NEW ORLEANS – So much for a three-peat.

Three points. Three first downs. Anything but three-and-out. Those turned out to be much more realistic goals for the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 59, when they proved without a doubt that past performance was not an indication of the here and now.

Because this blowout was hardly about taking a bow among the greatest champions in Super Bowl history. With the chance to be so special, the Chiefs demonstrated that they could be rather ordinary – or even worse.

Who knew?

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Rather than a three-peat, the Chiefs did themselves a solid by not becoming the first team to get shut out in a Super Bowl, finally getting on the scoreboard in the final minute of the third quarter. At halftime, when they trailed 24-zip, they had just one first down and 23 net yards. They were 0-for-6 on third-down conversions.

Now that was flirting with some kind of history.

How embarrassing. Sure, they saved some face by scoring their 22 points in the final 16 minutes. But that was mere window dressing. It was such a disaster for the Chiefs that Trump left the building way early, and the Eagles had the Gatorade shower before the two-minute warning.

Was that really Patrick Mahomes? The magnificent Chiefs quarterback was anything but that as he put his stamp on where the game was headed with interceptions on back-to-back passes in the second quarter that were quickly converted into 14 points.

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Sure, Mahomes’ best lineman, Joe Thuney, was pushed into the quarterback by Josh Sweat to influence the second pick over the middle to a diving Zack Baun. It led to Jalen Hurts’ 12-yard touchdown throw to A.J. Brown.

On his previous throw, a run-for-your-life situation, Mahomes threw across his body – uh-oh – at the wrong time. Rookie Cooper DeJean undercut the pass and didn’t stop until he dashed across the field for a 38-yard touchdown return.

In the days leading up to Sunday, Mahomes admitted that his previous Super Bowl loss, 31-9 against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers four years ago, is the game that stilll haunts him.

Well, the latest setback is the stuff of nightmares.

And it kept getting worse. A strip-sack in the fourth quarter – Milton Williams got the sack, forced fumble and recovery – led to another Jake Elliott field goal (his fourth) that made it 40-6. It was also a fitting snapshot for the punishment Mahomes absorbed throughout the game as his wall of protection was demolished by a deep, active and hungry Eagles defensive line that collected six sacks.

Some might suggest that karma finally caught up with Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Andy Reid and the rest their crew. If only it had come down to a one-possession game, of which the Chiefs have won a record 17 in a row.

The Eagles, though, made sure it was nowhere near being close.

And no, conspiracy theorists, the only way the officials could have pulled the Chiefs out of this mess was if they threw in the towel and declared the game over because of the mercy rule.

Yeah, Chiefs Fatigue is a thing. But not because they are tired of winning.

In this case, it seems as though the Chiefs had to be sick and tired of the beatdown.

Follow Jarrett Bell on social media: @JarrettBell

NEW ORLEANS – The Philadelphia Eagles not only prevented history in Sunday’s Super Bowl 59, they might’ve altered it.

In dominating the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22, Philly averted what would have been the first-ever Super Bowl three-peat. But did the Eagles also rip the guts out of a dynasty?

Never before had an established NFL empire crumbled so spectacularly on Super Sunday the way Chiefs Kingdom did.

The 1960s Green Bay Packers, 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers, 1980s San Francisco 49ers and 1990s Dallas Cowboys never lost a Super Bowl, those juggernauts a combined 14-0 in their heydays (which includes the Niners’ Super Bowl 29 win following the 1994 season). The 21st-century New England Patriots lost three of their nine Super Bowl appearances, but those defeats were by a combined 15 points in three classic matchups (two narrow defeats to the New York Giants and another to the Eagles).

The Chiefs were embarrassed 31-9 four years ago by Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but that was before Kansas City had officially waded into dynastic story (and K.C. was dealing with major injuries, particularly along its offensive line, during that loss in Tampa).

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But the 2024 Chiefs crumbled like a house of cards.

