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Albert Breer's Biggest Takeaways For Super Bowl LVII

Albert Breer's Biggest Takeaways For Super Bowl LVII


SUPER BOWL LVII PREDICTIONS: MMQB STAFF PICKS FOR EAGLES-CHIEFS

Our writers and editors each pick a champion, a final score and an MVP, plus one
bold prediction for the big game.
 * Author:
   The MMQB Staff
 * Publish date:
   Feb 9, 2023


IN THIS STORY:

Philadelphia Eagles
Kansas City Chiefs
 * 
 * 
 * 
 * 



Super Bowl LVII is finally upon us! After 22 weeks of buildup, it’s time to play
the final game. The Eagles and Chiefs enter a matchup of No. 1 seeds, and the
point spread indicates that we should be in for a close game.

Heading into the playoffs, our panel of eight writers and editors were spread as
evenly as ever, with seven teams picked to reach Glendale, Ariz., and six picked
as champions.



We remain split, as four picks have come in for the Eagles and four have come in
for the Chiefs. Below we’ll give you everyone’s pick for the winner, score, MVP
and a bonus bold prediction.





Here are our pickers:

Albert Breer, senior NFL reporter
Conor Orr, senior writer
Greg Bishop, senior writer
Michael Rosenberg, senior writer
Andrew Brandt, business of football columnist
John Pluym, managing editor
Gary Gramling, senior editor
Mitch Goldich, editor



Kevin Jairaj/USA TODAY Sports (Mahomes); Cary Edmondson/USA TODAY Sport (Jones);
Michael Hickey/Getty Images (Kelce); Scott Taetsch/Getty Images (Hurts); Bill
Streicher/USA TODAY Sports (Brown); Bill Streicher/USA TODAY Sports (Reddick)






ALBERT BREER

Super Bowl: Chiefs 27, Eagles 24
MVP: Patrick Mahomes

In his last act as 49ers defensive coordinator, DeMeco Ryans left the bones for
a Super Bowl game plan out there for Chiefs DC Steve Spagnuolo. He crowded the
line. He sent simulated pressure. And through one half of the NFC championship
game, he held the Eagles to fewer than four yards per carry and, outside of
DeVonta Smith’s circus catch on fourth-and-3, a whole lot of nothing in the
passing game. Eventually, the weight of carrying an offense hobbled by
quarterback injuries broke Ryans’s unit. But that doesn’t mean his plan didn’t
work. And the Chiefs’ defense, while not as good as the Niners’, won’t have as
much asked of it, with Patrick Mahomes running the show on the other side of the
ball. So put me down for a dogfight of a game, with Kansas City’s
force-of-nature at quarterback, as usual, being the difference maker.






Bold prediction: Someone other than Travis Kelce will lead the Chiefs in
receiving yards. The Eagles have been really good against tight ends all
year—only three have gone over 50 yards on them (the Titans’ Chigoziem Okonkwo,
Saints’ Juwan Johnson, Steelers’ Pat Freiermuth), none have topped 70 yards, and
Philly just held 49ers All-Pro George Kittle to three catches and 32 yards
(though that has a bit of an asterisk, because of the Niners’ QB situation). So
I trust Jonathan Gannon to have a plan to take out Kelce with the back end of
his defense, and make Mahomes look elsewhere for answers in critical situations.




CONOR ORR

Super Bowl: Eagles 31, Chiefs 30
MVP: Boston Scott





I think the Eagles are going to be able to manipulate and contain Chris Jones
better than the Bengals did. Thus, I think the Eagles are going to be able to
run their offense without much of an issue. And if the Eagles are able to run
their offense without much of an issue, I think they are going to score a
boatload of points. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem for Mahomes, but I
think his need to pass early in the game and the Eagles’ speed on defense will
force him into some less-than-perfect football. Ultimately, this game, like the
Chiefs’ last appearance in the Super Bowl, will come down to an ability to
handle rushers from multiple locations. Against the Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV,
Mahomes was helpless without the aid of any ancillary blockers or extra tight
ends. Will that be the same fatal flaw in Kansas City’s game plan, or will we
see a more whole Chiefs offense that is balanced formationally and doesn’t
require Mahomes to move as much on his injured ankle?






Bold prediction: I already made 13 bold predictions, and you should read them
first! But if I had to scrape the contents of my brain for one final bold
prediction, I would say this: Jerick McKinnon, a former quarterback at Georgia
Southern (who has a cannon, by the way), will at some point throw a pass in this
game. It would make some sense if, for example, Mahomes was hobbled and the
Chiefs could run a little bit of an academy-style option to throw the Eagles’
defense off course. I don’t know when it’s going to happen and I don’t know why,
but I do know that McKinnon won’t miss when he gets his shot. The Philly Special
was so yesterday, anyway.




