Super Bowl LIX: DVOA Preview

Everything about this Kansas City Chiefs run feels like we’re just having repeated encounters with deja vu, including the fact that the Chiefs are now facing off against the Philadelphia Eagles for the second time. So why not start off this year’s Super Bowl preview with a quote from the beginning of last year’s Super Bowl preview?

Well, here we are again with the question of whether we have to consider Patrick Mahomes as “playoff LeBron.” Does Mahomes specifically raise his game in the playoffs, to the point where we can’t accurately analyze the Super Bowl LVIII matchup because we can’t use past statistics to determine Kansas City’s strengths and weaknesses?

Replace “Super Bowl LVIII” with “Super Bowl LIX” and nothing has changed. Everybody knows about Kansas City’s absurd record in close games and their constant narrow escapes all season long. Despite going 15-2, they finished eighth in DVOA. That included a terrible Week 18 game where they played backups and got slaughtered by the Denver Broncos, but even before that they were only sixth. They’re a little higher if you include the playoffs and take out Week 18 and give more weight to recent games… then we have them fourth… but you get the point here.

Do the Chiefs truly have an “extra gear” for the playoffs? It certainly seems like it, if you look at their regular-season performance compared to their playoff performance over the last seven years. Kansas City averages about 20 more percentage points of DVOA in playoff games. Note that the regular-season numbers here include games where the Chiefs sat starters at the end of the regular season.

Is this something “real” or are we witnessing the Wyatt Earp effect? What if the Chiefs just randomly flipped the coin heads for seven straight years? We honestly have no idea. Complicating things even further is the fact that the Chiefs didn’t put it into an extra gear until the AFC Championship Game against Buffalo. Their Divisional Round win over Houston was fine but not terribly impressive, and of course they didn’t have to play in the Wild-Card Round.

So we’ll go through this preview trying to use regular-season stats to look at the matchups between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles. We’ll try to adjust for Week 18, and for the fact that the Chiefs played better at the end of the regular season, and for the fact that the Eagles defense improved significantly after the first few weeks of the season. We just have to accept that there’s a possibility that the Chiefs just ignore all this and do a bunch of impossible things before breakfast and then win the game by three damn points again.

Each week for the playoff previews, I’ve run a table with a selection of basic stats on the two teams. They’ve mostly included just regular-season stats. For the Super Bowl, I’ve got a table that adds the playoffs and removes the Week 18 games when both teams sat starters. I’ve also removed the Eagles offense in Weeks 16-17 when Jalen Hurts was injured and both the passing and running games struggled with Kenny Pickett at quarterback.

If you’re checking out FTN’s DVOA for the first time, it’s all explained right here. 

You’re probably curious why the Chiefs are actually lower in weighted DVOA, which gives more weight to recent games and drops early-season games, if they’ve been playing better in recent weeks. The weighted DVOA formula still gives a lot of weight to games going back two and three months, dropping everything from Weeks 1-6. The Chiefs defense happened to decline around Week 8, and from Week 8 to Week 13, the Chiefs ranked 28th in defensive DVOA. Those games are in the weighted DVOA formula, although with lesser weights, while the strong games the Chiefs defense had at the start of the season are not. The Chiefs would look better if we only looked back to December. Five of the top seven overall Kansas City games of the season have come since Week 14.

Except for that midseason blip, you’ll see that each defense comes out ranked better than the opposing offense. The story of this game is really about the defenses and the scheme battle between the two defensive coordinators, Vic Fangio and Steve Spagnuolo.

Week-to-week charts represent that team’s single-game DVOA in either offense or defense. The extra line is a rolling five-week average. All stats below are regular-season only unless noted.

WHEN THE CHIEFS HAVE THE BALL

The Philadelphia Eagles defense has its own interesting trend. The Eagles have played only four below-average defensive games all season according to DVOA. Three of those came in the first six weeks of the season. Since Week 7, the Eagles have easily been the best defense in the NFL. The Eagles have -27.4% defensive DVOA since Week 7, including the playoffs, and that’s more than 10 percentage points ahead of any other defense during that time period.

We wrote in the FTN Football Almanac 2024 that Vic Fangio did not have a record of turning around defenses right away. Usually, that meant in the first year. In 2024, that only meant the first month. From October onwards, this defense has been awesome.

