Each week this NFL season, we celebrate the electric plays, examine the colossal mistakes, and explain the unexplained moments of the latest slate. Welcome to winners and losers. Which one are you?
Winner: Patrick Mahomes
At the end of his fifth season as an NFL starter, Patrick Mahomes already has an NFL Hall of Famer résumé. He won his second MVP on Thursday night after leading the NFL in passing yardage and passing touchdowns this season, and capped it off with a second Super Bowl championship and second Super Bowl MVP on Sunday against the Eagles.
Mahomes threw three passing touchdowns in Kansas City’s 38-35 win, but perhaps his most important play was a brave scramble. Just three weeks after suffering an ankle injury against the Jaguars, and that injury worsened again in the second quarter, he called off a 26-yard streak — his longest of the entire season — to put Kansas City in a tie in the red zone to bring game three minutes from time and helps to score an easy field goal that wins the game:
It’s the second Super Bowl Mahomes has led a double-digit second-half comeback: in 2020, the Chiefs trailed 20-10 at the end of the third quarter; on Sunday they were 24:14 behind at half time. In the fourth quarter of those two games, he threw four touchdowns and one interception.
Mahomes had just 182 passing yards and averaged fewer than 7 yards per attempt. He didn’t have any of his signature miracle throws; Eagles QB Jalen Hurts had more passing yards and more highlights. But in four hours of football, Mahomes made no mistakes. He had no turnovers, and despite being pressured on 25.9 percent of his dropbacks, he was never fired. He completed 21 of 27 passes and two of his incomplete passes were throwaways, essentially hitting 84 percent of his shots. He went the Chiefs’ entire postseason run without an interception. Mahomes is usually spectacular; he was reliable in the Super Bowl — and that’s what the Chiefs needed as they roared back to win their second title in four years.
Loser: ball safety
The best player in the Super Bowl wasn’t a hobbling Mahomes. It was Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts who played the best game of his fascinating football career. He threw for 304 yards and ran for three touchdowns; he threw pinpoint needle threaders between Kansas City cornerbacks; He scored the game-winning touchdown and two-point conversion in the fourth quarter.
But Hurts made a game-changing mistake. After the Eagles led 14-7 in the first half, Philadelphia called a QB tie for Hurts. The Chiefs read it perfectly, prompting Hurts to make a move to hit Kansas City linebacker Nick Bolton. Hurts awkwardly tore the ball out of his own hands. It was a casual fumble, and Bolton returned it for a touchdown for 36 yards:
It was a lifesaver when the Chiefs faltered. The Eagles were up by a touchdown and moved the ball at will throughout the first half; Suddenly the game was a draw. It would be foolish to think that game alone was responsible for the Eagles’ loss – they gave up points on every single drive in Kansas City’s second half – but it was a huge momentum shift and led to the biggest change in winning probability (by far) in any game all night.
Sunday night was proof Hurts is a good enough QB to win a Super Bowl. He’s a great passer, a sensational runner and a fantastic leader. He fit in big moments when he was younger – he played terribly in the national championship game as a freshman and was famously benched as a sophomore – but on Sunday night he was up to the task on the biggest stage … except for the time in he forgot to hold on to a soccer ball.
Winner: Kadarius Toney
We love an out of nowhere appearance at the Super Bowl! Who can forget former Seahawks receiver Chris Matthews (176 career receiving yards) who rushed for 109 yards and a TD against the Patriots in 2015, or former Washington running back Timmy Smith (602 career rushing yards) who was the was the only player with a 200-yard rushing game in the Super Bowl?
This year’s candidate is Kadarius Toney. A standout at the 2021 combine, he never scored a touchdown for the Giants, who picked him 20th overall in that year’s draft. Toney always seemed to have some inexplicable nagging injury; Though the Giants have struggled to find enough receivers to put them on the field this season, he barely played. Not particularly interested in a player drafted by his fired predecessors, New York’s new coaching staff passed Toney on to the Chiefs in October. He was listed as a starter for the Chiefs but only recorded 14 catches in the regular season.
But in the fourth quarter Sunday night, he made a few plays that will cement him in the Chiefs’ lore. First, he lost an Eagles defender on an awkward release to open wide for an easy touchdown on a Mahomes swing pass. I’m not sure the Eagles knew where Toney was until the pass was in the air.
That gave the Chiefs a 28-27 lead; A few minutes later, Toney helped prolong this. On a short punt, Toney broke a tackle, reversed the field and found himself behind a wall of Chiefs blockers. He showed his 4.38-second, 40-yard speed and got the ball to the Eagles’ 5-yard line. At 65 yards, it is the longest punt return in Super Bowl history.
Toney was a great addition for the Chiefs, who started the year with Skyy Moore trying (and generally failing) to return punts. He’s just as fast and talented as he was when the Giants drafted him, and now he has Patrick Mahomes to his side. Maybe Toney will become another Super Bowl hero of the mayfly — or maybe Sunday was the night the guy who was so quick to declare bankrupt began to turn his career around.
Loser: Defensive hold
I don’t think there’s a big conspiracy by NFL umpires to award championships to specific teams — but if there were, there would be 50-50 calls in the crucial minutes of close games — something that happens in the closing moments happened in the past two Super Bowls.
Super Bowl LVII was a thrill: The Chiefs and Eagles combined for nine touchdowns, 757 yards of offense, and highlight plays on defense and special teams. The Chiefs wiped out a 10-point lead, then the Eagles hit a late touchdown and two-point conversion to level the score at 35 with five minutes left. But the game ended in a disappointing fart.
