Philly Front Office

Disclaimer: These are not even close to my final thoughts on the Super Bowl Champion Philadelphia Eagles.

I can’t stop thinking about how great this team is and how much this win means to everyone involved. Here are some random thoughts from the game and its aftermath.

Super Bowl 59

• We simply kicked the shit out of them. Winning is good, but blowing the doors off a team that everyone thought was invincible was truly special. No fortunate calls, no dumb luck, not a fluke win…this was a demolition and everyone knows it.
• …and everyone was happy about it too. Between Saquan, Jalen, and everyone being sick of the Chiefs the whole country was rooting for the Eagles.
• This team goes down as one of the greats because we took the Chiefs’ dynasty and embarrassed it. This is like Bane ruining Batman in The Dark Knight Rises.

Jalen Hurts

• Even the staunchest Hurts supporters needed this victory to shut everyone up. No one can say a thing now.
• He is 26 years old. Over his 4 full years as a starter he is 51-20 and has not missed the playoffs. He has been to two Super Bowls and played well enough to be the MVP in both. He is a champion.
• If you hear someone try to argue that Jalen isn’t a top QB, you have two options: 1. Ignore them knowing that they are not a serious person, or 2. Correct their poor grammar, “It’s actually Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts.”
• Putting him in a terrestrial conversation with the likes of Trevor Lawrence, CJ Stroud, and Brock Purdy is not a serious exercise. Leave that to bullshit publications like The Ringer. Even comparing him to Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson is downplaying Jalen’s accomplishments. Hurts is on his way to being with Steve Young, Troy Aikman, and Brett Favre for best QBs of the last 40 years. He isn’t Brady, Manning, or Mahomes, but he is in the mix below them.
• Anyone saying otherwise doesn’t remember that Hurts has played at an MVP level in TWO Super Bowls now and would have been MVP in 2022 had he not been hurt on a late cold day in Chicago (finished 2nd). He has shown that he has what it takes to win. Can you say that about Allen and Jackson? How about Matt Ryan and Phillip Rivers? People are happy to anoint Drew Brees and Matt Stafford in retrospect, but at 26 Brees was still in San Diego and Stafford didn’t win until he was 33. Looking back at history, it is very clear that a Super Bowl win means something.
• Now please, do you remember any other retired QBs from the last 40 years that also didn’t win a Super Bowl? I mean remember them AT ALL? Dan Marino? Jim Kelly? Maybe Andrew Luck (thanks Joe)? Is that it? If you didn’t win, in the end, everything else you did is forgotten.

Experts

• Cowards or fools, all of them.
• For the ones who laughed at the Eagles having a chance, where is the accountability? This wasn’t a close game that could have gone either way, the Chiefs didn’t belong on the field. You will continue to hear these blowhards claim to be experts every week, every year, as long as they are paid to be loud.
• For the ones who did the analysis and didn’t like what you saw, what is wrong with you? Everything told you that the Eagles weren’t just better but significantly better, and you couldn’t bring yourselves to trust your own work. It’s okay to be wrong, but be wrong because someone did something amazing, not because they did something you expected.

Howie

• He is finally getting the respect as one of the top GMs in sports, not just the NFL.
• He plays all the angles. There is not a trick he does not use. This is not wizardry, it’s called being prepared. I am a better evaluator of NFL moves because I follow Howie.
• Other teams simply do not put in the full scope effort that Howie and his team does. Instead of using option bonuses and void years, teams like the Saints simply restructure. Howie jumps on extensions early unlike the Cowboys. He is aware of how comp picks work unlike the Giants. These are all little moves at the time but add up to distinct advantages.

