The boys from DW share their Super Bowl thoughts, giving y’all the opportunity to come back and laugh at them when it’s all over:
TEDDY ALLEN
Until Championship Sunday nearly two weeks ago, I thought Haason Reddick was either a former member of a boy band, an SEC guard who played briefly in the NBA, or the Secretary of the Treasury under Millard Fillmore.
Knew he sounded familiar.
But after Philadelphia trounced and whipped and in general destroyed quarterback-less San Francisco, 31-7, me and err’body who’d watched the blood-letting knew this man. Everyone was aware of him except for maybe the 49ers, who didn’t block him. Or maybe they couldn’t.
Reddick, Number 7, is Philadelphia’s defensive end. Both of them. He also plays linebacker and safety, sometimes all at the same time.
Against San Francisco, he finished the game with 39 tackles (24 for loss), 14 fumbles caused, nine fumbles recovered, three interceptions, and a 49er in a pear tree. Those aren’t the exact numbers, but they’re close. Maybe I low-balled the guy. Seemed as if there were four different Eagle defenders wearing Number 7 on every ill-fated 49er snap.
Remember the old wrestler with the Greatest Wrestler Nickname Ever?, One Man Gang? That was Reddick in the title game. He was a one man gang.
Philadelphia will win the game because of Reddick. If one of his legs falls off, they will win. If both legs fall off, they will still win: they might not cover, but they will win.
True, I am worried a bit about Patrick Mahomes, mainly because he can throw to Travis Kelce, the tight end and the Kansas City offense’s Reddick. There are at least three Kelces on every Chiefs pass, I swear. And one of them always catches it. I am hoping all the Reddicks can cover, at least part of the time, all the Kelces.
“But what about the Philadelphia offense?” you say. Well, I love the offensive line and I love Jalen Hurts. In This One Game, I love him more than Mahomes. Just do. (Even though I wish he hadn’t sung “Fly Eagles Fly” during the title game’s on-field postgame celebration, which reminded me why I don’t usually watch those things).
And if Jalen gets hurt(s), I fully expect Reddick to come in and throw two, maybe three touchdown passes. He is in a zone. A Fly Eagles Fly Zone.
-30-
JOHN JAMES MARSHALL
There are two things at play for me here — (1) I think the Philadelphia Eagles are clearly better at almost every position group and are simply the better overall team and (2) the woods are full of people who bet against Patrick Mahomes. They are easy to spot because they are the ones with nothing in their wallets.
If I were going to lay down some scratch on this game, I think the Eagles are the definite play. What is it, 1.5 or 2 points? Seems awfully low. The Eagles have a better offensive line, defensive line and overall defense. Philly’s No. 7 (Haason Reddick), who nobody had ever heard of a month ago, is suddenly Lawrence Taylor out there. Their receivers are much better than Kansas City, which is not surprising because they have the best receiver group in the NFL other than Cincinnati and the Chiefs basically have me and Teddy.
But here are a couple of warning signs — Jalen Hurts hasn’t been all that great since he came back from injury and KC defensive lineman Chris Jones continues to be a problem for whoever is trying to block him. Plus, have you seen the list of quarterbacks the Eagles have played the last few weeks? Brock Purdy, Daniel Jones and Andy Dalton aren’t exactly Hall of Famers.
There’s a couple of things I know — Mahomes is the best quarterback in the NFL and whenever a big play needs to be made, he’s going to throw it to the guy in the gold shoes. Travis Kelce ALWAYS seems to come up big (and he’s easy to spot.)
They always say that when it doubt, take the team with the better quarterback. So that’s what I’m going to do. Philadelphia may have the better team, but sometimes that doesn’t matter.
KANSAS CITY 30, PHILADELPHIA 24