Mahomes magic, Eagles talent, and weaknesses on both sides: Inquirer’s Jeff McLane and K.C. Star’s Jesse Newell preview Super Bowl LIX

The beat writers look at the keys to the game, who has the edge in which areas, and how it might all play out.

Published Feb. 7, 2025, 2:24 p.m. ET

Inquirer Eagles beat reporter Jeff McLane joined Kansas City Star Chiefs beat reporter Jesse Newell for a conversation about Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Here is a transcript from their conversation, edited for clarity:

Jeff McLane: Hi, I’m Jeff McLane of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Eagles beat reporter, joined here with Jesse Newell, Kansas City Star, Chiefs beat reporter, and we’re here to talk about obviously Super Bowl 59, a big matchup that puts these two teams against each other two years after they faced off and the Chiefs won a close one, 38 to 35.

We’re here in New Orleans a few days before the game and we’re going to kind of go over some of the three key points from this game.

I’ll start us off.

Jesse, number one, I think the Chiefs' offense, obviously Andy Reid has been doing this a long time, but it seems like he’s doing it a little differently this year, he always has a lot of misdirection and kind of eye candy that he throws at teams with motion, but what is it about this unit this year that they’re getting it done despite not really having great receivers on the outside.

Jesse Newell: The last couple of years, you just think about Mahomes from 2019 and ’20 where he’s just chucking it down the field. Tyreek Hill‘s down there somewhere, you know, forget it. He’s gonna catch it. This offense has become something totally different the last couple of years. It’s become very efficient, brutally efficient, but they really don’t do explosive plays. Kareem Hunt in the backfield, I know that’s the running game, but he’s a guy that’ll get you 6 when there’s 4, or get you 5 when there’s 3.

But the passing game really is followed the same way, they drafted Xavier Worthy as a speedster out of Texas, hoping he could be a deep threat, but they’ve started to use him on the short routes. And so this has really been kind of a scheme-dependent thing and you do give credit to Patrick Mahomes for changing his style of play.

It’s kind of like Tom Brady. He kind of chameleons himself, you know, he becomes what he needs to be. But this is a team that’s built on 12-play, 14-play, 16-play drives, and also, as you might expect from what the Chiefs have done in past seasons, it gets better over time, it gets better in the postseason.

For the Chiefs side of this is that you look up and down at the Eagles defense and not many weaknesses there. We were kind of trying to look at some of the advanced numbers, me and Sam McDowell at the start: Where can you get at the Eagles passing game and like … nothing. They’re good short, they’re good middle, they’re good long, and so this will be a big challenge for the Chiefs, but Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid usually step up in these moments.

McLane: One of the stats that’s been kind of thrown out there a lot is Patrick Mahomes vs. Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio over his career, and he’s 8-0. You could point to Vic Fangio and some of the teams that he was either the head coach or defensive coordinator for, they didn’t have offenses as strong as this one, so I don’t think that’s entirely fair.

But I think this is going to be stylistically an interesting matchup between the Chiefs offense, like you said, it will take the check down, Mahomes will check to the run, if the boxes are light. That’s kind of what Fangio wants to compel an offense to do. So it will be interesting to see what breaks here.

He’s OK playing a little bit of a soft coverage. He likes to have two high safeties, and they’re going to have to rally to the ball. They’re going to have to tackle after the catch.

I’m a little worried about what happens in the red zone. I’m a little worried if Vic plays a little too much man coverage. I think that Kelce vs. man, vs. C.J. Gardner-Johnson, vs. Reed Blankenship. I don’t know if those guys can cover him because he’s so nifty in how he’s able to kind of create space and get away from guys.

All that being said, as you mentioned, Mahomes just seems to get it done, and that’s the concern I think for this Eagles defense, is if it’s close and he’s got the ball in his hands at the end of the game and a chance to win it, it’s hard to bet against Mahomes.

McLane: Next point here, Steve Spagnuolo, we know him pretty well here in Philadelphia. He was a linebackers coach for a while under the Andy Reid teams. Mentored, excuse me, prodigy under mentor Jim Johnson, longtime defensive coordinator. Jim Johnson likes to bring a lot of pressure packages, loves the blitz, and that’s pretty much what Spags will do a lot of, and you know, the Eagles spent the last two years trying to kind of erase the memory of how they handled the blitz in that meeting at the Super Bowl. Specifically, there was one play in that fourth quarter that Jason Kelce says it’s the one play from his career that he regrets the most because he didn’t really set the protection right and there was an unblocked defender, he was hot, and they had to throw the ball away, and the Eagles had to punt late in that game.

What is it about Spags’ blitzes? What does he do to really rattle quarterbacks and make them have to move off their first or second read and have to kind of throw in the spots where really guys aren’t open?

Newell: Yeah, their Rolodex is deep. And I know talking to these guys in training camp that they try to install everything in training camp and guys' eyes, they’re going, oh my gosh, there’s so much information. Their heads are kind of spinning, but that’s so that you have that base information in there.

And then you can go pick chapter 9. This will be good against the Eagles, or Chapter 11, this will be good against the Bills, and they vary it week to week.

One of the kind of underrated things about this Chiefs defense is the continuity. It’s interesting with the coaching staff. For the Chiefs, which they’ve won two straight Super Bowls, but really, last year, they didn’t lose any coaches off their coaching staff.

You look at like the Lions, they lose everybody. The 49ers seem like they lose guys every single year. The Chiefs don’t. And so they have that coaching staff continuity.

You teach guys year to year the same thing, and all of a sudden you get to training camp and you’re starting at, you know, grade level 6 or 7 instead of starting back at grade level 1, as you would with a new teacher.

Newell: The other part of this is, the continuity of their players, if you look back, this was fascinating. In the offseason, the Chiefs brought in nobody from outside the building the previous year, other than their draft picks on defense, until they traded for Cam Thomas from the Cardinals, and he’s actually no longer with the team anymore. And that was way up in August or September. I think it was late August when that happened. So they basically brought back Chris Jones, they brought back Drew Tranquil, they brought back a lot of their big names.

A lot of guys on their defensive line like Mike Danna. So these guys know the system and now, the way that Spags plays this thing, he asks you, he asks his players to do all sorts of different things. I talked to some guys: What makes him different from other defensive coordinators? The defensive linemen learned coverage responsibilities, zone responsibilities. How do you do these sorts of things?

And I talked to guys saying, hey, this isn’t something we did at previous places. So in saying that you look back at the big fourth-and-5 blitz he brought against the Bills, and Josh Allen’s been great against the blitz all year. The Chiefs blitz and they get two unblocked guys on a play, but yet they’re playing zone behind it.

And so this is what makes it so tricky. You don’t know where they’re coming from, and then you also don’t know what they’re gonna play potentially behind it.

But I think, Jeff, you spoke to a good point, which was the Chiefs still were their identity and they blitzed Josh Allen, even though he’s really good against the blitz. And you can speak to this, that’s been a little bit of what Jalen Hurts maybe has struggled with this year is handling that pressure, knowing when to throw the ball away.

And so the big thing with Spags is they always seem to get unblocked pressures. I mean there’s one thing to be like, OK, the blitz got there eventually. The Chiefs usually have guys running scot-free, and those are the sorts of players that can change the game.

McLane: Yeah, Hurts this year against the blitz, it’s been up and down. I think one of the things that’s really troubled him is simulated pressures and that, whereas it looks like it’s going to be more coming and it ends up only being four, it just looks a little different than maybe typically a four-man rush would look, and then he holds the ball too long. He gets off his first read and that’s when the sacks happen. That’s when the throwaways happen.

Now two years ago I mentioned the Eagles not picking up that blitz late in the game. For the most part, Hurts did pretty well against the blitz and had probably the best game of his career aside from the fumble, which led to a touchdown, we all know that.