GREG BISHOP

Super Bowl: Eagles 24, Chiefs 21
MVP: Jalen Hurts





Look, the Eagles are a lot like their budding superstar of a quarterback.
They’re doubted, doubted and doubted some more. But when Hurts has been healthy,
they’ve just rolled people up, almost without exception. Philadelphia has a
complete team. They Eagles are great on offense, even better on defense and
exhibit few, if any, weaknesses on special teams. They’ve proved over the course
of the season that they can beat teams in different ways. They’ve won with
offensive explosions, defensive clamp-downs and special teams star turns.
They’ve even won in different ways just on offense: with Hurts running a ton,
with efficient passing, with doing just enough to get by. Mahomes remains the
single greatest wild card in pro football. He could lift the Chiefs, with their
own stars and a complete roster, to victory. But I just keep thinking back to
the conference championships. Philadelphia blew out a very good San Francisco
team. Kansas City narrowly defeated a very good Cincinnati team. That all lines
up with an Eagles triumph for me.






Bold prediction: The Eagles’ defense will limit the Chiefs’ vaunted, excellent,
dangerous offense to fewer than 250 yards.

Watch Super Bowl LVII live with fuboTV: Start a free trial today!


MICHAEL ROSENBERG

Super Bowl: Chiefs 27, Eagles 23
MVP: Patrick Mahomes

So the Chiefs are headed to the Super Bowl against a team with a deeper roster,
led by a nasty defense and an excellent young coach. Sounds like the
Chiefs-49ers Super Bowl in 2019 to me! If we were drafting players from each
team, we would probably draft 20 Eagles before we got to 20 Chiefs. But that
isn’t how this works. I have extreme faith in Mahomes, especially after he will
get two more weeks to rest his ankle. I also have extreme faith in Andy Reid,
who is probably—this isn’t hyperbole—the best coach in NFL history with two
weeks to prepare. The previous four seasons in the Mahomes era have finished
like this: two overtime losses in the AFC championship game, one Super Bowl win,
one Super Bowl loss when Kansas City’s offensive line was decimated and
overmatched. These guys are a damn tough out.






Bold prediction: A.J. Brown will lose it on the sideline, and Philly sports
radio will have its go-to topic for the rest of the calendar year. Brown, who
averaged 88 receiving yards per game, has 50 yards—total—in two playoff games.
Chiefs rookies Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson have been playing well. Jalen
Hurts is an excellent deep-ball thrower, but Kansas City is more vulnerable to
short- and medium-range passes. Brown has already expressed his frustration at
times, but it will be magnified when he does it in the Super Bowl.




ANDREW BRANDT

Super Bowl: Eagles 34, Chiefs 17
MVP: Jalen Hurts

I have been a broken record since September: It is the Eagles’ year; we are all
just living in it. Their dominance on the offensive line is something that has
been talked about, although I am not sure if people understand how historically
good the unit is. And, oh, by the way, the defensive line has more sacks than
all but one or two teams in the history of the sport. The inside-out building of
this team will be on full display Sunday. The Eagles will pass (and sack
Mahomes) in the first half to get the lead, but then they will run, run and run
some more in the second half to hold and build the lead. They will continue one
of the most—if not the most—lopsided playoff runs in history after trouncing an
overmatched Giants team and a 49ers team without a quarterback (thanks to the
Eagles’ defensive line). Hurts will get the MVP by default; it really should go
to the offensive line, but that would be too far outside the box for old-line
MVP voters. As has happened in so many Eagles games this year, it may not be
pretty and it may not be close, but it will be decisive.






Bold prediction: In line with my game prediction, I predict that four—count
them, four (4)—Eagles will have more rushing yards than any Chief. Those four
will be Miles Sanders, Scott, Kenneth Gainwell and Hurts. This rushing attack is
not as sexy or pretty as the Chiefs’ passing attack, but it will prove much more
effective.


JOHN PLUYM

Super Bowl: Chiefs 27, Eagles 24
MVP: Patrick Mahomes



This is Mahomes’s moment. It could also be the time where a now-retired Tom
Brady passes the Super Bowl baton to Mahomes for the next 10 to 12 years. Brady
was and will always be the biggest clutch player in Super Bowl history. But now
Mahomes could become the toughest player in the game’s history, playing with a
high ankle sprain. As the MVP of the league, I expect Mahomes to get the ball
out quickly to avoid pressure from the Eagles. It’s going to be a dink-and-dunk
game for Mahomes, who has shown all season he’s more than capable of taking what
the defense gives him and not forcing the ball down the field.






