How the 2025 Super Bowl could go terribly wrong for Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs

The Kansas City Chiefs are on the brink of NFL history. No team in the league has ever won three straight Super Bowls.

Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid are slight favorites to hoist the Vince Lombardi Trophy again, but it won't be easy. Standing in their way is a Philadelphia Eagles team that surged through the back half of the 2024 regular season and parlayed that into a dominant playoff run.

Kansas City beat Philadelphia in a tightly contested Super Bowl 57 in 2023. There's reason to believe this year's game will be different.

Here's how the Eagles can make life miserable for Travis Kelce and a legion of Taylor Swift fans and be the Chiefs' worst case scenario in the biggest game of the year.

SUPER BOWL PREDICTIONS: How the 2025 Super Bowl could go terribly wrong for Saquon Barkley and the Eagles

1. Saquon Barkley runs for 200 yards

Let's begin with the most obvious route for a Philadelphia victory. Last week, the Eagles faced the league's 27th ranked run defense. Barkley's first carry was a 60-yard touchdown. Six more followed, all on the ground (and less than 60 yards, but still).

The Chiefs have a better run defense than the Washington Commanders, but it's not unimpeachable. Kansas City's expected points added (EPA) allowed per opponent run ranked 15th in the NFL over the regular season and playoffs. That's a perfectly average ranking that slotted the Chiefs between the Las Vegas Raiders and Cleveland Browns in the pecking order.

The good news is the Atlanta Falcons also belong in that clump of mediocrity. They held Barkley to just one of his five games in which he failed to run for 100 yards and beat Philly, 22-21. The bad news is that was the early season version of the All-Pro back.

He averaged 96 rushing yards per game over the first five weeks of the season, which is still pretty dang good. But that number rose to 140 in the 14 games that followed. The Eagles went 13-1 in those games.

That's a rough matchup for a team that got shredded by James Cook for three-plus quarters before he disappeared from the Buffalo Bills' game plan in the AFC Championship game. Cook's 64 percent success rate — a play that gains at least 40 percent of yards needed for a first down or touchdown on first down, 60 percent of yards needed on second down, and 100 percent on third or fourth down — would have ranked first among all NFL running backs by a significant margin in 2024.

Barkley is the tool Philadelphia will use to set up third-and-manageable situations and create space for Jalen Hurts to thrive. If the Chiefs let him get going, they're playing the game on hard mode.

2. The Eagles sniff out Steve Spagnuolo's disorienting blitzes and counter with man-coverage-beating routes

Defensive coordinator Spagnuolo's defenses are always good but rarely elite -- until you need them for a big spot in a clutch moment. In 2024, his unit ranked ninth in yards allowed and 17th in EPA per play. But with the Bills threatening to score what could have been a game-winning touchdown, Spagnuolo's perfectly disguised pressure ensured Josh Allen's last pass of the season was a desperate back-foot heave (which was almost caught anyway because Josh Allen is an impossible human).

In Super Bowl 58 last year, his third-and-four pressure from the Chiefs' nine-yard line denied Brock Purdy of a game-winning touchdown even as Brandon Aiyuk broke free for what could have been a remarkably easy walk-off score. Look at the top of the play here:

Spagnuolo's aggression puts elite wideouts in single coverage and then overloads the pocket so their quarterbacks cannot find them. Keeping Allen from escaping pressure was walking a razor's edge, but one Kansas City handled with Cirque du Soleil dexterity. Jalen Hurts will present a similar challenge -- and he's got two of the best one-on-one wideouts to bail him out if he can toss the ball his way.

Both A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith produced double-digit catch rates over expected (CROE) to rank eighth and seventh, respectively, among all qualified wideouts, tight ends and running backs. This is especially impressive for Brown, whose 2.1 yards of separation per target was second-lowest in the NFL, beating only Marvin Harrison Jr..

If Hurts can buy enough time to spot Brown downfield, there's a good chance the All-Pro wideout can go up and get whatever pass -- from laser to wounded duck -- his quarterback wings his way. With Kansas City known for playing with its food in a season where a dozen of its games were decided by eight points or fewer (all Chiefs wins), one big completion could be all it takes to swing the Super Bowl.

3. His downfield options covered, Patrick Mahomes gets frustrated with short throws and forces deep shots into bad situations

This is the least likely of the three scenarios. Mahomes has been here before -- three times in the last four years. The moment will not be too big for him.

A moderately frustrating season in terms of big throws and monster stat lines might. Kansas City's depleted receiving corps has kept a once prolific passing game in check. Mahomes ranked in the top 10 in deep throw rate each year from 2018 to 2020, and his 82 throws 20-plus yards downfield led the league in 2018 when he won his first NFL MVP award.

Taking Tyreek Hill out of the lineup quietly stunted those big plays. Mahomes deep throw rate slid in the years since. It was 9.2 percent in 2023 and dropped to 7.1 in 2024 -- 33rd highest among 35 qualified quarterbacks, per NFL Pro. The only passers who threw deep less often were Jared Goff and Gardner Minshew.

Goff is an interesting comparison. The Detroit Lions fell behind early against the Washington Commanders in the divisional round. That forced him to move away from the playbook he'd commanded in a 15-win regular season and make big throws downfield. His deep ball rate jumped from six percent to 15. All three of his interceptions in a 45-31 loss came on throws at least 15 yards downfield.

Mahomes is unlikely to make the same mistakes, but it's not impossible to believe he could escape pressure, turn his eyes downfield, attempt to thread a needle through double-coverage and fail.

He had three multiple interception games in 2024, all of which came against passing defenses that failed to crack the top 16 in EPA per dropback. The Eagles rank third in that metric and Quinyon Mitchell has saved the most impactful play of his rookie season for the postseason, where both his interceptions have come.

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This article originally appeared on For The Win: How the 2025 Super Bowl could go terribly wrong for Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs