Super Bowl 59 preview, pick: Chiefs’ 3-peat comes down to slowing Eagles’ Saquon Barkley
Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs have rolled through three straight postseasons.
They’ve won 17 of 19 games they’ve played this season.
They are one more win away from achieving what no one in the NFL ever has: winning three consecutive Super Bowls.
But Kansas City hasn’t faced any threat close to what it’s getting in Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans Sunday.
Saquon Barkley is coming right at the Chiefs’ quest for a three-peat.
The Philadelphia Eagles’ running back nearly broke Eric Dickerson’s NFL record for rushing yards in a regular season in 2024. Barkley romped for 2,005 yards this season. He was within 100 yards of Dickerson’s 41-year-old record entering the Eagles’ final regular-season game. But Barkley and most Eagles starters sat out that finale to rest for the playoffs. Philadelphia already had everything clinched for that day last month.
In their two previous runs to winning the Super Bowl plus this one to the edge of history, the Chiefs haven’t faced a challenge like Barkley.
It’s easy to say Mahomes, or Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, are the keys to this Super Bowl.
But Mahomes is going to get his. He always does. He’s going to run sideways and throw from ridiculous arm angles and find receivers for receptions that defy belief.
He always does. He’s one win from tying Tom Brady’s NFL record of 10 consecutive playoff victories, set 20 years ago.
And, yes, like Mahomes the 26-year-old Hurts is already seasoned on this grand stage. He completed 27 of 38 passes for 304 yards and a touchdown with one lost fumble while almost beating Mahomes and the Chiefs in Super Bowl 57. He and the Eagles lost 38-35 to begin this Kansas City run of titles, and end Hurts’ third NFL season.
Yet Super Bowl 59 comes down to Barkley.
If he runs on his 28th birthday Sunday against a Chiefs run defense that has struggled this postseason — run as Barkley has against everyone else this season — Philadelphia will win its second Super Bowl in franchise history, on its fifth try.
If Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo can do what he often has, devise a plan to take out his foe’s biggest weapon and slow down Barkley, the Chiefs will have their historic three-peat.
“We gotta have our best game yet,” Spagnuolo said this week in New Orleans. “And we gotta play as well as a unit — and as well as we ever had — to be successful against this guy.”
Saquon Barkley’s excellence
Barkley has 2,447 yards rushing in all games this season, including the playoffs. He is 30 yards from breaking Hall of Famer Terrell Davis’ NFL single-season record of 2,476 in the Denver Broncos’ Super Bowl-title season of 1998. Davis remains the last player to win the NFL’s rushing title (2,008 yards in ‘98) and the Super Bowl in the same season.
Playing behind one of the league’s best offensive lines — wouldn’t the Seahawks like to have one of those? — Barkley has rushed for 100 yards in five consecutive games. He’s topped 100 yards in nine of his last 10 starts, and 14 times in 19 games this season. He’s had 150 or more yards rushing six times. He’s topped 200 yards in a game twice, including in the divisional round of the playoffs with 205 yards with two touchdowns in the Philadelphia snow to bury the Los Angeles Rams.
In the NFC championship, Barkley romped on with 118 yards and three touchdowns on just 15 carries as the Eagles walloped Washington 55-23.
Look for the Eagles to send Barkley outside on many sweeps and toss plays wide of stud tackles Jordan Mailata on the left side and Lane Johnson on the right. Philadelphia play caller Kellen Moore will do that to stay away from Kansas City’s best defensive player, All-Pro tackle Chris Jones inside.
Moore knows this postseason the Chiefs are allowing 104.5 yards rushing per game and 6.1 yards per play on runs outside the tackles, away from the destructive Jones.
The Chiefs vs. the run
Spagnuolo’s Chiefs have never allowed a 100-yard rusher in the postseason in their six seasons with the 65-year-old defensive coordinator designing their schemes. Kansas City has gone 18 consecutive games without allowing a 100-yard rusher.
But Barkley has been revving up his game beyond even his regular-season greatness this postseason — at the same time the Chiefs’ have slipped in stopping running backs.
Kansas City allowed 101.8 rushing yards per game in the 2024 regular season, the eighth-fewest in the NFL in 2024. Yet this postseason the Chiefs have given up an average of 148.0 yards on the ground.
Barkley, whom the woeful New York Giants inexcusably set free before this season rather than re-sign, excels at making defenders miss tackles. His head and shoulder fakes are elite.
The Chiefs have been sure tacklers this season. They had the league’s lowest rate of missed tackles at 10.7% in the regular season, according to NFL NextGen Stats. Kansas City has been even better in two playoff games, at a missed-tackle rate of just 8.6%.
“You can tell that they are coached great. And they listen,” Barkley told reporters this week at the Eagles’ team hotel in New Orleans. “Sometimes you go against teams that aren’t disciplined. Especially for a guy like me, that’s what I look for, to set up runs, knowing that I can impact a guy with a shoulder reaction or a head reaction, and bring him outside of his gap, knowing that I will have a wide-open gap.”
But, Barkley says of the Chiefs’ defense: “They are really gap sound. That’s the challenge.
“For me during the game, it’s kind of like chess, knowing when to make those moves and (also) take what they give me. Because when they do slip up — you know, it’s football, they are going to make their mistakes. I’ve got to make them pay for it.”
Super Bowl 59 prediction
As in all games from Pop Warner leagues to the Super Bowl, turnovers will be key.
In Mahomes’ three career Super Bowl wins, he’s completed 70.4% of his passes with seven touchdowns against three interceptions and a passer rating of 99.22.
In his only Super Bowl loss, to Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to end the 2020 season, Mahomes completed just 53% of his throws with no touchdowns and two interceptions. His passer rating that Super Bowl was 60.62. Kansas City lost 31-9.
Mahomes and his Chiefs (favored by 1 1/2 points) have won an NFL-record 17 consecutive one-score games. Per the NextGen Stats’ calculations of win probability for each of those games entering the fourth quarter, the chances of Kansas City winning all 17 of those close games is just 0.02%. That’s about one in 4,480.
Spagnuolo will run blitz, crowd the line, have new tricks as he always does, to try to make Hurts — not Barkley — beat K.C.
But Barkley and the Eagles are going to keep Super Bowl 59 close.
And when it’s close, Mahomes and these historical Chiefs win.
Pretty much always.
Chiefs 31, Eagles 26
This story was originally published February 8, 2025 at 1:31 PM.
