Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts said this week that the team’s Super Bowl LVII loss to the Chiefs has been a “great driving force” for him and it’s not the only part of their history that’s playing a role in the team’s run this year.
The Eagles looked like they might have had a shot at making the Super Bowl when they opened the 2023 season with a 10-1 record, but they lost five of their final six regular season games before being bounced from the playoffs by the Bucs in the Wild Card round. That led to speculation that they might fire head coach Nick Sirianni and make other major changes, but they wound up limiting the coaching changes to the coordinator level while regrouping over an offseason that saw them add running back Saquon Barkley, linebacker Zack Baun and others.
It’s clear that approach had the desired result and Sirianni said at his Tuesday press conference that he’s thankful for what happened last year because of the impact it had on this team.
“You’re going to have bad plays, you’re going to have good plays and it’s about being able to focus your mindset on the next one,” Sirianni said. “This team’s embraced adversity. You never know, but even going back to the 2023 season, which we haven’t talked about a lot since the start of the year, we’re grateful for that. We’re thankful for that. As bad as it sucked at the time, I know I’m grateful for that — I’ll speak for myself — because it shaped us into who we are now and a big reason why we’re back here.”
It’s hard to discount the contributions of players and coaches who weren’t part of last year’s team, but this year’s squad heard grumbling after a 2-2 start and at other points when their offense wasn’t clicking as hoped so everyone in New Orleans this week can say they’ve been able to turn bad turns into positive results.
The rules the NFL put in place to deal with Tom Brady’s status as both an owner of the Raiders and a broadcaster for Fox Sports will be tweaked this week.
Brady, who is set to call Super Bowl LIX with Kevin Burkhardt, is typically barred from team facilities, practices, and production meetings heading into games because of his stake in the Raiders. Chiefs owner Clark Hunt said that the production meeting portion of that edict will be dropped heading into this weekend’s game.
“When [Brady] was approved as an owner of the Raiders, there were a lot of discussions internally and that ended up being the recommendation of the league office, that it didn’t make sense to have him in the production meetings,” Hunt said, via TheAthletic.com. “That’s where that rule came from. Since he’s doing the game this week, we have no issue with him being in our production meetings. He’ll have the access that any broadcaster would have.”
Brady will also be allowed into Eagles production meetings, but he will not be able to attend practices for either team. In his Monday press conference, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said that Brady has been “incredibly cooperative” with the league about conflicts of interest in his first season as both a team owner and broadcaster.
After drafting Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs coach Andy Reid kept him on the bench for his rookie season, while Alex Smith led the Chiefs to the playoffs. Reid says that was the best move for everyone involved.
Reid said today that having a veteran like Smith there to show Mahomes how to conduct himself as a professional was key to Mahomes’ development.
“I’m not saying he couldn’t have been as great as he is now if he didn’t sit, but being with Alex Smith I thought was something you can’t buy,” Reid said. “He was able to sit there and watch a guy who’s the ultimate professional, on and off the field, and just get an idea of the lay of the land of how things work in this league. I think that’s helped him in that part of his career. I’m sure if he stepped in as a rookie he probably would have been just as great as he is now, but that helped, for sure.”
Mahomes is a uniquely talented quarterback, but he was also drafted by the perfect team to make the most of his talents. That includes having Reid as a coach, and it also includes having the ability to spend his rookie year learning behind Smith, and then taking over for Smith when he was ready.
After the Chiefs won the AFC Championship Game, tight end Travis Kelce said that he loves being seen as a villain by those who have grown weary of Kansas City’s success.
On Monday night in New Orleans, quarterback Patrick Mahomes had a somewhat different view on being cast in that light. Mahomes didn’t show the same fondness that Kelce did for being labeled that way, but he made it clear that he doesn’t want to see anything change about the reasons why others might see them that way.
“I don’t even think it’s embracing being the villains,” Mahomes said. “We embrace who we are, and we believe we play the game the right way. We believe that we play with a lot of heart and a lot of passion for the game and then we win football games. If winning football games makes you a villain, we’re gonna keep going out there and doing it.”
The Chiefs’ success has led to enough grumbling about the way their games are officiated that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell addressed it at his press conference on Monday. Goodell called it a “ridiculous theory” and the bad feelings about the AFC champs will only get stronger if they finish off their three-peat this week.
Neither the Eagles nor the Chiefs have the same roster as they had in Arizona two years ago, but the memories of Super Bowl LVII are still on Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts’s mind as they head into Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans.
The Eagles led going into the fourth quarter of that game and then tied it back up on a Hurts touchdown run with just over five minutes to play, but the Chiefs drove for a field goal in the final seconds that lifted them to a 38-35 win. Hurts ran for three touchdowns and threw for another in the loss, but also lost a fumble and he said on Monday night that the experience was an informative and motivating one for him.
Hurts said all games have “good, bad or indifferent” lessons to be learned and that the ones from the last Super Bowl have helped him “become wiser, grow and mature.”
“It’s had a great driving force,” Hurts said. “It lit a flame, lit a fire in me, and to have this opportunity again is exactly what you work for.”