Toughness

• Landon Dickerson and Jalen Carter are fucking badasses. They set the tone on both sides of the ball and threw the other team around at will. They did this all season and refused to be out-toughed by the other team every week. If they ever fought at practice, they would both be killed. Godzilla v. King Kong level shit.
• People who underestimate Jalen don’t seem to understand how well he handles everything. He does not get rattled. He does not force anything on the field. He is always calm. His teammates know this, and you saw it in the Super Bowl. He has had to deal with so much scrutiny all the time and has done nothing but thrive. This is mental toughness.
• Cam Jurgens was originally ruled out in the NFC Championship but serendipitously decided to be active in case of emergency. How amazing was that decision after Landon Dickerson went down?
• Inner excellence. AJ Brown never screamed in his coach’s face and shoved him. He never showed up anyone. He sat down and recentered himself on the sideline. Maybe it was performance art, but simply being able to stop what you are doing to calm down and refocus is something that most people cannot do.

Jalen Carter

• Do you realize he saved the season against the Rams? Not unlike Julio Jones dropping the ball against the Falcons in 2018, the Super Bowl dream would have died early against the Rams had Carter not sacked Matt Stafford then pressured him on the final two plays of the game. We were screwed until Jalen Carter happened.
• He doesn’t get enough credit for being double teamed constantly, held on every play, and his teammates getting rewarded for his gravity. Everyone does know though, even if it doesn’t show up in the stat sheet. He will be DPOY next season.

Coaching

• I still find it funny that 49er fans cry about the NFC Championship two years ago when Brock Purdy and his back up got knocked the fuck out. Hassaan Reddick was having a DPOY level year and was on a game wrecking tear at the time. WE ALL KNEW THE PLAN WAS TO KILL THE QB. However, genius Kyle Shannahan decided to block him with only a backup tight end on the play where he murdered Brock. That’s bad coaching, not bad luck.
• Some people are trying to give credit to the Chiefs for shutting down Saquan Barkley. I’m sorry, but if a test is half essays and you only answer the multiple choice, you still failed that test. They put up zero resistance to the Eagles passing game. ZERO.
• Let’s dig into them focusing on Barkley. By stacking the box to stop the running game, the Chiefs went single coverage on AJ Brown and DeVonta Smith, two top 10 receivers in this league. It didn’t work and it sounds insane when you write it down.
• The Eagles didn’t blitz once in the game. They only rushed 4 on every drop back. Instead of trying to run the ball with Hunt or Pacheco, or even going with a few designed runs for Mahomes, the Chiefs kept trying to throw it into max coverage. If four guys rush at six guys, that’s two extra bodies in coverage. No matter how good Mahomes is, that’s tough.
• The Eagles screen game has been terrible for years, that is until the Super Bowl. Seeing that the Chiefs were selling out for the run, they put Barkley in the flat to give Hurts the safety valve he rarely has. It kept one more man close to the line on a pass and forced single coverage on the big threats.

Super Bowl 57

• It’s the one that got away. I think we were the better team going in, but we got beat. That loss looks a whole lot better now than it has the last two years.
• With the way our pass rush got to Mahomes this game, it’s hard to fathom how we didn’t get to him once in that game. We crushed Mahomes on Sunday, but our pass rush was better two years ago. Hassaan Reddick was playing out of his mind that season and better than any of our EDGE rushers in this game. That game the field was terrible and our greatest advantage was neutralized without the Chiefs having to do a thing. It’s hard not to see what happened in this game and label the field as the defining story of that game.
• Two Super Bowl appearances in two years looks a whole lot better when one of them is a win. Now it is part of Jalen’s resume rather than another footnote for Mahomes.

The Eagles Legacy

• The Eagles were already an elite organization. They carry themselves well as a company, never have to deal with PR scandals or questionable hires, never find themselves making questionable decisions, and always have a plan. This win elevates things though. It’s one thing to do everything right, but results matter. That’s three Super Bowl appearances in eight years with two wins. That’s next level.
• This team is one of the best ever. Full Stop. All of the Brady Pats teams kind of run together, but every other team to win a Super Bowl since 1996 has won it either with a great defense or great offense, rarely an elite mixture of both. Look at the list. Who since those 90s Cowboys teams was this good on both sides of the ball?
• That’s TWO Super Bowls. When someone says, “Remember when we won the Super Bowl?” the only correct response is “Which one?”