The Eagles defense couldn’t stop Mahomes in 2022. In Super Bowl 59 they got their revenge

NEW ORLEANS — There Howie Roseman danced, a cigar between his fingers, surrounded by the team that dismantled a dynasty. Players urged their general manager on. Others showered him with champagne. More stood atop their lockers, hollering over speakers that pulsated lyrics that partly defined their franchise within Future’s “Lil Demon.”

Go platinum, f— a budget.

Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles, later lauded Roseman in the hallway outside. The NFL is not a place to be risk-averse, Lurie believes. Not if you want to unseat the Kansas City Chiefs. Not if you want to be Super Bowl LIX champions. Not if you want to turn a long-languishing team into a league-wide standard that’s won two Super Bowls in eight seasons when it once had none.

“Aggressive,” Lurie said. An organization must be aggressive. Look through the smoke and the spray in the Superdome locker room. Look at all the reasons the Eagles thrashed the Chiefs 40-22 in one of the most blatant beatdowns in Super Bowl history. Look at Saquon Barkley pouring a giant golden bottle of bubbly down an offensive lineman’s throat.

That image doesn’t exist without a three-year contract that fully guaranteed $26 million to the outlier of a devalued position entering his seventh season. No, Terrell Davis would still own the full-season rushing record he set in 1998, instead of watching Barkley topple it by halftime on Sunday — completing the single greatest season by any running back ever. Barkley wouldn’t be there, shirtless and smiling, a once-ringless wonder for the New York Giants, now an Eagles demigod, watching his teammates pass the Lombardi Trophy around the room.

“She looks prettier in person, I’ll tell you that,” Barkley said.

The trophy eventually reached A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Landon Dickerson and Jordan Mailata — four key members of a young offensive core whose combined offseason extensions included $155 million guaranteed. Aggressive. An organization must be aggressive. The Eagles ranked third in the NFL in cash spending in 2024, per Over the Cap. Lurie authorized Roseman to set the market instead of chasing it, to retain a foursome that knew what it took to beat the Chiefs because they’d each suffered the last-minute loss in Super Bowl LVII. Mailata had beaten a locker-room refrigerator with his fists that day. On Sunday, he’d beaten a team pursuing the NFL’s first-ever three-peat.

Beaten is too kind a word for what the Eagles did to the Chiefs. They made a two-time reigning champion that only lost two games all season look like losing was all it ever did. They made Patrick Mahomes, a three-time Super Bowl MVP, not only look mortal — they familiarized him with football mortality. They pulverized him within a brutal three-drive sequence that supplied the Eagles with a 24-0 halftime lead — an advantage that eventually swelled to 34-0 after Mahomes, who was sacked a season-high six times, was further throttled in the third quarter.

The Chiefs only trailed 10-0 when Mahomes dropped back on the first play of their fourth possession. Eagles edge rusher Josh Sweat blustered past tight end Travis Kelce so swiftly, Mahomes didn’t have time to dish a checkdown to Kelce before Sweat tore him down with one hand. On the next play, Jalyx Hunt, a third-round rookie, bullied Joe Thuney, a two-time All-Pro guard filling in at left tackle, backward and dragged Mahomes down for yet another sack.

Then came the fatal blow. Cooper DeJean, a nickel safety and defensive rookie of the year finalist, started the subsequent third-and-16 drifting toward the sideline in zone coverage. Mahomes rolled to his right, and, anticipating DeJean to remain there, fired a pass across his body toward the middle of the field. But DeJean jumped the pass, picked it off and housed his first-ever interception for a 38-yard touchdown.

PICK 6 IS HECKUVA BIRTHDAY GIFT 🎁@cdejean23 | #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/aIO8v7Czls

— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) February 10, 2025

DeJean said he was too excited to think. He didn’t even celebrate. He just caught his breath because he immediately returned to the field. The Chiefs went three-and-out after Milton Williams sacked Mahomes within a four-man rush. The Eagles didn’t need to blitz. Defensive coordinator Vic Fangio never sent one. The seven-time defensive play-caller later said “Mahomes is very, very good when you rush five or six” defenders. Fangio had seen Mahomes too often make teams pay for trying too hard to take him down. So, he constructed a game plan in which the Eagles relied on the strength of their secondary, on the belief there’d be enough time for their defensive front to strike home.

