SI:AM | A New Dynasty

Plus, a way-too-early prediction for every NFL team in 2023.

Good morning. I’m Josh Rosenblat. My alma mater took down No. 1 Purdue yesterday, but I heard there was a little football game last night, too.

In today’s SI:AM:

🏆 A Super Bowl in a rebuilding year

🏈 Mahomes does it again

📋 The best play-caller in NFL history

🔮 Predictions for every NFL team

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It’s Mahomes’s world. We’re just living in it.

Down 10 at halftime and, seemingly more importantly, hobbled by an already banged-up ankle, Patrick Mahomes and coach Andy Reid put together an offensive master class during the final 30 minutes of Super Bowl LVII. The Chiefs scored on each of their four second-half drives: three touchdowns and a clock-grinding, 12-play march to set up a chip-shot field goal to beat the Eagles, 38–35.

If Kansas City’s first Super Bowl of the Mahomes-Reid partnership after the 2019 season was about proving they’d arrived, this one was about making sure people knew they won’t be going anywhere. Simply, they’ve created a dynasty: two titles in three trips to the Super Bowl in four years and five straight appearances to the AFC title game. What Mahomes did last night in his MVP-winning performance has become somewhat routine, Greg Bishop writes:

This year Mahomes lifted Kansas City. Always has. Continues to. Teammates and coaches point to his attitude (generally positive), his mindset (stronger than that right arm), his willingness to seek camaraderie and his normal-ness (check out that Chad Henne bobblehead sitting atop his locker). All speak to what the QB who mentored him believes is the concept that most defines Mahomes. “Competitiveness,” says Alex Smith, who started in 2017 before Mahomes took over the following season. “I would love to say that I saw everything coming, but yeah, no. I don’t know why I always use the word pure to describe him that way. But that’s it.”

And for Reid, who has already accomplished so much in his coaching career, those final 30 minutes may have been his magnum opus. As Conor Orr puts it, those second-half drives were “Reid’s public grasp at the title of greatest play-caller in NFL history.”

Though [Mahomes] was in serious discomfort, he was in good hands with a coach who has conjured his offensive inspiration from everywhere. Texas high school football. Some Rose Bowl in the 1940s. Probably (likely) some playground out there somewhere that Reid could get a look. His brain is an art gallery with no discernable theme or concept, just one beautiful painting after the next.

The Eagles didn’t lose the game as much as the Chiefs won it. In a contest that seemed destined to become a high-powered offensive display, Philadelphia was able to keep up. Jalen Hurts threw for more than 300 yards and a touchdown. He added another 70 yards and three scores on the ground. But it was going to take perfection to outlast K.C., and Philly came up a little bit short. Hurts, though, said he was looking forward following the game:

You either win or you learn. As always, win, lose or draw, I always reflect on the things that I could’ve done better, the things we could’ve done better to try and take that next step. That’ll be the same process that goes on now.

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• In today’s Daily Cover story, Greg Bishop and Conor Orr write about why this Chiefs team was different in their pursuit of a Super Bowl title.

The Chiefs added more variance, more checkdowns. They ran the ball more. And when they did all that, the offense opened up and the deep plays returned but more organically, part of the offense’s growth from Fort Worth to another Super Bowl.

• Where do the Eagles go from here? Albert Breer breaks down his takeaways from the Super Bowl, including how Philadelphia will move forward with likely changes coming to its coaching staff.
• An unfortunate theme from the game was the slippery field conditions at State Farm Stadium, which cost $800,000.
• Eagles cornerback James Bradberry admitted he committed the controversial defensive holding penalty called in the game’s final minutes.
• Relive Rihanna’s halftime show performance.
• Conor Orr offers one prediction for each NFL team.
• The NBA’s trade deadline reminded of us one thing above all else: It’s still a superstar league, Howard Beck writes.
• Jeremy Woo reveals the players who could shape the title race in men’s college basketball.
• In the latest edition of the Five-Tool Newsletter, Matt Martell walks through the World Baseball Classic’s stacked lineups. You can subscribe to the newsletter for free at SI.com/newsletters. 

SIQ

On this day in 1920, Black baseball team owners met at a YMCA in which city to found the Negro National League?

• St. Louis
• Kansas City
• Chicago
• Atlanta

Friday’s SIQ: Andy Reid became 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

Answer: Dan Reeves. He reached three Super Bowls with the Broncos in the 1980s (and lost them all) before leading the Falcons to Super Bowl XXXIII against Denver after the ’98 season. Reeves’s team lost that one, too.

Reid, whose Eagles were defeated by the Patriots in Super Bowl XXXIX, is the only other man to coach against a team in the Super Bowl that he also led to the Super Bowl. (And, after last night, he’s the only coach to actually win the game.)

That fact comes with an asterisk, though. Weeb Ewbank won two NFL championships with the Colts (in 1958 and ’59) before the launch of the AFL and the advent of the Super Bowl. He then led the Jets over the Colts in Super Bowl III after the ’68 season