Seven months after the Kansas City Chiefs suffered a heartbreaking loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in February’s Super Bowl LIX, the two teams will match up again on Sunday on GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. After facing off on the NFL’s biggest stage in two of the last three seasons, the contest clearly has more meaning than your typical interconference pairing in Week 2.
“I think we know them, and they know us,” head coach Andy Reid said of the Eagles on Wednesday. “There are going to be wrinkles
in there [for] both teams, but [we’re] pretty familiar with each other. They have a lot of guys coming back — and we have a lot of guys coming back. So, you have that part of it.”
When the teams met in February, the Chiefs were shut out until the third quarter. After failing to put points on the board during the first quarter of last week’s 27-21 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in Brazil — and with crafty Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio looming — getting a faster start on offense is a priority.
“[We must start fast] from the very first play,” declared offensive coordinator Matt Nagy on Thursday. “The energy [and] the execution is very, very simple. The energy is organic. It can’t be fake energy — and it’s not going to need to be in this game.
“Coach Fangio? We all have a ton of respect for what he does. He does what he does, and he’s going to have some curveballs and changeups that he throws at you. In the end, it’s about playing football fast — and whoever does that better.
“I think [with] a fast start — playing fast, being able to be aggressive and mixing all that together — you’ll have good results. So we’re really looking forward to the challenge.”
On defense, a week after Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert sealed the upset win with his legs, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo must have a solution for an even more mobile passer: Philadelphia’s Jalen Hurts.
“It seems like we play one of these quarterbacks every week,” Spagnuolo observed on Thursday. “The guy we just got done playing? He’s a really good athlete. I give him a lot of credit for what he did with his legs. The guy we are getting ready to play this week is elite at that. We’ll talk till we’re blue in the face about pass rush lanes and containing — and we’ll have some things that we hope will take that away.”
After watching Herbert run uncontested down the sideline late in Week 1’s game, moving the chains on a third-and-14 to ensure the Los Angeles victory — many have called for Spagnuolo to keep a spy on Hurts. But the longtime defensive coach believes it is rarely that simple.
“With the spy, or whatever you want to call it,” he explained, “you’ve got to get them in those situations when you’re in first and second down. You can’t be spying people, because they’re going to run the ball right at you. So we’ve got to try to dictate it somehow by having some negative plays on first and second down and get things kind of steered in our direction.”
While the reigning champion Eagles are a formidable opponent, cornerback Trent McDuffie reiterated that every team the Chiefs play is top tier. Still, McDuffie has heavy respect for the Eagles’ wideouts.
“It’s the NFL,” the fourth-year pro said on Friday. “We go against a lot of great quarterbacks. We go against quarterbacks who can run, who can throw and who can do both.
“I just think, as an overall defense, we always rise up to those challenges. We take that head-on, and we know they’ve got DeVonta Smith, A.J. Brown and Jahan Dotson, who is a great player who can get in there. They do a lot of great things, and they do really well at what they do.
“So going into this game is just going to be more about us and being really good at the basics, versus doing anything outside the box or anything too crazy.”
Kansas City nearly mounted a comeback against Los Angeles behind the heroics of quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Although the effort fell short — and the team would prefer avoiding that position altogether — Mahomes’ teammates know he can always give them a chance to win.
McDuffie admits that having the face of the league on the sideline factors into the defense’s mindset.
“There’s always confidence,” he remarked. “Any time we’re down, up — whatever it is in the game — we always feel like on defense, as long as we get the ball back to him, we’ll always have a shot. I think he’s been one of those quarterbacks that, year-in and year-out, has brought us back. He’s won games for us. It’s a good feeling and a big confidence boost that you can go out there and make a few plays, [knowing that] once the ball is back in his hands, you have a good shot.”
While wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster has been part of some big comebacks in Kansas City, he thinks it goes beyond what Mahomes can do on his own.
“It’s more so [about] just keeping your composure,” the veteran wideout said on Friday. “We’ve put ourselves in this position before. We train ourselves in training camp for these situations — to be down and go out and put points on the board.”
But Smith-Schuster also understands that ultimately, it takes all three phases of the team to prevail — and that happens when players simply focus on doing their jobs.
“I think for us,” he said, “it’s just doing what we know: go out, execute, make the plays, and move on.”
