Eagles vs. Chiefs: The Andy Reid Super Bowl

There's a *hilarious* shot of CJ Gardner-Johnson diving at a pile for a fumble waaay late which would've worked for Random of the Week too.

Liberal-minded or not, Lurie is still a billionaire Boomer. ;) 

it makes 100% sense for it to be in line with the US population, rather than the population of the NFLPA, because there's no "athletic" component to being a head coach

Exeunt *omnes*

And it's technically "third person plural present indicative".

Now write that 100 times. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut yer balls off!

Though credit Orlando Brown against Hendrickson.  Yes Brown got some help at times.  Yes the refs let him get away with some pulls, tugs, and general holding that wouldn't have been out for line for being called.  But Brown was still better than in previous matchups.  Major difference maker yesterday

Ok double checked and Cincy starting field position not quite as bad as it seemed

Bengals drives starting position:

19 yard line

38 yard line

25 yard line

25 yard line

5 yard line

38 yard line

25 yard line

KC 45 yard line

18 yard line

6 yard line

Oh yeah.  You saw it flash in real time

That crew yesterday was just all over the map.  No roughing on Burrow on a call made pretty regularly during the season.  The Bengals line were penalized and rightly so on holding but the Chiefs were doing pretty much same against guys like Reader and the flags didn't get tossed nearly as often.  And Hilton gets called for a DPI when the Chiefs dbs were grabbing for dear life to keep up with the Bengals wideouts.  

And before anyone accuses me of Bengal fan bias I wear the Packer G all day long.  I just think Cincy has reason to grouse about the refs.  

Pick a lane guys.  That's all we ask.  

As for the nonruined game, it puzzles me that I haven't heard more about what looked like a block in the back on the Chiefs big punt return on the last possession. I'm pretty sure the t.v. production truck showed the Bengals s.t. coach getting into it with the refs, and it looked pretty clear to me that it was a foul, but they never showed a good camera angle, and I've heard no mention of it. The peoole in souhthern Ohio, I imagine, have to be talking about it, right?

The gunner fell because he got his feet tangled with the Chiefs outside blocker.

https://twitter.com/DoughtyBetMGM/status/1619896932025135104

Now, that might have been intentional. (Sort of looks that way) But it was not a block in the back. He was never touched in the back.

I saw it in real time, but I was honestly okay with the non-call.

Watch the replay. The KC defender is trailing the Cincinnati gunner, and as the gunner slows down, the defender slows down a little slower, running into his back and shoving him a bit inside of the punt returner. But the KC defender doesn't use his hands, the impact isn't too bad, and the Bengals defender sells the contact like a red devil flopping for a friendly call at Old Trafford.

Could the refs have called that? Sure. But they didn't. It was a little ticky-tacky anyway. No biggie.

I'm more concerned with the uneven nature of other calls. Obviously, intentional grounding was called inconsistently, but so were holding calls. The whole debacle with the third down "do-over" just seemed to confirm that the refs that were only selectively paying attention to what was happening on the field.

Kyle was pretty bad early and it cost the team a lot. Honestly though I am happy they didn't find some fluke way to win to see a hobbled Jimmy get drubbed by the Chiefs. Being a long time fan this may be the least depressing NFCCG loss I have seen. 2011, 1990, 1992, and 1993 were all way worse. The defense played great all game while getting really sloppy with the penalties when it was obvious the offense could literally do nothing. The Eagles offense was not impressive at all. Out gaining a team 3.8 to 3.6 yards a play at home with your starter while the other team has no functional QB is really bad. I need to monitor the injury reports for the Chiefs, but at this point that +2.5 looks like a really good bet.

Were those regular season crews? I know earlier they scrambled them for the playoffs. Not sure about this week.

Generally the games felt very "let them play" - no questionable RTP, no illegal man downfield. I know the repeat down looks terrible, but it *is* Arrowhead.

This right here.

The read in that situation is you don't go for the kill shot unless there's no other option or the kill shot is WIDE open.

I hope they look at that film and make that point.

I still do not 'get' the current 'chuck it downfield' on short yardage to get downs. 

What part don't you get? The Eagles and Bengals converted busting drives into scoring ones by doing precisely this. The Eagles have been doing this all year.

Last year, the Bengals offense was oriented around throwing long bombs to JaMarr Chase -- and sometimes Tee Higgins -- and praying he comes down with the ball. This was in part because it was effective, but it was also in part out of necessity; due to Cincinnati's poor offensive line play, teams liked to pressure our inexperienced signal-caller and dare him to beat the blitz by launching deep against mam coverage. Well, Burrow and Chase -- and sometimes Higgins -- proved that they were up to the task, and we were able to ride this boom-and-bust offense all the way to the Super Bowl.