Part of what makes the battle between Fangio and Spagnuolo interesting is that they have very different styles. The Chiefs will blitz a lot, and the Eagles will not. The Eagles’ blitz rate was only 26th in the NFL this season. Patrick Mahomes was 11th in DVOA against the blitz in the regular season (13.0%) but has 69.3% DVOA against the blitz in the playoffs (10-of-15, 157 yards).

Instead, the Eagles will try to get pressure with just their front four most of the time. It’s a bit of a surprise that the Eagles were just 19th this season with a 28.4% pressure rate, although their rank improved to 12th (26.6%) when not blitzing. Mahomes took a lot of pressure, in part because of questionable tackle play and in part because of his own style. He was 32nd among quarterbacks with 31.8% pressure rate.

The big matchup to watch for pass pressure is Philadelphia edge rusher Nolan Smith against Kansas City right tackle Jawaan Taylor. Although we had Jalen Carter leading the Eagles with 49 pressures, Smith was third with 38 pressures. And Taylor was clearly Kansas City’s worst lineman in pass protection, with 62 pressures allowed including the playoffs. (Wanya Morris allowed more pressures per snap, but he’s not starting anymore.)

The Eagles’ cornerbacks all did fantastic in my coverage DVOA calculations. Cooper DeJean was at -26.6%, Quinyon Mitchell at -19.0%, and Darius Slay Sr. at -10.8%. Even Isaiah Rodgers had -19.7% DVOA in limited time.

Despite this strong cornerback play, the Eagles ranked just 24th in DVOA against No. 1 wide receivers, which would suggest that we’re looking at a big game for Xavier Worthy However, the Eagles were ninth if you just look at Weeks 6-17. It’s one of the parts of their defense that has most improved.

The Eagles have also been strong against tight ends all season, which suggests that they can limit Travis Kelce. Some have suggested that the Nakobe Dean injury will be a huge problem against Kelce because he’s been replaced by Oren Burks, who was on the 49ers last season and did not have a good night covering Kelce in last year’s Super Bowl after he replaced an injured Dre Greenlaw. However, I went to look at our charting for the regular season and by far the most likely Eagles defender to be covering a tight end is Zack Baun, followed by Cooper DeJean and then C.J. Gardner-Johnson (Dean was much more likely to be listed in coverage on running backs.) When Zach Ertz had 11 receptions in the NFC Championship Game, Burks was only covering him on one target. My worry about Burks might be second tight end Noah Gray, not Kelce. This season, Gray had the best receiving DYAR for any Chiefs tight end in history other than Kelce and Tony Gonzalez.

The two-tight end set is a way to get the Eagles to play base defense rather than nickel. The Chiefs’ offensive DVOA is 26.2% against base (third) and 9.6% against nickel (13th). However, the Eagles’ defensive DVOA is -22.3% in base (best in the NFL) and -15.7% in nickel (second behind Houston).

Patrick Mahomes during the regular season ranked eighth in DVOA against man coverage (12.6% DVOA) but 20th against zone (2.9%). However, Mahomes killed the Bills’ zones in the AFC Championship, especially with RPOs. The Eagles ranked fourth in both man coverage and zone coverage this season. Of course, if you play man coverage against Mahomes, he will scramble against you. Including the playoffs, the Eagles were roughly average in DVOA against quarterback scrambles.

One weakness I want to point out for the Eagles is intermediate-level passes, roughly 10-19 yards past the line of scrimmage. The Eagles were great against short passes and they were great against deep passes. They were only average against intermediate passes. Now, Mahomes and the Kansas City offense used a lot more shorter passes this season. But if Mahomes has the time to get the ball away, they can probably move the offense with the intermediate-level passes.

And here’s a table comparing Mahomes at these distances to the NFL average:

Mahomes may want to avoid throwing it up the middle. The Eagles had the best defense in the league on passes in the middle of the field, while Mahomes ranked 34th out of 39 qualifying quarterbacks during the regular season. That’s changed in the playoffs, because of course it has; Mahomes has 14.3 net yards per pass on passes up the middle over the last two games, in part because of two big JuJu Smith-Schuster YAC gains against the Bills in the AFC Championship Game.