But I mean, he really kind of torched that Spagnuolo defense. Now I think Spags’ defense is better this year than it was two years ago. It was great last year when they faced the Eagles in Kansas City, Hurts struggled against the blitz that game.

Now, the Eagles won that game, contrary to what had happened in the Super Bowl, but with Hurts and the blitz, with Jason Kelce no longer there, he used to call the pre-snap protections when he retired this past offseason.

Now Hurts, it started to fall on his shoulders more now Cam Jurgens, the new center, they kind of help in the offensive line. They’ll help out Jalen Hurts, but he’s hot more now because he’s setting the protections, which is what you want sometimes as long as you’ve got a receiver that’s open.

But I think sometimes, as you mentioned, why Spags blitzes are so tough to beat, it’s because they just look a certain way and in fact you’re thinking, oh, OK, I’m going to go hot here when in fact you’re not hot, you have a receiver and maybe it’s your best guy who’s bracketed by a couple zone defenders.

So I think that’s going to be a huge part of the game. Obviously how the Eagles handle Chris Jones up front. I think what they do a lot of times is, they use him as a decoy to set up and free up other guys in the blitz, and you probably could speak a little bit to that.

Newell: That’s a great point. That’s a great point. The Bills game, that’s where the Bills slid their projection. They slid it to Chris Jones because it’s darned if you do, darned if you don’t, right?

I mean, it’s like, oh my gosh, how did you not get four hands on Chris Jones? Well, if you get on Chris Jones, they’ll drop the defensive linemen on the other side, and all of a sudden you’re blocking air or blocking him with three guys, and you’ve got two unblocked guys coming the other way.

So it seems like [inaudible] does a great job of, you know, kind of scheming to that, to be like, OK, how do you utilize Chris Jones and make sure that all that attention he’s getting can be used in a creative way? That’s one way to do it.

But yeah, I think you’re making a good point.

This defense is better than the defense two years ago that the Eagles saw in the Super Bowl, but I don’t want to pull any punches here either, or pull the wool over people’s eyes. The Bills had success. You know what I mean? The Bills scored 29 points against the Chiefs. The Chiefs struggled for the most part to stop Josh Allen. And, if you’re up, going up and down and looking at the roster and what’s going on with both of these teams heading into this game, I would expect some offensive success from the Eagles in this game.

You know what I mean? Like, the receivers on the outside could cause some problems. And we saw in the Super Bowl two years ago, Trent McDuffie’s a much better player, but the one weakness he does have is he doesn’t have the huge size to go against a guy like A.J. Brown outside the numbers, and we saw A.J. Brown go up and get one over the top of him.

And it was interesting hearing McDuffie. I asked him about this at the Chiefs press conference, when they were back in Kansas City, and he actually said he walked off the field, I mean, happy to win the Super Bowl, but like a little bit disappointed because he was like, hey, we as a defense didn’t do what we thought we could do coming into this game.

So he wants another shot at the Eagles, but I’m here to tell you, like you said, last year’s Chiefs defense was dominant. It was really, really good. Two years ago was not very good, was kind of dragged along by Mahomes. This one’s somewhere in the middle, but it’s had its struggles this time this year, times this year, and then, I’m sure we’ll get to this point eventually, like in the third quarter against the Bills, the Bills ran all over them.

That has not been a theme for the Chiefs this year, but that has to be something that the Eagles are watching on film and going, can we do and replicate this sort of thing against the Chiefs? And if so, obviously things could tilt in their favor.

McLane: Yeah, I mean, we haven’t even mentioned Saquon Barkley yet, and they’re going to have to ride him to some extent. That’s been the formula all year. The Eagles don’t want to get away from him too much early on.

