The Eagles hit the Chiefs. Then hit them again. Then won the 2025 Super Bowl.

The Kansas City Chiefs entered the 2025 Super Bowl as a 1.5-point favorite. That's about the nicest thing you can say about their quest to earn the NFL's first big game three-peat.

After 30 minutes of play Patrick Mahomes had thrown two interceptions, including a pick-six to rookie Cooper DeJean. The Philadelphia Eagles led 24-0. Their win probability clocked in at a borderline indecent 98.4 percent.

There was no 28-3 miracle to be made. The Eagles' defense would not tolerate such shenanigans. Philadelphia rolled to a 40-22 victory that was a pair of garbage time touchdowns from being the fifth-biggest Super Bowl blowout of all time.

The main victim was the one man who's proven capable of pulling off Super Bowl comebacks. Mahomes didn't just have his worst game of the playoffs. He had one of the worst games of his career. He threw a pair of interceptions and suffered a brutal strip sack, resulting in 17 Eagles points.

Mahomes was pressured on more than half his dropbacks. He was sacked six times and hit 11 more. Every time he escaped pressure to extend plays Philadelphia's front seven made him pay, battering behind the line and in front of it. Two brutal holding calls meant he took lung-blowing hits all to lose 10 yards in the process.

Mahomes didn't just get outplayed by Jalen Hurts. Philadelphia turned him into Zach Wilson. Look at this first half!

-1.3 expected points added per dropback? That was twice as bad as Bailey Zappe in 2024, a player so awful the Cleveland Browns started Deshaun Watson, Jameis Winston AND Dorian Thompson-Robinson ahead of him -- all of whom were, vitally, terrible at football last fall. Do you know how good you have to be to make PATRICK MAHOMES LOOK SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE THAN BAILEY ZAPPE???

(Things got better in the second half, mainly thanks to a pair of touchdown passes after Philly went up 40-6. Still, Mahomes didn't lead his offense past midfield until well into the third quarter.)

This was all part of a master plan from general manager Howie Roseman. The 2023 Eagles fell apart thanks to an aging secondary and a lack of effective off-ball linebackers. Last offseason he drafted Quinyon Mitchell and traded up to select DeJean. He signed Zack Baun to a modest one-year prove-it deal. On Sunday, Mitchell cut off Kansas City's deep routes, DeJean scored a touchdown and Baun set up another with an interception deep in Chiefs territory.

But no one was more important to the Philly effort than two homegrown studs up front. Josh Sweat added about $20 million to his upcoming contract -- he's a 2025 free agent -- by harassing Mahomes and chasing him to the ends of the earth. The former MVP quarterback couldn't step up in the pocket because, ope, there was Jordan Davis, a physical impossibility crumpling the Chiefs' interior offensive line and bullying his way into the backfield.

Sweat had 2.5 sacks and three hits on Mahomes. Davis didn't shine in the box score (two QB hits) but was the rising tide that lifted everyone else. And occasionally rolled over the Chiefs offensive line like a tsunami.

But that was only half the recipe for a world championship.

Jalen Hurts made sure the defense's efforts didn't go unrewarded

Saquon Barkley was the headliner of the Eagles' offense in the regular season, but there were signs he wasn't the most important cog in the machine. After all, both the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns limited him and Philadelphia still managed to win. Barkley had three regular season games where he averaged fewer than 4.5 yards per carry. Hurts was 2-1 in those games with a 73.5 percent completion rate, 8.5 yards per attempt, five touchdowns and a 113.1 rating.

Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo sold out to stop Barkley and it worked. Barkley had just 57 rushing yards on 25 carries. It was his first game with fewer than 100 yards since before Christmas.

But that left one-on-one opportunities for the league's most efficient wideout pairing. So Philadelphia ran man-beating routes that, to channel my inner Tom Brady, beat man coverage:

Or exploit the lack of safety help over the top by utilizing play-action -- a tenet they didn't use all that often even with Barkley in the lineup during the regular season:

A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith got left on islands as Kansas City kept its core defense on the field to maximize the number of linebackers it could throw at Barkley. They exploited that en route to 112 yards and two touchdowns.

They weren't alone. Jahan Dotson, largely a non-factor after being acquired via trade on the eve of the season, was a half-yard away from scoring the game's first touchdown. Both his targets before a garbage time throw from Kenny Pickett (!) resulted in Eagle first downs.

This was, in essence, the problem with facing the Philadelphia Eagles all along. They had so many arrows in their quiver that stopping the first volley merely built up a false sense of confidence. The Chiefs stopped Barkley and it didn't matter. They couldn't stop Brown and Smith. They couldn't block Sweat or Davis. They got devastated by guys who were offseason lottery tickets in Baun and DeJean.

This was a barrage no team could withstand. The Eagles were the best team in the NFL in 2024. They proved it at Super Bowl 59.

This article originally appeared on For The Win: The Eagles hit the Chiefs. Then hit them again. Then won the 2025 Super Bowl.