One surprise is that the Eagles’ great defense was only 19th against the pass in the red zone. They were easily No. 1 against the run in the red zone. If we take out Week 18 and include the playoffs, the Eagles were 15th against the pass in the red zone. The Chiefs offense in the red zone was 16th passing and eighth running the ball. 

We haven’t talked about the Chiefs’ running game yet, but it is solid and consistent. The Chiefs ranked fourth in success rate on running plays, including the playoffs but excluding the playoffs. The problem is that, much like in the passing game, the Chiefs did not get explosive runs. The Chiefs were 31st in second-level yards per carry (5-10 yards past the line) and 32nd in open-field yards per carry (11+ yards past the line). The Eagles defense was strong against the run but also very strong against explosive runs, making a big gain by Isiah Pacheco or Kareem Hunt even less likely.

The Chiefs ranked 10th in EPA/play with inside zone, which was their best run concept. Eagles were good against all run concepts. The Chiefs were also much better running to the right side during the regular season. Kansas City was dead last in adjusted line yards on runs going left but 10th up the middle and 16th going to the right. The Eagles defense matched Kansas City with the same strengths and weakness: 25th against runs to the left but eighth against runs up the middle and 11th against runs to the right.

The Chiefs were only 16th in DVOA on third-down runs, while the Eagles defense was No. 1 by hefty amount. If I tell you that the Chiefs need to put it in Mahomes’ hands on third downs, you will not be surprised.

Finally, something I wrote about in our pre-preview: You may have seen a stat that Mahomes has a career 8-0 record against Fangio defenses. This is true! However, that doesn’t mean that Mahomes had eight great games against Fangio defenses. In four of the eight games, Mahomes had less than 6.5 net yards per pass. In another game, Week 7 of 2019, Mahomes only threw 11 passes, completing 10 of them, with 76 yards before he was injured (the famous quarterback sneak injury, which is the reason Mahomes never runs the sneak anymore) and Matt Moore replaced him for the second half.

In addition, Fangio’s defenses that faced Mahomes in the past were not anywhere near as good as the Eagles defense that ranked No. 1 in DVOA and No. 2 against the pass. When Fangio was head coach for the Broncos from 2019 through 2021 and faced Mahomes twice each season, those defenses ranked 13th, 12th, and 19th in pass defense DVOA. The 2023 Dolphins defense faced Mahomes in both the regular season and postseason but ranked only 22nd in pass defense DVOA that season.

WHEN THE EAGLES HAVE THE BALL

There are two things that everyone is going to be watching here. First, Saquon Barkley and whether he can have another dominant game on the ground. Second, Steve Spagnuolo’s blitz packages and how they affect Jalen Hurts and the Eagles passing game.

Let’s talk about Barkley first. Those who have been reading me all season know that I’ve written a few times about Barkley’s easy schedule this season. Barkley faced only three run defenses this year who ranked in the top 10 of run defense DVOA. Kansas City will be the fourth.

The good news here for the Eagles is that even these good run defenses didn’t exactly shut Barkley down. In four games (including two against Green Bay, one in the playoffs) Barkley averaged 21 carries for 105 yards with three rushing touchdowns. Explosive runs were the story of Barkley’s season and he had a 59-yarder against Tampa Bay, a 34-yarder against Green Bay in Week 1, and a 25-yard touchdown against Baltimore.

It’s a little surprising given the reputation of the Eagles offensive line that they only ranked 20th in adjusted line yards this season. Barkley wasn’t stuffed for a loss or no gain as often as you might expect (17% of the time, 13th) but he had a lot of runs that gained just a yard or two. He also had plenty that went into double digits. The Eagles ranked fourth in second-level yards per carry and second in open-field yards per carry. Now they face a defense that counters that. The Chiefs ranked second on defense in both categories.

Adjusted line yards say that the Eagles were particularly poor running on the outside around the ends: 23rd left end and 27th right end. However, this was also the weakness of the Chiefs run defense, which ranked 20th against left end runs and 28th against right end runs.

Another surprise is that the Eagles only converted 67% of short-yardage runs (17th) although they also had the most short-yardage runs. They had 73 such runs in the regular season, when the NFL average was just 45.5. This includes runs by Jalen Hurts as well as the running backs, and the tush push was not unstoppable this season. I will note, however, that the Eagles were better on fourth-and-1 (9 of 10) than on third-and-1 (17 of 24). Meanwhile, this was another weakness for the Chiefs. It may not seem like it because of their success against the Bills in the AFC Championship Game, but the Chiefs allowed 75% conversion on short-yardage runs in the regular season, which ranked 28th in the NFL.

