For the second time in three years, the Eagles and Chiefs will meet in the Super Bowl.
Souhan: Vikings can feel Bills’ pain following Buffalo’s latest playoff exit
Running quarterbacks, running backs highlight the conference championship games.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
January 27, 2025 at 5:29AM
Which is remindful of the greatest quote in Super Bowl history, from the Cowboys’ Duane Thomas: “If it’s the ultimate game, why are they playing it again next year?”
• New rule: Teams from freezing winter climates who have lost four or more Super Bowls without a championship get to join forces and form one super team. Welcome to the Vikings roster, Josh Allen and James Cook.
The Bills are the Vikings’ Brothers From Another (Super Bowl) Smother. One of these teams has to win it all someday.
• Most pregame analysis centers on quarterbacks and matchups.
Most pregame analysis should center on turnovers.
If not for turnovers, the Ravens would have been in the AFC Championship Game. Baltimore committed three in its loss at Buffalo last week.
If not for turnovers, the Commanders could have competed with the Eagles. Washington fumbled three times and threw an interception.
• You’re sick of the Chiefs?
Why do you watch sports?
The Chiefs have positioned themselves to become the first team to win three consecutive Super Bowls by outsmarting the league.
The Chiefs have won 17 consecutive one-score games.
Why are you not entertained?
• The Chiefs remain the worst one-loss team in NFL history. They soon might be the worst one-loss team to win a Super Bowl.
• The Giants let Saquon Barkley leave, and he rushes for 2,000 yards and leads his new team to a conference championship.
The Giants later released quarterback Daniel Jones, and the Vikings signed him.
Would it be surprising if Jones, like Barkley, proved that he was held back by the Giants’ offensive system?
Would it be surprising if Jones became the Vikings’ next bridge quarterback to overachieve, especially considering that he was a better quarterback before joining the Vikings than was Sam Darnold?
Jones led a team to the playoffs and won a road playoff game. Darnold never came close to leading a team to the playoffs before 2024.
• When it comes to big quarterback decisions, fortune favors the bold.
The Eagles had Carson Wentz, the second pick in the 2016 draft, when they selected Jalen Hurts in the second round in 2020.
The Chiefs had Alex Smith, the first pick in the 2005 draft and a fixture in the playoffs, when they chose Patrick Mahomes in the first round in 2017.
• The two winning quarterbacks Sunday produced a combined five rushing touchdowns. Remember, not long ago, NFL teams wanted standstill pocket passers.
• Barkley is trying to become the third back to lead the NFL in rushing, then win a Super Bowl. The others: Emmitt Smith three times with Dallas, and Denver’s Terrell Davis in 1998.
So it happened four times in the 1990s, before the running back position became devalued.
And had Ravens tight end Mark Andrews not had a key fumble and a key dropped pass last week, the second-leading rusher in the league this year, Derrick Henry, would have been in the AFC Championship Game and perhaps the Super Bowl.
Also: Seven of the NFL’s 10 leading rushers were in the playoffs.
So, in a way, the Raiders’ hiring of 73-year-old Pete Carroll to be Las Vegas’ head coach makes sense. Carroll loves the power running game.
• The Eagles’ Brotherly Shove should not exist. It is a rugby play. An NFL offense should have to execute an actual play to pick up a first down, not form the kind of amorphous wedge that the NFL rule book has always tried to prohibit.
If the Brotherly Shove and Tom Brady are both going to be a big part of Super Bowl LIX, should we just cancel it?
• Mahomes is 29. He won’t turn 30 until Sept. 17, 2025. He has a chance to win four Super Bowls, and a chance to become the first quarterback ever to win three in a row, well before he turns 30.
We’re going to have to start viewing quarterbacks in the Mahomes era the way we viewed competitors of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods in their prime. The lack of championships produced by Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson is a result of the existence of the son of a former Twins righthander.
Saquon Barkley consulted with his family before the star running back decided — yes, it was time to leave his only professional home with the Giants and sign with the Eagles.
