I’ve long sought a truth as pretty as a Patrick Mahomes scramble.
I’ve instead continually stumbled into a reality as nasty as the tush push.
For exactly a quarter of a century, I’ve grasped and groveled and guessed.
For nearly that entire time, I’ve gagged.
In New Orleans on Sunday it’s Super Bowl LIX between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles.
That means it’s time for Super Bowl Prediction Column XXVI, written by the worst Super Bowl predictor in America, this wrong-way hack stumbling through the last quarter-century embarrassing supporters naive enough to back me and richly rewarding those with enough common sense to bet against me.
I have written 25 Super Bowl prediction columns.
I have been wrong 18 times.
That is a 28% success rate, which means you have a 72% chance of cashing a wager against me, which I suggest you do, now, immediately, because history doesn’t lie.
Remember when the Buffalo Bills lost four straight? I picked them three times. I loved their story. I embraced their courage. I lost my mind
Remember the New England Patriots’ six-win dynasty? I never picked them once. Best dynasty in history and not once. I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand Bill Belichick. I couldn’t stomach Brady and Gronk. I couldn’t believe the depths of my ignorance.
A quick glance at a Google search unearths some of the headlines that tell my sorry story.
“Super Bowl 2019 prediction is a no-brainer: Rams…”
“Chiefs will batter Tom Brady and Bucs in Super Bowl blowout…”
“It just feels right to pick Atlanta Falcons to win Super Bowl…”
I once missed on 11 consecutive picks. How do you blow 11 consecutive picks? By betting on the best story instead of the best stats, that’s how. By being more sentimental than smart. By doing what — let’s face it — many folks do when guessing the winner of the one game a year they actually watch.
They bet helmets. They bet colors. They bet backstories. For all intents and purposes, they bet like me.
In my first 18 Super Bowl picks, I was right three times. That is not a misprint. I have since refocused and rebounded to hit on four of the last seven, and actually took a career-high two-game winning streak into last year’s Super Bowl, having picked the Rams in 2022 — duh, I had no choice — and then picking the refreshing Chiefs to beat the dull Eagles.
Can you say three-peat? I can’t. I blew it again last year by picking the San Francisco 49ers to beat the Chiefs because my heart told me the Chiefs and all their Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce nonsense had become too distracting.
I was wrong, of course. It was the circus that triumphed over the corporation, and so this year one would think I finally learned.
The Chiefs and their glamorous high-wire act are back. The Eagles and their hardscrabble brotherly love have returned to dethrone them.
The Chiefs can make history with their third consecutive championship. Mahomes officially can become Tom Brady’s successor with his fourth Super Bowl title in, like, 10 minutes. Kelce can sing old rock and roll songs from the podium and then propose to Swift in the confetti.
A Chiefs victory would be perfect narrative, perfect drama, a perfect ending.
Which is why I’m picking against them. I’m a sucker no more. This year I’m not betting the best narrative. This year I’m betting the best football team.
And the Eagles are clearly, decidedly, unequivocally the best football team.
Championship football is not about style, it’s about substance. It’s not about appearances, it’s about depth. It’s not about attitude, it’s about ability, sheer ability, and the Eagles have more than the Chiefs by a large margin.
This is where the Chiefs’ magic of 12 one-score wins ends. This is where the Chiefs’ deplorable tomahawk chop stops. This is where football’s luckiest team becomes its most bloodied.
I’m picking the Eagles in a beatdown, and listen to me, this time I’m right.
Since their Week 5 bye, the Eagles have gone 15-1 while winning their games by an average of two touchdowns.
The Chiefs, meanwhile, have won games with doinked field-goal attempts, blocked field-goal attempts, bad snaps, fourth-down tackles, and favorable officials rulings.
The Eagles have been darn good, the Chiefs have been darn fortunate, and we’ll see that manifest itself from the first moment Jalen Hurts scrambles to the last moment Mahomes slips.
The Eagles have the hotter quarterback, Hurts’ designed runs more effective this year than Mahomes’ 14% rate of off-target passes. Hurts also has better receiving weapons — A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith over Kelce — and one of the game’s best offensive lines.
The Eagles have a better defense — Jalen Carter is a mammoth run stopper and since early in the season they’ve given up a league-low 5.2 yards per pass attempt. They’ve also recorded 10 takeaways this postseason, the most by an NFL team with no turnovers.
The Chiefs defense, meanwhile, cannot stop the tush push — the Eagles are 3-0 against them in scoring touchdowns on the short-yardage play — and now they will be charged with stopping something far more difficult, someone who will change this game.
How can they slow down Saquon Barkley? The answer is they can’t, and that will be the difference in the Eagles’ win.
When the Eagles lost to the Chiefs two Super Bowls ago, Eagles running backs gained 45 yards. Barkley, the league’s leading rusher who twice crushed the Rams, gains 45 yards every time he sneezes, and will change everything with his unstoppable presence.
The Chiefs have given up an average of 108 yards to running backs in two playoff games, a dip from their strong regular season and a sign they may be wearing down. Barkley has spent all season breaking tackles for a jillion yards, and there’s no reason to think he won’t do that Sunday.
It will be a good game … for a half. It will be a bruising battle of wills … until all-world Eagles tackle Lane Johnson takes over. It will be an exciting battle of brains … until the Eagles’ extraordinary defensive coordinator, Vic Fangio, dominates.
In the end, it will be so obvious that even the wrong-way hack will hit it on the nose.
Eagles 35, Chiefs 20.
And, as always … Chiefs fans, you’re welcome.
The post Plaschke: Super Bowl sucker no more. Eagles will derail Chiefs three-peat in a beatdown appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