That being said, you know, if you look at the history of the Super Bowl, if you look at the teams that have won Super Bowls over the last 25 years plus, it’s been behind quarterbacks that can throw that are, when you’re put in certain circumstances and you need to win it, you need to have an elite thrower. Jalen Hurts is a good quarterback, but if you’re putting it on his shoulders, that’s where the problem comes.

That being said, the Eagles have been able to win this way all season. There’s no reason to think they can’t do it in the Super Bowl, and as you mentioned, the Chiefs' run defense is strong. Spags is probably going to stack the box. He’s probably going to put it on Jalen Hurts. I don’t think that’s any surprise, but the Eagles have seen that before, and Barkey’s still been able to break off big runs.

And if they can get ahead in the second quarter, they’re going to be tough to beat. They got ahead two years ago and were beat. This is a different defense. This is a different defensive coordinator, which doesn’t necessarily lead me to the third point, but the one thing I wanted to kind of go over with you, we all know the big names from this game on both sides of the ball. The Eagles with Saquon Barkley, A.J. Brown, Jalen Hurts, DeVonta Smith, obviously an effective receiver. On the other side of the ball, Patrick Mahomes, I mean the other team, Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Isiah Pacheco, Xavier Worthy, but is there one guy maybe under the radar that you think the Chiefs are most concerned about heading into this game?

Newell: Yeah, maybe not under the radar for Eagles fans, obviously, but Dallas Goedert is the one to me. If you look at the season-long numbers for the Chiefs, when they face tight ends, they give up yardage. They give up plays, and they don’t really have a great answer, in their secondary and with the guys that they have to sort of counteract that sort of thing over the middle of the field, that intermediate middle of the field.

And so I think the Chiefs have to have a huge concern there. And again, this is one of those topics where it would keep getting brought up sort of in the middle weeks and they still couldn’t fix it, you know what I mean? This is just one of those things with their defense, that they give up and the Chiefs have not faced a dominant tight end so far in this playoffs. And obviously, if they had, if Dalton Kincaid could adjust back and catch that ball on fourth-and-5, potentially, you’d be talking about a different Super Bowl, maybe Eagles-Bills this week, instead of the one that we are talking about.

But I definitely think that’s a big concern for the Chiefs' defense coming in here because if you’re just looking at overall weaknesses and one thing that’s just, they have not been able to solve in this particular defense with, guys like Chamarri Conner who are trying to guard that position or some of the rotations they have on the back end with their safeties. That’s the one thing that would stand out. So I think that would be the one on the Chiefs sideline.

I’m sure you probably have one from the Eagles sideline. Who are they looking at for the Chiefs to potentially be that one that maybe could give them a little bit of problems if things fall the Chiefs' way.

McLane: Yeah, I mean, you obviously mentioned with Goedert that Eagles fans, they know that this guy is going to be dangerous and the same goes for my guy Xavier Worthy. He’s been kind of the only guy that’s been able to stretch the field a little bit for the Chiefs. And I know that as you mentioned, this is a downfield kind of throwing offense, but when they do go down the field, it seems like it’s to him. He doesn’t quite have the route tree, maybe the ability to track the balls the way that Tyreek Hill did, but he can do it on occasion.

I think where they’re going to have to be more concerned about it, we mentioned this earlier, is just how much he’s used in the misdirection game, how much they’ll get those little flares out to him, get the ball in his hands and allow him to use that elite type of speed to pick up, you know, it could be like four or five yards on first down. Those are kind of simulated run plays to almost an extent if the run game isn’t working, and then sometimes he can break this off if he’s got good blocking in front of him.

So I think he’s the chess piece.

It was almost like maybe the one when I did my mock draft last year, it was like the one I got right in the first round because I just said this is an Andy Reid-type of player and receivers, yeah, and it turned out that way.

Now you’re worried if you’re the Chiefs about Hopkins and Hollywood Brown has got speed, you have Juju Smith Schuster. These are guys who have done it for a long time, but they just have a lot of tread on the tires and I think the Eagles have the speed in the secondary and the zone coverage where they can handle those guys.