With just under two minutes left, officials called Eagles defenseman James Bradberry to hold Chiefs receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, giving the Chiefs a first down at the 11-yard line. In an extremely rare instance of official honesty from an athlete, Bradberry admitted he snagged Smith-Schuster’s jersey— but it’s the kind of ticky-tack hold that didn’t seem to affect the game significantly. The reigning blog Football Zebras called it “One to pass on”:
The flag gave Kansas City a new set of downs, a backbreaker for the Eagles as they ran out of timeouts. It was possible for the Chiefs to effectively close the game without scoring a touchdown. Running back Jerick McKinnon missed an opportunity to score a touchdown by slipping inbounds to keep the clock ticking– I don’t know how he resisted the urge to score the touchdown in the Super Bowl; he deserves a trophy of sorts for that – then Mahomes knelt twice to clear the clock to eight seconds. Kicker Harrison Butker hit a chip-shot field goal from 27 yards in less than 10 seconds – the least exciting Super Bowl sweepstakes imaginable. (It wasn’t much different than two weeks ago when the Chiefs won the AFC championship game with a game-winning field goal after an unnecessary roughness call against the Bengals put the Chiefs within field goal range.)
It was also strikingly similar to the end of last year’s Super Bowl, when Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson was flagged for a questionable save by Rams receiver Cooper Kupp with less than two minutes left, setting up a game-winning Rams touchdown. This situation was slightly different as the Rams still needed to get a TD while the Chiefs were already in position to kick a go-ahead field goal. But both were dubious calls that turned third-down stops into first-downs in the red.
The umpires were pretty decent for most of the game, and some of the biggest calls went to Philadelphia (notably an overturned touchdown by Chiefs linebacker Nick Bolton on a catch fumble and an unstoppable call to Bradberry early in the game), but Am In the end, a call that didn’t need to be made resulted in a massive shift in determining who won the NFL championship. Once again.
Winner: Doinks
The Super Bowl is the time for you to bet on the dumbest things imaginable: the first song Rihanna will sing at halftime; the uniform number of the first TD scorer; and of course whether the coin toss is heads or tails. (Tails, as you may have heard, never fails, nor did it on a Sunday night.)
This year the hottest bet has been on doesks – field goals or extra points that bang against posts and make the beautiful metallic sound of failure. And virtually every bettor believed in the Super Bowl doink:
The stats on that weren’t good. This season, the NFL has had 223 missed field goals or extra points; only 27 of them had a description of “hit upright” or “hit the crossbar”. It’s possible that not every doink in the official play-by-play was described by the scorekeepers, so that could be an undercount – but if there were 27 doinks in 272 regular-season games, that’s about one in 10 games, but at +450, the implied odds were as if it happened once every five games.
But don’t you know, we have a Super Doink. For some reason, the Chiefs were attempting a field goal in fourth and third place at a time when their offense was averaging over 9 yards per play. Harrison Butker generously took one for Team Doink, putting the ball into the left post:
With over 90 percent of punters betting on this long shot, sports betting must have beaten that prop – but it could also have convinced millions of newbies that sports betting can be fun and whimsical, the first step in eventually getting them off convince bet on the relegation battle of the English third division. (Just a random example of this I may know something about it.)
Loser: Expensive weed
Ahead of this year’s Super Bowl, there was much talk about the new turf field that was being built specifically for the big game. Arizona stadium turf was often sub-par — some Michigan and TCU players struggled with footing at the Fiesta Bowl in December — but the NFL reportedly invested time, money and research into guaranteeing a better playing surface. The media wrote rave articles about an enduring new Bermuda compound developed by grass scientists in the state of Oklahoma with an investment from the US Golf Association; Turf Masters spent two years lovingly growing the grass for the game.
But almost from the moment the game started, the grass was disastrous. Turfs flew up when players switched directions, so much so that Fox reported at least six Eagles players swapped out their cleats for shoes with better traction at halftime.
But the slip persisted throughout the game on all possible plays. Here’s Eagles kicker Jake Elliott landing on his butt after slipping on the turf during a kickoff:
Running back Isiah Pacheco slipped while trying to celebrate a touchdown:
My instinct would be to toast the NFL for being careless enough to host a billion-dollar football game without even considering improving the playing surface. But it seems like the NFL put a lot of effort into improving the surface… and the turf guys just did a poor job? I’m not sure if incompetence is worse than carelessness – let’s find someone who can grow some weed!
Winner: Chris Stapleton
Every performance at the Super Bowl was great! No cynicism here! Sheryl Lee Ralph gave a smashing performance of “Lift Every Voice and Sing”; they made Babyface sing “America the Beautiful”; and DON’T SAY ANY BAD ABOUT RIHANNA, SHE WAS IN THE SUPER BOWL HALFTIME SHOW WHILE PREGNANT.
But only one performer made a coach cry: Chris Stapleton’s gentle rendition of the national anthem like Tennessee whiskey. Cameras caught Eagles coach Nick Sirianni with blueberry-sized tears streaming down his face:
It’s possible it was just the emotion of the moment, as opposed to the actual quality of the singing, and that even if DJ Khaled had done the national anthem, Sirianni would have cried. Regardless, it was the most impressive cry we’ve seen on an NFL field since Knowshon Moreno.