Chiefs had the best defense in the league against outside zone runs but were strong against all run concepts except power, where they were average. The Eagles were the best team in the league using power concepts, with 7.1 yards per carry, and were third in the league with 80 such runs in the regular season.

Obviously, the running game is going to be important to the Eagles and they want to avoid those 1-2 yard runs because they want to avoid the obvious passing situations. That’s when the Chiefs can really come after Hurts with pressure. So let’s talk a little bit about Hurts and the Chiefs’ pass pressure.

One piece of good news for the Eagles is that their entire starting offensive line has been cleared to play in the Super Bowl. There were worries about left guard Landon Dickerson and center Cam Jurgens after the NFC Championship Game, where Jurgens originally couldn’t play and Dickerson had to go out in the middle of the game. But both will be in the lineup on Sunday. The Eagles did not want Chris Jones going up against a backup lineman, and he won’t unless there is another injury.

Hurts ranked 12th among quarterbacks with a 26.5% pressure rate. That increased to 35.1% pressure when the defense was blitzing. The Chiefs defense was seventh with a 31.4% pressure rate, which moved up to 45.7% pressure when blitzing (including the playoffs).

Kansas City’s blitz rate was 29.1% on first down, seventh in the league. It was 32.1% on second down, also seventh. On third and fourth down, the Chiefs blitzed on 41.9% of pass plays, which ranked fourth in the NFL. Jalen Hurts ranked only 16th in DVOA against the blitz and was among the most blitzed quarterbacks in the NFL (31.3% of dropbacks, which ranked seventh). In last year’s Week 11 Philadelphia victory over Kansas City, Hurts completed 7 of 13 passes against the blitz for 6.9 yards per pass, including a 41-yard bomb to DeVonta Smith which set up Philadelphia’s go-ahead touchdown in the fourth quarter. (Mike Edwards, no longer with the Chiefs, was in coverage.)

The interesting question is what the Chiefs will play behind their blitzes. During the regular season, the Chiefs played man on about two-thirds of their blitzes. And man coverage is probably not what the Chiefs want to be playing against Jalen Hurts.

Hurts had a 17.8% DVOA against man coverage, which ranked seventh in the NFL. He had a -21.2% DVOA against zone coverage, which ranked 33rd. That’s a huge difference. And Hurts has a particular problem with Cover 3. He ranked 36th in DVOA against Cover 3, and it was the third straight year where he had real problems against Cover 3. He ranked 29th in 2023 and 30th in 2022.

Kansas City ranked 28th in man coverage and third in zone coverage. It really lines up for the Chiefs to play zone coverage against Hurts, but it turns out they played the least amount of Cover 3 in the league this season. FTN Data only has them in Cover 3 on 30 passes during the regular season. Last year against the Eagles, the Chiefs did not play Cover 3 against Hurts even once. Overall, the most common zone for Kansas City is Cover 4 although they played better in Cover 2. In last year’s game, they mostly had man behind their blitzes.

Man coverage also lets Jalen Hurts scramble. The Chiefs faced league-high 50 scrambles during the regular season allowing 7.5 yards per carry with a 60% success rate. Hurts “only” ranked 11th in DYAR on scrambles this year. He had 39 scrambles in the regular season for 9.4 yards per carry and a 64% success rate.

If the Chiefs do play man coverage, they are likely to line up Trent McDuffie against A.J. Brown. McDuffie was the slot cornerback in 2023 but played outside much more often in 2024 and generally covered the opposition’s best receiver. This was the second straight year where McDuffie’s coverage DVOA did not live up to his reputation. He was slightly worse than average at 3.3%. The Chiefs only ranked 22nd in DVOA against opposing No. 1 receivers.

The best coverage DVOA on the Chiefs belonged to Jaylen Watson, who was injured in Week 7 but had -51.5% coverage DVOA before he got hurt. He’s been back for the playoffs and played well against Houston and Buffalo. It was Watson’s injury that prompted a tailspin for the Chiefs defense, which ranked 28th in DVOA from Weeks 8-13 before they got back to being one of the top defenses in the league again starting in Week 14. Removing the Week 18 game, the Chiefs have had -12.8% defensive DVOA since Week 14, ranking sixth in the NFL during that time.