This off-season, we reinforced our offensive line through the draft and free agency, improving the unit from "god-awful" to "mediocre." With a little better protection, we were able to establish our running game and use more slow-developing plays. Teams played differently against us, giving the Bengals more plays underneath in an attempt to stop our deep threats. Burrow excelled at long drives taking whatever the defenses gave him throughout the 2022-20223 season. Until yesterday.

Due to injuries on the O-Line, the Bengals were starting three of the same linemen who were routinely picked apart last year. Remember, even though the Bengals won last year's AFC Championship against Kansas City, the Chiefs still managed to get four sacks on Burrow and had opportunities to win the game.

So the Chiefs worked within the same blueprint, hammering Cincy's offensive line from the opening whistle. This was effective, as the Chiefs had 4 sacks when Burrow had only 4 completions early in the first half. Burrow reverted to long bombs in an attempt to counter the Kansas City blitzes, but either he was misreading the coverages or just playing a little desperately because he definitely threw deep into double coverage on a few plays.

I, too, get a little frustrated when I see similar plays called throughout the league. If a team has a deep threat, it's probably not a bad idea to take a shot every now and again just to stretch defenses and open up running lanes and crossing routes underneath on future short-yardage situations. But most of the time I see bad quarterbacks heaving up an inaccurate ball in these situations, proving to the defense that they DON'T actually have to respect the deep threat.

I still do not 'get' the current 'chuck it downfield' on short yardage to get downs.  Rodgers began doing that 4-5 years ago and now it's so much a part of his game that it's a standard meme on Packer message boards.  4th and 1 and yup, there is the 40 yard pass falling to the ground.

There are two types of 4th down attempts:

1) Desperation - Down late and losing possession is or nearly is a game-ending situation. In that case, yes teams should maybe play a little more conservative to try to retain the ball.

2) In the area of the field where a punt has limited upside - For a team like the Bengals, every defense is going to fixate on stopping their deep shots on nearly every play. Short yardage is about the only time where you'll be able to hold the safeties' attention at the LOS long enough to get one of your guys in a 1v1 downfield, so I can see the argument for taking a shot sometimes in that situation. It can be tough to watch though.

The philosophy is that oftentimes the defense is selling out to stop short yardage making it much easier to get a 1v1 deep shot than it would otherwise be. It was perfectly on display with the Higgins TD. The Chiefs sacrificed 1v1 to the far side of the field with Higgins to keep Chase doubled and the middle protected for a throw beyond the sticks. Burrow took the Higgins matchup, made a perfect throw, and Higgins made a perfectly timed leap for the TD.

The only real issue with what Burrow did later is that in both those spots he wasn't throwing into a favorable matchup. Both throws were into tight double coverage. The first was a perfect throw that Chase couldn't locate in time and hit his helmet. The 2nd was slightly underthrown allowing for a tip and INT. 

The TE you reference being wide open is open because Burrow isn't read the far side of the field so the coverage had sagged off. If he is looking to that side the defenders are right up on the TE and it isn't an easy throw for a 1st Down. If you watch his eyes his first read is the slot WR who runs right to the sticks and sits down. That throw isn't there so he moves to the 2nd option which is Higgins deep and by the time he lets that go he's being pressured. 

https://twitter.com/Sports_24x7_/status/1619891302686142464

That's not particularly ticky-tack. The ball doesn't make it to the tackle, and he's four yards behind the LOS. The nearest eligible receiver is seven yards away from the tackle, with two Chiefs between him and the ball.

Who, plausibly, was he throwing toward?

Yeah, I'm all for them calling that grounding and doing it more often. It's not one that always gets called but usually the intended receiver on those types of groundings on screens are generally in the middle of the cluster of lineman.

Personally, I do think grounding should be called more often. My favorite example is the 2015 AFC Title Game, where Brady could've been called for gronding 5 or 6 times, throwing passes that had 0% chance of completion while 3/4s of the way to being sacked, but there was a receiver within a very generous radius of "in the area"

Totally agree, although there's no real way to do it. I would seriously prefer if there was a way to make the "chuck it at the feet of your receiver" play grounding (say, if the receiver is facing away from the QB, it's a penalty), and it could even be balanced by making "downfield pass when no one's around" not grounding, too, because there are times when that gets called grounding and it's not (receiver broke the wrong way, for instance).