Sweat, a member of the Eagles defense that failed to sack Mahomes two years ago, recorded 2.5 sacks. Williams sacked Mahomes twice and forced a fumble in the fourth quarter.

Hmm… we’ve seen this before 😏 pic.twitter.com/UQa3R6t3hU

— Philadelphia Eagles (@Eagles) February 10, 2025

“The boys up front are some bad motherf——,” DeJean said.

They were “angry,” too, if you ask Lurie. That Super Bowl LVII loss drove the Eagles in their journey back to the mountaintop. “I mean, we lived that every day,” Lurie said. They believed they’d be right back with the same ideas. At first, it seemed they would. But a 10-1 start in 2023 devolved into a 1-6 collapse, and Eagles coach Nick Sirianni fired both of his coordinators — Brian Johnson and Sean Desai — in a staff overhaul aimed to repair dysfunctional systems and maximize a roster that Roseman flipped into one of the best the Eagles have ever fielded.

In one dizzying offseason, the Eagles acquired Barkley, linebacker Zack Baun, safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson and right guard Mekhi Becton in free agency, and spent their first two draft picks on DeJean (No. 40 overall) and cornerback Quinyon Mitchell (No. 22). Baun, who’d never before played inside linebacker, burgeoned into a Defensive Player of the Year finalist. Mitchell and DeJean blossomed into starters in a secondary that went from surrendering the league’s third-most passes of 15-plus yards in 2023, to the fewest in 2024, per TruMedia. On Sunday, Mahomes failed to find anything deep in the first half. Mitchell blanketed speedy wideout Xavier Worthy, forcing Mahomes to settle for checkdowns.

Mahomes eventually got flustered. Just before halftime, dropping back from his own 6, Mahomes failed to spot Baun when firing to Hollywood Brown over the middle of the field. Baun intercepted the pass. Jalen Hurts tossed a 12-yard touchdown to A.J. Brown two plays later. Mahomes’ EPA per dropback at halftime (-1.45) was the lowest ever by a quarterback in a Super Bowl since at least 2000, per TruMedia.

Behind the defensive dominance, Fangio’s hands were on the controls, running the system this Eagles regime prefers. If the franchise had its way, Fangio would’ve been the team’s defensive coordinator in 2023. He’d served as a consultant during the 2022 playoffs, but, before Jonathan Gannon suddenly accepted the Arizona Cardinals’ head-coaching job, Fangio left Philadelphia for a one-year stint as the defensive coordinator for the Miami Dolphins. But the Dunmore, Pa., native returned to the team he admired growing up. “I just called them,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m going to get out of Miami if you’re interested. I’m here.’ It was done many days before it was announced.”

Fangio, 66, stood there in the bowels of the first NFL stadium he ever coached in. After starting as a linebacker coach with the New Orleans Saints, after four decades in professional football, Fangio at last had the Super Bowl championship that had long eluded him. He’d begun Philadelphia’s final week of practices with film from his only other appearance — a loss in Super Bowl XLVII as defensive coordinator of the San Francisco 49ers. That, too, had been played in New Orleans.

“It’s just a really warm feeling of accomplishment,” Fangio said. “And….”

Fangio flinched. Turned. There was Hurts, smiling. The quarterback had slapped the old-school coach on the behind. The two field generals, who developed a friendship while dueling each other on the practice field, hugged amidst the scrum of reporters.

“…. and satisfaction and all of that,” Fangio finished.

And what about that guy?

“Yeah, I think Jalen’s great,” Fangio said. “Him and I have a good little relationship. Very happy for him.”

Hurts, the Super Bowl MVP, the quarterback who embraced a more conservative role with Barkley in the backfield, the man Sirianni always called “a winner,” combined for 293 yards and three touchdowns in the first championship of his career. He carried a cigar in his hand and moved from teammate to teammate with a grin that seemed reserved for that very moment — and that moment alone. There was Brandon Graham, the edge rusher who perhaps made his final appearance with the Eagles, activated for a surprise appearance after suffering what was thought to be a season-ending triceps injury. Hurts tugged Graham by the shoulder pads, pulling him away from the reporters. The past and the present celebrated in the cigar smoke together.

(Top photo: Timothy A. Clary / AFP via Getty Images)