Super Bowl Predictions: Eagles or Chiefs?
January 31, 2023
The Super Bowl is coming up so fast that many fans are surprised the NFL postseason is almost over. With Mr. Irrelevant now injured, Hurts’ right shoulder injury and Mahomes’ ankle injury, the postseason has been laden with QB injuries and obstacles for both superbowl teams and many other teams.
In the Super Bowl, SportsLine projects the Eagles to win by 2 points. Regardless, we believe the game could go either way. Look forward to this year’s halftime show, headlined by none other than Grammy Award-winning pop star Rihanna. Note: this article was written and published before the Super Bowl.
Eagles
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For the second time in seven years, the Philadelphia Eagles represent the NFC in the super bowl. The team still has a lot of similarities as their championship team back in the 2017-18 season, with six players on the current roster were also on the roster on their Super Bowl 52 team. Recently facing the number one defense in the 49ers, the Eagles proved that they are dominant on the run game, putting 148 rushing yards. It’s always a big takeaway for every game the Eagles come into. These playoffs have proved that Jalen Hurts doesn’t need to be the focal point of not just this offense, but in the team as a whole.
Philadelphia was able to beat off the number one defense, but now they will face the MVP favorite in Patrick Mahomes, the best quarterback this defense had to go against. There shouldn’t be any doubt that the defensive line will be able to apply all the pressure they can, but the biggest concern for the Eagles in this game is the secondary. Despite being ranked the number two defense, the secondary has had its case of ugly moments in the season, like their performance in week 16 against the Dallas Cowboys where Dak Prescott was able to do whatever he wanted.
The Eagles match well with nearly every aspect of the Kansas City Chiefs, so the three main keys in order to win it all is to simply run the ball efficiently, to not let the secondary give Mahomes a ton of easy looks, and lastly, for Jalen Hurts to step up a little more.
Despite being a MVP finalist, Jalen Hurts certainly hasn’t been able to play at the same elite level he was ever since his shoulder back in early December against the Chicago Bears. Hurts also has admitted he still isn’t a hundred percent in these playoffs, but luckily hasn’t needed to put a large workload on his shoulders. Sirianni should focus on the game plan to focus more on running the RPO and chuck plays for Jalen.
Lucas joined the Wildcat Tribune to pursue his dream of writing about sports and covering football games. He joined again this year to be better and to make more podcasts with Rikin. He had absolutely zero...
Chiefs
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Just barely squeezing past the Bengals with a late field goal, the Kansas City Chiefs will represent the AFC in the Super Bowl for the third time in four seasons. With Mahomes still recovering from the high ankle sprain that left him limping against the Bengals, the next two weeks will give Mahomes time to rest ahead of Super Bowl weekend. Once he’s back on the field, however, he will need to watch out for Eagles LB Hasson Reddick, who single-handedly injured both 49ers 3rd-string and 4th-string QBs Brock Purdy and Josh Johnson. Reddick will be lining up against Chiefs OT Orlando Brown, who has been a successful left tackle as of late when guarding his blind side. It remains to be seen who will overcome the other, but Reddick and Brown will be an exciting matchup to watch.
To put it bluntly, although they scored 31 points, the Eagles’ offense sucked against the 49ers. A botched passing game and a mediocre run-game that took off near the red-zone but capped off almost everywhere else was the most the Eagles’ offense could muster against a spectacular 49ers pass-defense and stout defensive line. If not for Purdy and Johnson’s injuries, which skewed the playing clock against the 49ers defense and set the Eagles up close to the endzone, there was no doubt the Eagles would’ve lost the game unless they somehow turned around their sluggish offense. Thankfully, the defense they will face in the Super Bowl is nowhere near as good as the 49ers defense. Still, it’s too early to breathe a sigh of relief.
The Chiefs’ offense every week seems to be more and more centered around one man, TE Travis Kelce. Kelce has had his seventh straight 1,000 yard season and became the fifth tight end in NFL history to rack up 10,000 career receiving yards. With a 14-yard touchdown pass from Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes in the AFC Championship game, the two became second for most playoff TDs by a QB-pass catcher duo, passing Joe Montana and Jerry Rice, and now behind only Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski. Being the focal point of the Chiefs offense this season, Mahomes and Kelce should be able to continue their postseason successes and score big against the Eagles.
There’s a hot take going around: the Super Bowl is destined to go into overtime. That’s because not only did both teams score exactly 546 points this year, including playoffs, but many believe both teams will score the same amount of points on Feb. 12, forcing the game to go into overtime. Last season, the Chiefs beat the Bills in overtime following a touchdown score on the first overtime possession. This boils down to luck. Whichever team wins the coin-toss in overtime would be the favorite to score first in overtime and win it all.
Rikin joined the Tribune because he wanted to write about sports, record a fantasy sports podcast and write about business/economics. Rikin is politically active and believes civic engagement by high school...