Like I said, there's no way to do that, but I hate seeing quarterbacks be able to get away with crap like that.

Here's why I think it's ticky tacky ...

Mahomes did something similar earlier in the game. Under pressure, with contact imminent, Mahomes dumps the ball over the middle, 6 yards away from two different receivers, one of whom is actually looking at the quarterback and makes a step towards the ball. But the ball falls to the grass a few yards in front of the line of scrimmage, a completely uncatchable and desperate attempt to avoid a sack.

No flag? Cool. Technically there was a receiver in the area and the refs aren't penalizing intent. You could also argue the impact of the defense affects the throw.

Now watch Burrow. Is this exactly the same as Mahomes' pass? No, of course not. But Burrow throws the ball while getting hit amd still manages to get the ball about 7 yards away from Perine, who is running a crossing route. The only real difference to me is that Burrow's ball goes towards the feet of an offensive lineman instead of a patch of green space. Does that make his ball more desperate and less catchable than Mahomes' desperate and uncatchable dump off? This seems a bit subjective to me, especially when I've seen Burrow -- and other QBs -- get a lot of leeway on those calls throughout the season. 

So this call is TOTALLY REASONABLE if you've watched a bunch of games this season and you found yourself screaming "Why aren't they calling Burrow and all these other quarterbacks for intentional grounding literally all the time?!"

But if you've watched a bunch of NFL games and said "I guess the refs have been told to swallow their whistles on intentional grounding calls to protect quarterbacks from injury," then this one is not even in the top 100 worst examples of intentional grounding.

No matter which side you come down on, i think we can all agree that it's a shame we are talking about the refs instead of Mahomes' heroic effort, the clutch punt return, etc.

FWIW I thought Bosa played well.  Held the edge (most of the time) and snuffed out some run plays where he was the only guy who could make the play.  Flushed Hurts off his base several times leading mostly to runs out of bounds for limited gains or throwaways.  And on the running game not clear on how SF was dominated.  Sure they gacked on run defense in the red zone (which was weird of all places) but mostly kept all runners in check even accounting for kneel downs.  Not a single runner averaged even 4 yards a gain.  

I thought asking the second tight end to try and hold the edge against Reddick was curious.  Though maybe that the Eagles seeing a matchup opportunity and exploiting in real time versus play design

But yeah the genius would have prevailed had his overmatched rookie QB not been injured by the league’s best pass rush.

Looks like now we'll never know.

I also sort of suspect that we might see an automatic review process for fourth down plays next year; those are high enough leverage plays and relatively rare enough that it makes sense to auto-review them in the same way that scoring plays and two minute warning plays are reviewed.

Assuming Purdy still gets injured, it only would have made Niners-Eagles closer rather than change the result, but this is a case where a closer game is clearly better for the fans.

Or just get rid of a separate practice squad and inactives. College sidelines show it's not a space issue 

I'm fine with it from a player safety standpoint, but 99.9% of the time the game is still going to be uncompetitive and borderline unwatchable if you get down to the 3rd QB on the depth chart.

Sure, Purdy started the season as QB3 and he was unquestionably good enough for games to be watchable, but he also moved up to QB2 before being pressed into starting. And his example brings up another point...if the emergency backup QB is really QB4 or QB5 rather than QB3, then it's even less likely he'll make a meaningful difference. I have yet to hear anyone advocating for the emergency backup QB for any rationale besides player safety who's thrown out a name for who the 49ers would have pressed into service in that spot on Sunday if it existed.

Really I don't understand how a professional football coach could think that trotting out a QB who literally could not throw due to injury was a better option than having another player come in and try. It's almost certain you're going to lose at that point, so why not go down swinging?

Kurt Warner has done some really good breakdowns of the 49ers offense and he constantly criticizes the lack of hot routes he works into his play design. It's one of the play design areas that he needs to improve on. I am guessing McDaniel brought that tendency with him to Miami. Another thing their offensive designs do is make bad offensive linemen look better. An example is Laken Tomlinson being a pro bowl level player in SF and then struggling badly with the Jets. It's why I think they are going to let McGlinchey walk and replace him with the rookie Zakelj they have been stashing on the PS all year.