I think Xavier Worthy has to be the X factor. And of course I mentioned Travis Kelce, but I still think if they’re going to win, Worthy has to get involved.

Newell: Two things, something very interesting about Xavier. His average as a target, if you watch over the season has shrunk. So they used to use him basically just as a deep threat. And then as the season’s gone along and you know, they lost Rashee Rice to injury early in the season, they’ve incorporated more and more of the offense as he’s gotten it.

So that’s one thing to watch again, you’re talking about quick RPO’s, screens, they have him come across the formation and carry the ball. So they’ve really used him on some short type of stuff, easier type of stuff to get him the ball, and that’s happened. He’s real good with whip routes as well. So watch him on third down, cutting inside if you’re in man coverage, he cuts back out. It’s really, really difficult to defend.

But the second thing I want to mention, Patrick Mahomes told me last year, his favorite player from the Super Bowl against the 49ers, Super Bowl 58, was the deep pass he had other than the championship winner. Deep pass he had to Mecole Hardman down the field, and they completed for about 40, about 50 yards.

But again, the Chiefs last year were not known for their deep passes. But he said he thinks it gets in the back of defenses’ minds if they can complete one of those to be like, hey, They can do it. They’re capable of doing it.

So to your point, we’re talking about all these trends and things that have gone with the Chiefs, and they don’t have explosiveness. They don’t throw it downfield, all those sorts of things.

I would not be surprised at all if early, especially Patrick Mahomes, hearing him say that, and say that he feels like it’s really important early to put in the back of the defense’s mind that the Chiefs can go deep.

Maybe they unleash Xavier Worthy on one of those deep. Again, they haven’t connected on many of them this year, but it is something to watch for because I guess Mahomes told me that was his favorite or his favorite pass of the Super Bowl because the 49ers basically had to expect it from then on out. He felt like it opened up their offense.

And so I would not be surprised at all if the Chiefs tried to do the same thing as the Eagles, just to put something back there so the Eagles know that they can’t just bring everybody up toward the line of scrimmage and know the Chiefs are going to play their shutdown game all game.

McLane: Well, I warned that Patrick Mahomes to be careful because Vic Fangio does not want to allow explosive plays. In fact, no opposing offense, no pass defense has allowed fewer explosive plays this season, and I imagine he’s going to do his best to make Mahomes check down, make him audible in the run plays.

They want, he just wants to kind of bend, OK. He’s OK with bending, but he feels like his defense won’t break when they’re in the red zone. So it should be really interesting to see how this game plays out.

I haven’t quite made my prediction yet, but I think it’s going to be a close one. It could go either way.

Newell: Yeah, I mean, I think so too. It’s interesting my prediction from Super Bowl 57. I remember thinking the same thing. It’s like, if you just match up these two rosters, I’m probably taking the Eagles, but the Chiefs seem to have this little magic something in the postseason, and Mahomes always seems to be at his best, and you just mentioned about this being a quarterback game or a quarterback league, or whoever wins Super Bowl is quarterback led.

Jalen Hurts, you’ve mentioned, played his butt off that last Super Bowl. He was good enough to win that game, but in the clutch moments, Mahomes is a little bit better, and then you just don’t know, like the corn dog thing, like you just don’t know what’s coming out of Andy Reid’s sleeve at the exact right time.

And so that really does make this an even matchup because I think, like I said, you can go down offensive line vs. defensive line, defense overall vs. passing, offense for the Chiefs, like most of those I would probably give the slight edge to the Eagles, but there is just something in the postseason the Chiefs seem to have mastered, and a lot of that goes back to Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid.

That’s why this one should be a great one coming up on Sunday.

McLane: Great.

Well, Jesse, thank you for joining me. Again, I’m Jeff McLane, and for Jessie Newell, everybody, thanks for watching us and I hope you enjoy Super Bowl 59 on Sunday.

That’s it from us. Talk to you later.