Sunday Slate: It was always going to end this way unless it wasn't
The Eagles and Chiefs make their way to the Super Bowl
Commanders 23 at Eagles 55
It’s hard to think about this after looking at the total box score, but the Commanders were not far off from making a game of this. In fact, they mostly lost the same they won last week: With a huge turnover deficit that shifted things dramatically.
From a 14-12 game with 7:05 left in the second quarter, the Commanders gave up a 72-yard touchdown drive. Instead of getting a chance to drive the field, they fumbled the kickoff right back to the Eagles on their own 24. It was now 27-12. With just 39 seconds left in the half, Washington pushed 46 yards for a field goal. They stayed in what I’ll call “Daniels Clutch Range” for most of the third quarter, then Austin Ekeler fumbled at the Philly 49, Saquon Barkley pushed down field for 22 yards, and it was a three-score game with 12:24 to play — donezo.
Daniels threw a pick when the game was out of reach, but he spent most of the first three quarters playing stellar ball. A sack here, a tipped pass there. The Commanders couldn’t run the ball without injured lineman Sam Cosmi against a good Eagles front seven, they were losing the one-on-ones way too often. Daniels found 48 scramble yards and a score, but the two running backs combined for 19 carries for 51 yards. The funny part is that Robinson and Ekeler combined for 57 yards after contact per NFL Pro — they tried, they just never found a favorable situation.
Psychologically, the game is just summed up by the first drives. The Commanders took 18 plays and 7:03 to kick a field goal after converting two fourth downs. The Eagles just did this on play one:
Look at the Commanders front seven on the left side of the offensive line. Couldn’t stay on their feet, let alone contain this play.
It’s hard to call this anything but a successful year for the Commanders — perhaps the most successful year in franchise history — it was like a supersized version of the 2023 Texans season. They hit on quarterback. Dan Quinn not only was a good hire, but appeared to find an answer whenever they needed one and managed a hell of a fourth-down conversion scheme with Daniels. They created a great offense with only one real receiver of note. The defense was, if not fixed, patched up enough to compete. Cap space going forward will be plentiful. Dan Snyder was pissed off. About the only thing that went wrong for them all year was the Marshon Lattimore trade.
Despite looking tentative with the ball early in the game and having plenty of moments where he spun around like a top in his backfield, Jalen Hurts finally had an objectively good playoff game in his third try. A.J. Brown handily cooked Lattimore.
But the depth of this Eagles team and the tenaciousness of the defense makes them feel like an 80s juggernaut. They don’t win by generating open receivers — though their receivers are good enough that sometimes does happen. They simply keep beating up on you, wailing at you, until you are out-physicaled. Barkley is waiting to exploit you for an explosive run the exact moment one of your trail defenders gets tentative or picks himself. The defense is happy to let you check it down and beat the hell out of your receivers, and if you want to find that 18-yard field goal drive that’s fine. Everything is going to be an ordeal and nobody is going to have fun.
I don’t know that the Commanders did anything wrong in this game. They had a wildly good fake punt play. They went 4-for-6 on fourth-down attempts. The team just didn’t have the talent around Daniels to win this game. Couldn’t stop the Eagles defensive line enough times, couldn’t stop Saquon enough times, could only resort to holding on for dear life. Or jumping offsides for dear life, as it were. Their defense needed Frankie Luvu splash plays so desperately they made Shaun Hochuli read them the riot act on the goal line.
Nothing tells the tale of the game more than the Eagles visiting the red zone seven times and scoring touchdowns on all seven of them.
Bills 29 at Chiefs 32
It’s hard to call the Bills losing this game a wasted opportunity. Patrick Mahomes had 9.4 yards per attempt, rushed for two touchdowns, and outside of two sacks generally just handled the Bills defense whenever he felt like it.
Usually he got there by a simple formula: Where is Kaair Elam? (I really hope Christian Benford is okay, two concussions in seven days is scary, and the look on his face as he was driven off in a cart looked grossly defeated in a way that reminds you of all the bad things this sport can do to the human brain.)
At the same time, the Bills didn’t have to spot the Chiefs a lead early in the game as Josh Allen threw two near-picks on his first drive. And once they caught up, the Bills didn’t have to manage the game the way they did. It wasn’t that Sean McDermott was being too conservative this time, as Buffalo was happy to go for it with aplomb. The problem was the shape of their aggression.
The Bills only rarely found a way to challenge KC’s corners downfield, one of which was Mack Hollins Mossing Trent McDuffie for an essential score that kept the game tight heading into halftime.
OK, maybe it wasn’t completely a Mossing. It was a hell of a throw by Allen either way.
But Buffalo kept running Allen over the left guard in sneak spots, failing three times despite Jim Nantz loudly telling everyone on the broadcast that the Chiefs knew that was where the Bills preferred to run the ball on Allen sneaks. They also saw a superhuman performance from James Cook, who ran 13 times for 85 yards and two scores, and had this stretch play on fourth-and-goal:
It is unreal how long he stays in the air and gets that final surge after getting hit back. Phenomenal balance by Cook.
And they took a look at that and just kept rotating Cook out of the game. Cook looked by far the most explosive of any of Buffalo’s options and he didn’t touch the ball on the final drive. I’m no Ty Johnson hater, but c’mon, he doesn’t need to be getting half the snaps in this game when your main threat is running the ball because you can’t trust any of these receivers to win one-on-one outside of Khalil Shakir.
There is nothing intimidating about Patrick Mahomes running downhill at you. He’s not fast, he’s not elusive, and he’s not powerful. But he’s smart enough about what he’s doing and where he’s going, and defenses have taken enough personal foul penalties trying to treat him like a normal football player, that he’s kind of able to do whatever he wants anyway. The touchdown run that put the Chiefs back in front was all about that:
And yeah, I was just struck by how there’s not a single physically dominant thing about Mahomes’ game at this point. Lamar Jackson runs circles around whoever he wants and baits defensive linemen into games. Allen tries (and usually succeeds) at bowling over anybody in his way. Mahomes? It’s all guile. The closest athlete to him in my lifetime is probably Pete Sampras, and even that feels unfair because there’s not really a French Open haunting Mahomes.
The Bills successfully shifted to this run-first identity and I think made some real strides this year, but I’m not sure what to do with their 2025 roster. They’ll obviously part ways with Von Miller for cap space. But they are in a weird space where they’re kinda cap-locked still because they have lots of money going to (gulp) Curtis Samuel, Dawson Knox, Matt Milano, and Daquon Jones. And, you know, Allen’s cap hit is $43 million. It’s not an ideal spot. The good news is that I think they can cheap out on offense and do roughly the same thing as last year — the only offensive players they’re going to potentially have to move on from are Hollins, Johnson, and Amari Cooper. The problem is I don’t know where the defensive improvement is coming from without major cap space.
My initial Super Bowl read is: I think the Eagles have 10 of the 12 most talented players on the field. I’m scared to believe in them because as long as the Chiefs can be stout enough to hold Barkley to one or two megagains, Hurts versus Spagnuolo would scare the hell out of me as an Eagles fan.