Bold prediction: I bombed out picking the 49ers and Bengals to go to the Super
Bowl, so I have nothing to lose if I bomb out on this. So here goes: Travis
Kelce will catch 12 passes for more than 150 yards, including the game-winning
score with less than two minutes to go in the game, giving Andy Reid revenge
over his former team.


GARY GRAMLING

Super Bowl: Chiefs 34, Eagles 31
MVP: Patrick Mahomes



If this game were played in October, you’d call it a coin flip. Since it’s not
October—by the way, take the rotting jack-o’-lanterns off your porch, you
animal!—and the teams had two weeks to prepare, I’ll give a slight edge to the
Andy Reid staff, since we’ve seen what he and they and their players can do to
opponents with that extra prep time. Which isn’t to say the Eagles’ staff can’t
do the same; they had the 49ers’ linebackers in an absolute blender and got
Haason Reddick two clean shots on then healthy quarterbacks last round. But both
offenses should be able to do what they want. Mahomes had two weeks to heal, and
what, they’re gonna start throwing flags on that offensive line now? He’ll have
time and space to do his thing. And if Fred Warner and Dre Greenlaw had those
kinds of issues finding the ball against the Eagles’ run game, I fear for Nick
Bolton & Co. I think Sunday will bring a lot of sustained drives and a
back-and-forth affair, and it will probably turn on whichever team is the
beneficiary of some weird, fluky turnover.






Bold prediction: A record 83 penalty flags will be thrown during the
game—including 17 false-start penalties on Lane Johnson—turning Super Bowl LVII
into an interminable slog. With the game still scoreless midway through the
fourth quarter and—thanks to referee Carl Cheffers’s uncharacteristically
lengthy conferences and explanations—the clock hitting 2 a.m. on the East Coast,
both teams agree to call it a night. As the players leave the field, Cheffers
removes his mask and reveals that there is no Carl Chaffers—the official you’ve
all come to know and love is actually Ira Kelce, the long-, long-lost third
Kelce brother, and he’s spent decades climbing the officiating ranks as part of
his plot to one-up his famous brothers. But then he pulls off another mask
revealing he’s actually Shawn Hochuli, which makes much more sense because this
game is pretty much par for the course for a Hochuli crew. A confused audience
never gets closure as to whether the game will be resumed or replayed (or on the
question of how Hochuli and Cheffers worked different games in different cities
over the years), as Fox ends its broadcast and starts the premiere episode of
Gordon Ramsay’s new show, in which he critiques and berates ... uh ... let’s
say, HVAC repairmen.







MITCH GOLDICH

Super Bowl: Eagles 30, Chiefs 26
MVP: Jalen Hurts

My bracket from before wild-card weekend is in good shape, as I was the only
person on this panel to correctly envision the two top seeds waltzing into the
Super Bowl. It’s fine; none of them will scroll down this far to see that I’m
making fun of them. Pretty much everything I wrote in January has turned out to
be true … but I am now flip-flopping! At the time, I was worried about the
Eagles being banged up. Now they look like the healthier team heading into the
Super Bowl, even if Mahomes has had two weeks to rest that ankle. I am picking
the Eagles for all the reasons you would expect after reading two weeks of
wall-to-wall Super Bowl coverage. The full complement of starters, the adaptable
offense that can win with the run or pass, the ferocious pass rush and excellent
corners. I think this is where the injuries to the QB, receivers and secondary
will catch up to the Chiefs. I don’t think it’ll be easy for Philly’s offense
all day, but a short field off a turnover will help lead to seven of the 30
points. Brown will have a big day, and people will argue he deserves the MVP
award, but they’ll give it to Hurts because that usually feels like the right
thing to do.






Bold prediction: All right, I’m calling my shot. Put me down for a Super Bowl
octopus. This is a bigger homer pick than saying the team from my hometown will
win the game, but let the record show I have never predicted a Super Bowl
octopus until this year. I am not the boy who cried octopus every February. To
back up: The octopus is the stat I invented, coining the phrase for when a
player scores a touchdown and then immediately scores the ensuing two-point
conversion. It has gained enough of an internet following that people who are
not me also discuss it online, and a growing number of sportsbooks have offered
it as a prop bet for the Super Bowl for the last four seasons. This is the year
I’m calling it. Both starting QBs had one this very regular season! Travis Kelce
could do it on any given drive. McKinnon had one for the Vikings in 2017. This
is the year the bets cash, and, yes, I’d be willing to come on your podcast to
talk about it.




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