Here’s how Kansas City Chiefs compare with Eagles in Super Bowl LIX at New Orleans

Super Bowl LIX will feature a rematch of Super Bowl LVII.

In teams.

Not necessarily in playing style.

The Chiefs and Eagles will play for the Lombardi Trophy on Feb. 9 in New Orleans, two years after the Chiefs beat Philadelphia 38-35 on the same stage.

We won’t have the Kelce Bowl Part II, but we’ll still have Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts. We’ll still have Chris Jones and A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith.

But there have been some changes.

Here is a first look at the Chiefs’ opponent in two weeks, the final foe standing between them and the first three-peat in NFL history, after beating the Buffalo Bills 32-29 in the AFC Championship Game:

Philadelphia Eagles (14-3, NFC East champion, NFC No. 2 seed) scouting report:

OK, the similarity to Super Bowl LVII first: The Eagles can flat-out run the ball. And they never shy away from it.

The Eagles called run plays more frequently than any team in football — 55.7% of their snaps, per FTN Network — and that’s not strictly because their quarterback, Jalen Hurts, is willing to tuck it and scramble. They also had the fewest dropbacks in the league. The rushes come by design, in other words.

Makes sense when you consider the personnel. Saquon Barkley is the favorite to win the NFL’s offensive player of the year award after topping 2,000 rushing yards. And, man, he can get them in chunks. Barkley took the Eagles’ first play 60 yards for a touchdown against the Washington Commanders in the NFC Championship Game.

That’s not not exactly an anomaly. Barkley, with an explosive run rate of 13.3% this year, has seven touchdown runs of 60-plus yards this season.

How did Philadelphia only rank 11th in yards per play and eighth in total yards?

Well, their passing game has been up-and-down. Hurts struggled throwing the football this year, at least relative to the past, and he’s been much less comfortable maneuvering in the pocket. He has been sacked on 23.3% of his pressures, per PFF data, a huge jump from the 14.4% last season. The Chiefs’ pass rush has come alive in the postseason, and pressures are rewarded against the Eagles this season.

The Chiefs, by the way, just faced one of the best running teams in the NFL in the Bills. It’s actually where their defense has improved most from 2023 to 2024. The Chiefs allowed the seventh-fewest yards per carry (4.14) in the NFL after ranking 24th in the same category a year ago.

Those are the Eagles’ stars. The players who draw the headlines.

The real reason Philadelphia is here?

The Eagles’ defense.

They rank first in FTN’s all-encompassing DVOA metric, but the most notable relation to the Chiefs is that the Eagles have the best pass defense in the league. They have allowed only 174.2 passing yards per game.

It’s mostly due to their secondary.

The Eagles don’t actually pressure the quarterback that much and don’t blitz much, either — both are the fifth-lowest rate in the league. But they defend basically every aspect of the field well.

Nobody is stingier in allowing deep passes, yet they defend short throws effectively too. That’s tough.

One final note on the Eagles here, because it’s undoubtedly going to come up: the Tush Push. It’s a quarterback sneak play the Eagles have made famous, and a play they run with high success. But that success is not quite as high as it used to be.

The Eagles had a 87.1% conversion rate with the Tush Push for three years with Jason Kelce at center, per Next Gen Stats. Since his retirement, that number dipped to 82.4% this season.