Joshua Williams also had an impressive coverage DVOA at -24.3%. Nazeeh Johnson (5.2%), who replaced Watson, and safety/nickelback Chamarri Conner (10.2%) were less impressive.

Nick Bolton is very good in coverage and the Chiefs were very strong this year against running backs as receivers. That’s one of Saquon Barkley‘s strengths but the Chiefs may neutralize it.

The Chiefs are the No. 6 defense against passes in the middle of the field, but that doesn’t really help against Jalen Hurts. Few quarterbacks throw to the middle of the field less than Hurts.

The Chiefs defense is much better in nickel personnel: -11.0% DVOA (fifth) compared to 10.2% DVOA (25th) in base. However, the Eagles are also better against nickel personnel, with 14.3% DVOA against nickel (eighth) and -2.9% DVOA against base (19th).

One other interesting note about the Chiefs. In the red zone this year, just like the Eagles, their defensive strength switched! Including the playoffs, the Chiefs have the best pass defense inside the 20 but only rank 19th against the run. Since their run defense is better than their pass defense on the rest of the field, I’m guessing this is just some sample size weirdness.

SPECIAL TEAMS

Special teams are the most random part of a football game, and so you never know when there’s going to be a big game-changing return or fumble. But looking at special teams from the regular season… these teams definitely had them. The Chiefs ranked 12th in special teams during the regular season, while the Eagles ranked 14th. The Chiefs ranked between eighth and 17th in the five aspects of special teams that I measure. The best unit was net punting, mostly because of punter Matt Araiza rather than the coverage team. Returner Nikko Remigio has been better in the playoffs than in the regular season, but there’s no reason to expect him to continue to break long returns.

The Eagles ranked between 10th and 23rd in the five aspects of special teams that I measure. Their best unit was also net punting, although more because of the coverage teams because punter Braden Mann had negative gross value. The other player to mention here is Philadelphia kicker Jake Elliott, who had a subpar year but not a terrible one. The Eagles were only worth -2.9 points on FG/XP compared to expectation. The problem for Elliott was that he didn’t hit the long kicks, going 1-for-7 on anything 50 yards or over. Elliott also missed a 54-yard try against Washington two weeks ago. He was almost automatic from inside 50, but if the Eagles can’t trust him to hit a 52-yarder if it’s fourth-and-12 from the 34-yard line, that’s a problem. You don’t want to be punting but you don’t want to be giving Mahomes the ball on the 42 with a miss.

OUTLOOK

This is another close battle, or at least it looks like it from the numbers. The fact that the Chiefs have played so many close games suggests another close battle. We’re not living in the ’80s anymore when Super Bowls would end 42-10.

The numbers from the season would give a slight edge to the Eagles, but I can’t get away from a couple of things in my mind. First, the fact that those Saquon Barkley explosive runs are so important to not only the Eagles’ offensive success but to their offensive mindset. The Chiefs seem very much built to prevent those runs. I can’t imagine Barkley going the entire game without a 20-yard gain but I don’t think there will be three or four of them. Second, Steve Spagnuolo’s ability to create unexpected pressures with blitzes against a quarterback who has had trouble with blitzes. No Barkley explosives will put the game in Hurts’ hands. Spagnuolo and the Kansas City defense will then get their opportunity to throw him off his game.

I think this is more important than Patrick Mahomes doing magical Patrick Mahomes things. He will still do them, but this is a very strong Eagles defense and they are going to keep him from doing the mundane good things that put him in position to do the magical things.

The most likely scenario in my mind is that the Chiefs offense has a reasonable game but the Chiefs defense has a strong game. I don’t like picking final scores but I told ESPN my final score was Chiefs 31, Eagles 25. That’s a somewhat cheeky reference to the idea of the Eagles going for 2 down 8 if they’re trying to come back late. This is where my mind goes: I think that we are more likely to see a situation where the Eagles have to come back late and fail than a situation where the Chiefs have to come back late and succeed. That means the Chiefs winning yet another close game and becoming the first NFL team to win three Super Bowls in a row.*

*Thanks to the fact that the Super Bowl didn’t start until the 1966 season, otherwise Green Bay would have done it in 1965-1967!