After a week off, it’s officially Super Bowl week in Arizona. The Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles will square off Sunday in Super Bowl LVII.
The Chiefs and Eagles were among the favorites in their respective conferences for the regular season and entered the playoffs as the number one seed. That should make for a pretty good Super Bowl matchup, but is a blowout possible?
Danny Parkins and Andrew Fillipponi of the Audacy Original Podcast “1st & Pod” dove into possible scenarios for each team coming away with a blowout victory in the Super Bowl.
“I don’t see a scenario where the Chiefs blow out the Eagles. I don’t see that,” Parkins said (8:57 in player above). “I don’t think it’s in play that the Chiefs blow out the Eagles. But I think it’s absolutely in play that the Eagles win by double digits. I think there’s just a chance that they kick the s–t out of them, like physically, they just physically dominate both sides of the line of scrimmage.”
The Eagles ended the regular season with the third-most offensive yards per game and second-least defensive yards allowed as well. They had 70 sacks – 15 more than the second-place Chiefs.
“They’ve done it to everybody,” Parkins continued. “That’s a pretty good recipe to win a ton of football games. And the Chiefs’ defense is not as good as the Niners' defense and the Niners' defense held in there for a while but then I think that game got weird when they realized that they didn’t have a quarterback who could throw the ball and it spiraled out of control. But the Niners’ defense is better than the Chiefs’ defense.”
There is one question mark for the Eagles heading into the game, however, and that’s the health of Jalen Hurts.
“I’ll give you a scenario in which a blowout would happen and that’s if this shoulder thing with Hurts is as bad as he’s let on and he gets Chris Jones or somebody to land on him and aggravate that thing,” Fillipponi said, acknowledging that a major injury would shift any game.
“It still sounds – at least the Eagles and Hurts they continue to try to push the narrative – he’s going to play this game at less than 100%. We’ll see. He still does not look great throwing the ball. He’s not as precise. He’s not as accurate. He’s not the same quarterback as he was back in September or October. He’s just not,” Fillipponi continued. “Is it possible that we’re sitting here (next week) and it’s like ‘Man, we should’ve seen this coming because Jalen Hurts couldn’t make a decent throw more than 15 yards downfield’? Maybe.”
The Eagles may not need Hurts’ shoulder to be at 100% to win the game, though, due to their rushing attack. They’ve run for over 400 yards in two games while allowing less than 400 yards of total offense.
“I think that they are going to be able to run the ball,” Parkins replied. “ So as long as he is in the game, their zone-read game is as good as I’ve ever seen anybody do it.”
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