SI:AM | Get Ready for a Tight Super Bowl

What will decide this evenly matched game?

Good morning. I’m Dan Gartland. I’ll be traveling Monday, but Josh Rosenblat will have you covered with all things Super Bowl.

In today’s SI:AM:

✅ Super Bowl picks …

🔮 … and predictions

🔄 Wrapping up the NBA trade deadline

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It’s anybody’s game

If our experts are to be believed, it’ll be anybody’s game Sunday in Arizona. Of the eight staffers who submitted their picks for the Super Bowl, seven think it’ll be a one-score game, and five believe it’ll be decided by a field goal or less.

It’s tough to argue with that consensus. The Eagles and Chiefs were the best teams in their respective conferences during the regular season. They both possess many of the qualities that win championships: a talented quarterback, a stable of reliable targets for that quarterback, a feisty defense, smart coaching staffs and so on. It’s anyone’s guess who will win. Our experts are evenly split, with four taking Kansas City and four taking Philadelphia. Here are a few factors that could decide the game.

The defensive lines

These are two of the most fearsome defensive fronts in the NFL this season. The Eagles led the league with 70 sacks, miles ahead of the second-place Chiefs, who had 55. Kansas City’s pass rush is nothing to sneeze at, but Philadelphia’s is on another level.

Four Eagles players had at least 11 sacks this season: Josh Sweat, Brandon Graham, Javon Hargrave and Haason Reddick, who was tied for second in the league with 16. As a team, the Eagles pressured opposing quarterbacks on 25.5% of dropbacks, second-best in the NFL behind the Cowboys (25.6%). That could spell trouble for the Chiefs, considering how Patrick Mahomes’s ankle injury limited his mobility against the 49ers in the conference title game. Conor Orr points out the Chiefs had trouble scheming to account for a heavy pass rush when they faced the Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV. Sunday could be a replay of that.

The Chiefs have their own elite pass rusher in Chris Jones, who was tied for fourth in the NFL this season with 15.5 sacks. But as a defensive tackle, Jones is capable of much more than just getting after the quarterback. His ability to blow up run plays, as well, is why he was one of three finalists for the Defensive Player of the Year award. If the Chiefs are going to slow down the Eagles’ offense—through the air and on the ground—it starts with Jones. The chess match between him and the league-best Eagles’ offensive line will be fun to watch all day.

Travis Kelce

Mahomes’s favorite target is his tight end, who blew all other players at his position out of the water with 78.7 yards per game this season (11th in the league and 20.2 yards per game better than the next tight end, Philly’s Dallas Goedert). But Albert Breer points out the Eagles’ defense has clamped down on tight ends all season long. Only three tight ends have recorded more than 50 yards against Philadelphia this season, and none have gotten more than 70. Kelce is the best tight end in the league, but Mahomes may have to look elsewhere to move the ball.

A.J. Brown

Here are A.J. Brown’s receiving yard totals for the final four games of the regular season: 181, 103, 97, 95. And here are his receiving yard totals for the Eagles’ two playoff games: 22, 28. Brown had a monster year after arriving in a trade with the Titans, finishing sixth in the league with 88 receiving yards per game, but he’s been quiet in the playoffs. To be fair, the Eagles’ entire receiving corps hasn’t done much in the postseason, because it hasn’t really been asked to. (Philly has gained more than 60% of its offensive yardage on the ground in the playoffs.) DeVonta Smith and Goedert have played well in the postseason, but if the Eagles find themselves needing to put the ball in the air to keep pace with the Chiefs, it would be a big help to have Brown return to his usual production.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Christian Petersen/Getty Images

• Today’s Daily Cover is our staff roundtable previewing the Super Bowl. Who will be the player we’re all talking about Monday? Which matchup will decide the game? Which quarterback would you rather have with the game on the line? Our writers get into it all.
• Rohan Nadkarni has a recap of who won and lost at the NBA trade deadline.
• With Texas and Oklahoma set to join the SEC a year earlier than expected, Ross Dellenger breaks down what the conference’s football schedule could look like.
• In signing Yu Darvish to a contract extension, the Padres are hoping their ace pitcher will age gracefully, Emma Baccellieri writes.
• The WNBA is investigating Dearica Hamby’s allegations of “traumatic” events that occurred during her time with the Aces.
• Patrick Mahomes was named MVP at the NFL Honors ceremony last night.
• Joe Thomas and Darrelle Revis are among those who will be inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year.

The top five...

… things I saw last night:

5. Former Canucks captain Bo Horvat’s goal in his first game against his old team.

4. Austin Reaves’s crossover on Giannis Antetokounmpo.

3. The pregame ceremony honoring LeBron James for becoming the NBA’s all-time leading scorer.

2. Uruguayan teenager Luciano Rodríguez’s free kick against Paraguay in an under-20 match.

1. The two buzzer beaters in the Wagner–St. Francis Brooklyn men’s basketball game. First, Wagner’s DeLonnie Hunt hit a long three on the run to force overtime after the Seahawks had fallen behind by 19 with just under 12 minutes to play. But St. Francis won when the Terriers’ Di’Andre Howell-South hit a jumper in the corner at the end of overtime.

SIQ

On Sunday, Andy Reid will become the fifth coach in NFL history to face his former team in the Super Bowl. Who is the only other man to coach in a Super Bowl against a team that he previously led to the Big Game?

• Pete Carroll
• Jon Gruden
• Dan Reeves
• Weeb Ewbank

Yesterday’s SIQ: Which former Supreme Court justice also led the NFL in rushing twice?

• Potter Stewart
• Felix Frankfurter
• Harold Hitz Burton
• Byron White

Answer: Byron White. He was an All-American selection at Colorado in 1937 and the fourth pick in the ’38 NFL draft by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Known to football fans as Whizzer White, he led the league with 567 rushing yards in 11 games as a rookie (over 100 yards more than the next highest player), then took the ’39 season off to study at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He returned to the U.S. and led the league again in rushing in ’40 with the Lions while taking a break from studying law at Yale and played one more season in ’41 before joining the military in World War II.

In 1962, after White was nominated to the Supreme Court by President John F. Kennedy, he sat down for an extensive interview with Sports Illustrated. In it, he described his upbringing in a small beet-farming town in northern Colorado, his college football career and the choice he made between the NFL and the law. White said he played his final two seasons only to earn some extra cash in law school.

“At first I was not going to play at all, but then when it looked as if I couldn’t finish Yale before I was drafted I decided to take out a semester from law school and earn money,” White said. “I played that 1940 season with Detroit and made up the courses I missed at law school by studying at the University of Colorado the following summer.”

The entire SI interview with White is more than 7,000 words but certainly worth reading. His life was remarkable.