Once again, Philly pulls out an ugly one. This game (particularly in the first half) seemed like a total lost cause, as nothing that Philly tried seemed to work with any consistency for a long time. Pass pro? Basically nonexistent for most of the game. Pass rush? Mahomes rarely seemed truly under duress. Tackling? Atrocious in the first half, particularly inexcusable considering they were off a bye. Play calling? In a word, horrible.
Considering how nasty this team looked last night, how did they pull this off? The first thing that comes to mind is that KC really didn't have a good game either (the multitude of drops plus two red zone turnovers all come to mind). I'm looking forward to their fans whining about the officials, who had a bad game but hurt both teams by the end of the game. Let's hit a few more of the game's most important takeways:
A tale of two halves. As mentioned the first half was particularly bad in many ways. Thankfully, most of the worst of the issues were dealt with in one form or another after halftime. Jalen was sacked five times in the first half but not at all in the second. Philly was outgained by 117 yards in the first half but outgained KC in the second half. The ground game was largely neglected by Brian Johnson (more on him in a bit), but they did settle in a bit with it in the second half (16 of 27 carries in the 2H). Most importantly, Philly outscored KC 14-0 after halftime. I made a comment at the half that Sirianni needed to challenge some guys' manhood at halftime and it seemed that the message got through.
Jalen has an up-and-down effort. There were certainly some poor moments (the pick that really should have been a score by Brown, the fumble that he recovered, a series of open receivers downfield that went unseen), but some of these problems (if not the majority) were due to the protection being uncharacteristically awful. Blame to Jalen for letting his vision drop and missing some players, but credit to Jalen for hanging in and making some big plays (running and passing) to bring the team back. He does seem as healthy in the lower body as he's been in weeks, a positive development.
(By the way, I mentioned in the midseason report that Jalen had racked up impressive winning percentages against playoff teams, teams with winning records, and teams with top five defenses; you can tack on another win on all three categories).
Brian Johnson struggled. No need to belabor this, you all saw what I saw. My main criticisms were the general disinterest in the ground game (which was pretty consistently effective at 4.2 yards/carry and racked up a first down every 2.7 touches), and overly complicated playcalls that nearly led to disaster on multiple occasions (and rarely produced anything meaningful). Sometimes you have to give first year coordinators some rope, but we'll need better from him and we'll need it soon.
The Valdez-Scantling drop didn't lose the game for KC. Obviously that moment was a guy punch for the Chiefs, but no excuses: they still had two plays to make the first down and nearly two minutes (plus a timeout) to score. Even had he caught that ball, Philly would have taken over about 1:45 left and all three timeouts, and would only have needed a FG to keep the game going. That's a bad moment for KC but didn't cost them the game.
While we're here, Justin Watson's drop on 4th-and-25 was unforgivable (as was Philly's D allowing that to open up at all), but even that drop didn't cost KC the game. They still would have had to drive another forty yards to score.
Eagles punt game makes a difference. Braden Mann didn't have an all-time night, and they let Kadarius Toney get loose once or twice (I had legitimate flashbacks to the Super Bowl on that long return he had), but all in all the punt game was an undersold edge for the Birds tonight, most notably the last kick that went inside the ten, and the coverage team which stuffed Toney in a high leverage moment. Mann's gross average was superior to KC punter Tommy Townsend's by a margin of 47.7-42.7. The net punting (which factors in the opponent's return) saw Philly lead 39.4-33.8. Football nerds tell us that a yard of field position is worth .064 points; if that's so, this special teams victory was worth 4.68 points for Philly last night, critical in a one-score game.
Side note; Britain Covey is a weapon. His 14.6 YPR is third in the league this year and he seems to be getting better as time goes on.
Let's talk about the officials! The talking point that seems to be rising in NFL fandom is that Philly is becoming one of those teams that the officials favor; last night won't change anyone's mind if they're leaning in that direction. As previously mentioned, the officials screwed up in both team's favor, but the call that everyone seems to remember is the non-call on the hold during Swift's 1Q scoring run. Here's a few thoughts:
No question it was a missed call; it should have been a flag, the TD comes off the board and Philly has 2nd-and-goal from the 12 or so.
I'm not convinced that the hold actually altered the outcome of the play; Swift's lead around the corner was so large that the extra couple steps that Mike Edwards might have gained may not have made a difference.
Even if the flag had been thrown, Philly still has a good shot at scoring. Would you bet heavy against them gaining 12 yards in three plays?
Did anyone notice that Edwards was bellyaching and desperately calling for a flag while the play was still in progress? It's representative of just how much the Chiefs lean on the officials; they're like a team of LeBrons. Big time loser energy on that play.
Big picture, Chiefs fans whining about bad officiating against their team is textbook irony. Other than the fact that the officials could have thrown several holding flags on KC throughout (but didn't), I can't forget the sketchy calls against Ricks and Cox that boosted the Chiefs in the second half.
Worst case scenario, the penalty would have cost Philly four points. That's critical in a close game, but hardly an insurmountable obstacle for the Birds. They did win by four, after all.
The situational degree of difficulty for this win was HIGH. We've seen the stat plastered everywhere this week, but this was only the fourth time in Andy Reid's 25 years that he lost after the regular season bye. Arrowhead is, as we know, a total pit for visiting teams (going into tonight, the Chiefs were 65-21 at home under Reid, an NFL high win % of 75.6%). Credit to ESPN for sharing a stat that KC had won their last eighteen games when they scored first before last night. Reuben Frank (the GOAT of these kinds of stats) pointed out in the postgame that Andy Reid as the Chiefs HC had winning percentages of better than 90% both when leading by 10+ at halftime and when entering the 4Q with a lead. I had already pointed out that Andy had never lost in this series, as a coach for either team. All of these situations painted an extremely narrow path to victory, but Philly somehow found a way.
By the way, seven straight wins for Jalen when trailing by 10 or more. Thirteen straight wins against teams that entered with winning records. Unreal stuff.
Final analysis. The Birds just keep finding ways to win, what else can you say? Kurt Warner compared this year's Birds team to last year's Vikings team (in that both groups had a lot of one score wins); on the surface that's fair but there are some key differences. For one, and most importantly, Philly has actually outscored their opposition on the year (Minnesota didn't), and this team has real championship pedigree (Minnesota didn't). I agree that Philly has been living dangerously and probably isn't as good as their record (they are a play or two per game away from six or seven losses), but it's just as fair to point out that they are a play away from being undefeated. On balance, this is definitely a top five team league-wide (no lower than third or fourth), and definitely a championship contender. Philly should be favored against Buffalo but that 49er game the week after that looms very large as far as the NFC playoff picture is concerned.
Happy Thanksgiving and GO BIRDS!
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