All year, the Chiefs just got by. One narrow victory after another. Through the regular season and the playoffs.
Sunday night, the magic was gone. Sunday night, against a formidable opponent with two weeks to prepare, Patrick Mahomes and Co. were overwhelmed.
They were trounced. Outclassed. Blitzed, 40-22, at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans in a game that wasn’t nearly that close. The Eagles looked like a dynasty, not the Chiefs. It was stunningly noncompetitive, almost hard to believe that the back-to-back champions were crushed so thoroughly, made to look like they didn’t belong on the sport’s biggest stage.
But if you really paid close attention to Kansas City this season, they weren’t dominant. Eleven of their 15 regular season wins were decided by a single score. The Chiefs were hardly impressive in their two playoff wins, struggling to get past the Texans in the divisional round and the Bills in the AFC Championship Game. Their point differential of plus-59 ranked third in the AFC West, behind the Chargers and Broncos. The Eagles, meanwhile, outscored the opposition by a whopping 160.