The Eagles no longer have center Jason Kelce, but they have added running back Saquon Barkley to the mix and his presence gives their offense a dimension it didn’t have the last time around. Sunday will show us if that and the lessons Hurts and others have learned are enough to make the Eagles the last team standing this time around.
There’s little doubt about what move of the 2024 offseason had the most impact on the 2024 season.
Eagles General Manager Howie Roseman’s move to sign running back Saquon Barkley early in free agency paid off in every way. Barkley had one of the best seasons of any running back in NFL history to help propel the Eagles back to the Super Bowl for the second time in the last three years.
The move to sign Barkley ran counter to recent trends regarding investing in running backs, but Roseman said it was “not a hard trigger to pull” and that he was confident that he’d produce at a high level with the Eagles.
“I’d like to say he’s exceeded expectations, but he’s always been one of the best players I’ve ever seen whenever I’ve watched him and I have always known about what kind of person he is because it’s not hard to find that out,” Roseman said, via Tim McManus of ESPN.com. “So I’m really not surprised by any of this, and I don’t say that in an arrogant way, it’s based on who he is, nothing to do with me, because this is who he’s always been. And I’m just glad everyone gets to see that.”
The Eagles’ poor finish to the 2023 season dimmed some expectations for the team heading into the season, but moves like signing Barkley and linebacker Zack Baun helped turn things around in a hurry. That reflects well on Roseman and a Super Bowl ring would make for an ideal cap to his year.
The Eagles held their second practice of the week on Thursday and the injury report looked pretty much the same as the last one.
Left guard Landon Dickerson (knee), lirunning back Kenneth Gainwell (concussion, knee), tight end Dallas Goedert (rest, ankle), center Cam Jurgens (back), cornerback Eli Ricks (illness), and wide receiver DeVonta Smith (hamstring) remained out of practice. In most of the cases, it seems likely that rest was the bigger reason for their inactivity than any injury.
The Super Bowl teams put out injury designations as if they were playing this weekend and Gainwell was the only member of that group listed as questionable. Wide receiver Britain Covey (neck), defensive end Brandon Graham (elbow), and tight end C.J. Uzomah (abdomen) got the same tag with Covey and Graham working on a limited basis.
Linebacker Zack Baun (groin) also sat out practice. Running back Saquon Barkley and wide receiver A.J. Brown rested while linebacker Nolan Smith (illness) was limited after being added to the report.
The Eagles will practice in Philadelphia again on Saturday before heading to New Orleans.
The Eagles are facing the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, just as they were two years ago, but one major difference is this time, the Eagles have Saquon Barkley. Barkley says he remembers that previous Super Bowl — and wanting the Chiefs to win.
Asked if he was rooting against the Eagles, Barkley said he absolutely did, because he played for the Giants at the time and the Giants had lost to the Eagles three times, including in the divisional round of the playoffs.
“Of course I was rooting against them,” Barkley said. “They had knocked us out of the playoffs. There was no part of me that wanted the Eagles to win, but it’s funny to look back on it now . . . being here with a lot of those guys that were part of that team.”
Barkley said he had been in Arizona to participate in Super Bowl media activities before the game two years ago.
“That stuff is fun, Radio Row and all that, but I like this better,” Barkley said of preparing to play in the Super Bowl.
Defensive end Brandon Graham was back on the practice field for the Eagles on Thursday for the first time since he tore his triceps in Week 12.
Graham believed his season was over, but his recovery has gone well and the Eagles’ run to the Super Bowl has given him more time to get cleared for a return to the field. While it’s too soon to know if that will happen before February 9, Graham said the process got off to a good start.
“Today was a good one, tomorrow we’ll see what happens and we’re just gonna keep working until we get there,” Graham said, via Eliot Shorr-Parks of WIP.
Graham said that he feels his conditioning is good and that he’ll be able to do anything asked of him if he is in the lineup against the Chiefs.
“I don’t feel restricted at all,” Graham said. “It’s a good balance. Whatever I gotta do to get ready for this one game, I feel like I can do it.”
The Eagles have two more practices in Philadelphia and three practices in New Orleans before Super Bowl LIX.
The Chiefs signed veteran D.J. Humphries during the regular season with the hope that he’d solidify their left tackle spot, but a hamstring injury in his first game forced the Chiefs to go with another option.
Left guard Joe Thuney kicked out to the tackle spot with Mike Caliendo taking over on the interior. Humphries has recovered, but Thuney has held up well at the new spot and Chiefs head coach Andy Reid does not sound inclined to consider any change ahead of Super Bowl LIX
“Yeah, it’ll probably be the same,” Reid said at his Thursday press conference. “Again, we’ll rotate them all in there, but I think it’ll probably end up being the same when it’s all said and done.”
Thuney’s versatility helped solidify the protection in front of Patrick Mahomes — he’s been sacked six times in five games with Thuney at left tackle — so it’s no surprise that the Chiefs aren’t planning to break something that they’ve already fixed.