Excuses from a Bengals Fan

In Order of "Things that Cost Us the Game, Most Impactful to Least"

1. Offensive linemen Hakeem Adeniji and Jackson Carman are good enough to fill in against inferior opponents, but will get absolutely steamrolled by talented pass rushers
2. Kansas City has talented pass rushers
3. Patrick Mahomes is a very good quarterback, even with limited mobility
4. Man, we should've kicked the ball out-of-bounds late in the 4th in order to avoid the potential for a game-winning punt return
5. Man, we really should've NOT HIT MAHOMES THREE YARDS OUT OF BOUNDS with 8 seconds left to gift the Chiefs with a game-winning FG attempt
6. The refs could've called the game more consistently

I'm not a Bengals fan, obviously, but I thought they played very well. Since this was a playoff game,it couldn't end in a tie, so one team had to win. I felt like it could have gone either right up until the final field goal. I don't think the Bengals should be ashamed for losing a close championship game, especially since they were down three starting offensive linemen. There's really no need to belittle them for losing a game that's essentially a coin flip.

I think we have a pretty good idea of what Purdy will be ... a Garoppolo-style point guard who distributes the ball to talented playmakers while relying on his good judgment and ability to read defenses to create plays. Less upside than Goff but less downside than Goff as long as he's playing for a coach who will work within his limitations. 

Lance is the bigger unknown to me, but I think Shanahan has shown how much he REALLY wants a quarterback with a cannon arm. Lance has that talent, so he'll probably win back his starting job in preseason by making big throws that Purdy can't. Whether he can actually get it done in-game will be an interesting question to answer. And with Purdy showing fans what his baseline performance level is this season, I think Lance will have a short leash.

As Tanier said, though, Shanahan's offense is built to run on pumpkins.

That uncertainty has ramped up - ESPN is reporting Purdy has a torn UCL and that it's a 6 month recovery regardless of whether or not he needs surgery (ESPN says he is seeking second opinions to see if surgery can be avoided).

The Eagles should be favored more than they are, especially given the injury situation. The Eagles pass rush, especially on a neutral field, is far superior to the Chiefs, and the Eagles have the better oline. Mahomes is going to take a beating, I suspect.

Sirianni seems unlikely to hesitate in late-game situations in the way Shanahan does.

I think Philly would have preferred to see Cincinnati -- they are built to stop a QB+2WRs team like Cincinnati, especially one with a suspect line and only an okay defense. Cincinnati's defense is built on misdirection, but I'm not sure that works against Philly, whose offense is built around simply bludgeoning you until you forget to cover a WR, or repeatedly going deep until you forget to overload the box. They aren't trying to outthink you so much as force you into one of two bad decisions. It's not flashy, as exemplified by their f***-you sneak tactic.

KC has Mahomes and Reid, and their fleet of TEs and catchy-RBs and utter absence of reliable WR kind of hits at what the Eagles aren't great at. It's not all roses -- KC is completely unable to power run, and that's a problem against Philly, given it's their primary weakness. It may come down to whether or not KC's pass-only defense can slow Philly's power-run game and big advantage in the trenches. They did against SF, but Hurts isn't Garoppolo. If Philly can bear trap Mahomes like they did against NYG and the 49ers, KC will have a bad day.

I don't really feel great about rooting against Andy Reid. I like Andy Reid.

The Cincinnati game with a gimpy Mahomes was an interesting peek into Old Andy Reid. Peak Mahomes and his creative aggression covers for a rash of Reid sins (and vice-versa).

On the one hand, we saw a return to some of his old flaws -- interesting time and challenge decisions, a streak of conservativism. 

On the other hand, we also saw a return of some of his old strengths -- pulling out effective game plans based on an injured or semi-functional QB in combination with a series of fungible scrap-heap WRs. He did that with the Eagles, too.

I didn't really hate the punt; the go-for-it metrics don't know Butker knew he couldn't make the kick from 55, and didn't know none of the eligible receivers were healthy. Playing for a stop/overtime is risky, but he was stranded in no man's land decision-wise with no good options. It could have gone badly. It turns out it worked.

One hundred percent yes!!!!

I'll be sad the eagles lost, but some of the sting will be lightened to see Andy Reid winning it. Plus, I love Mahomes, too. We can't lose!

(Plus it would be ironic if some kind of clock mismanagement played a part, maybe of the first half so it doesn't directly affect the outcome without a chance to overcome it.) 

Addendum: the Eagles have nothing to apologize for either. They played and won the games they needed to and were the top team in advanced metrics until the Hurts injury so it's not like they were overly lucky to be in this situation.

The Eagles were better at converting pressures into hits/sacks than the Cowboys were.

In short, they rush differently. And that difference was why SF lost two QBs and almost got McCaffery snapped in two on an option pass.