victory lap after a years-long culture war with the NFL essentially ended with the league’s surrender, and who drew cheers whenever he was shown on the screens inside Caesars Superdome – left early to beat the traffic. The president, perhaps embarrassed by his pre-game selection of the Chiefs as likeliest victors, exited the building on the stroke of half-time, conveniently missing the pointedly “political” performance that Lamar dished up during the intermission
‘A lovely sweet kid’: tributes paid to John Cooney after Irish boxer’s death
John Cooney, the young Irish boxer who has died after a title fight in Belfast, has been described by the former world champion Barry McGuigan as a “lovely sweet kid” whose life was “snapped away”.As a condolence book was opened at Belfast’s Ulster Hall, his manager Mark Dunlop said the death was “a complete tragedy”.McGuigan told BBC Ulster it was “terrifying that this could happen to a 28-year-old kid who was looking in the prime of his life”.“He was just a lovely, sweet kid. Ambitious, determined and driven
Travis Kelce declines to address retirement rumours after Chiefs’ Super Bowl loss
Travis Kelce did not address rumours that he intends to retire as he contemplated his team’s heavy defeat to the Philadelphia Eagles in Sunday’s Super Bowl.The Kansas City Chiefs star will turn 36 at the start of next season, an age at which most NFL players have long since retired, and he has already built a lucrative off-field career, which includes a series of endorsements and a wildly popular podcast with his brother, Jason.Kelce did not attend the postgame press conference in the Superdome after the Chiefs’ 40-22 loss to the Eagles but did briefly answer questions in the locker room. “We haven’t played that bad all year,” said Kelce. “[We] just couldn’t find that spark, couldn’t find that momentum
Patrick Mahomes was chasing Super Bowl history. He left humbled and harassed
The Chiefs may well contend for the championship again next season. But Sunday’s loss to the Eagles exposed problems that had been there all yearSome losses sting. Others echo throughout a career. The Philadelphia Eagles pummeled the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, ending any hope of a historic three-peat. It was a humbling
Gordon Ramsay reaches boiling point in Chelsea, 1999
The Great Indian, London: ‘A thoroughly delightful food pub’ – restaurant review
Save our cider: apple growers and producers call on government to protect traditional ‘native wine of England’
How to turn eggs into a traditional British pub snack – recipe
Benjamina Ebuehi’s recipe for orange and cardamom muffins | The sweet spot
Seven kitchen gadgets I can’t live without: ‘How does anyone make a salad without one?’