And there were no excuses. No significant injuries to speak of. No impact from the refs (K.C. even benefiting from a less-than-definitive pass interference against the Eagles’ A.J. Brown to kill Philadelphia’s opening possession). Nothing but ideal playing conditions on an optimal field and under cover in the Caesars Superdome.

There were no Chiefs points until the very end of the third quarter. Weren’t many yards, first downs or much time with the ball, either. But there were a pair of Patrick Mahomes picks – he now has nine INTs in five Super Bowl starts – one a pick-six to rookie defensive back Cooper DeJean. A team that managed to effectively go 17-1 this season prior to Sunday – just throw out that Week 18 loss to the Denver Broncos when Kansas City’s key players took the day off – with a slew of nip-and-tuck victories finally fell off its high wire with nary a safety net down below.

This doesn’t mean the Chiefs lose their dynasty card. That hay’s been in the barn since last year. And they are the first team to win consecutive Super Bowls and then manage to return for a third crack the following season.

But it is worth wondering how Kansas City recovers.

“You don’t ever get over them,” Brady, who has first-hand knowledge, said of demoralizing losses during Fox’s broadcast Sunday.

Moving forward, it’s unclear how much longer tight end Travis Kelce will continue to play – and he wasn’t a factor at all Sunday – but it is apparent that he’s slowing down and might soon have to cede significant snaps to Noah Gray. Per OverTheCap, the Chiefs only have about $11 million to spend on free agents next month – not much to import new bodies, much less retain the likes of core players such as safety Justin Reid, linebacker Nick Bolton and guard Trey Smith. (And boy does this team need a different answer at left tackle.) And, as AFC champs, K.C. will effectively be drafting near the end of every round.

Did we witness the death of a dynasty Sunday? Mahomes is only 29, and this roster has evolved significantly since Kansas City ended its 50-year Super Bowl drought five years ago – which means head coach Andy Reid and GM Brett Veach certainly know how to retool on the fly.

But from emotional and personnel perspectives – to say nothing of several rising powers in the AFC to contend with – the reanimation of the Chiefs could take a while.

If it happens at all.

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NEW ORLEANS – Nick Sirianni appeared as if he’d broken a sweat after winning his first Super Bowl.

But barely.

Following Sunday’s 40-22 thrashing of the two-time defending champion Kansas City Chiefs, the Philadelphia Eagles’ fourth-year head coach was cool, calm and collected in his postgame news conference – appropriate given he’s pushed almost all of the right buttons over the past four months but maybe also indicative of how he’s grown into his role.

“Outside world had an opinion on what was going on and everything there. And we just stuck to our process and got better from it,” Sirianni said of a team that finished 16-1 after a Week 5 bye preceded by a 2-2 start.

The Eagles’ lone loss since September occurred Dec. 22 at Washington in a game when quarterback Jalen Hurts was concussed.

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“I think, at the end of the day, you saw this team embrace adversity throughout the entire year,” continued Sirianni, his temperament amazingly even for a 43-year-old man who’d just reached the summit of his profession.

“Now it’s hard to say that when you’ve won sixteen out of your last seventeen, but there was adversity – there’s adversity constantly. And I think we did a good job of embracing that.”

So well, actually, that any adversity in 2024 hardly seemed noticeable given the myriad issues this team and its coach have grappled with over the years.

Sirianni infamously bombed during his introductory news conference in 2021. He was roasted for not running the ball sufficiently at the start of that first season. The sideline antics early in his tenure rubbed some the wrong way. There was the heartbreaking loss to the Chiefs in Super Bowl 57, a steady disintegration on and off the field down the stretch in 2023, and an ESPN report last summer suggesting a significant rift between Hurts and Sirianni – the latter’s job security often a major point of speculation in Philadelphia and beyond.

And yet we’re talking about a coach who is 54-23 (.701) – statistically, positively Belichick-ian – has gone to two Super Bowls and never missed the playoffs.

“It’s crazy,” said Sirianni, “sometimes we’re answering questions on how we win. It’s hard to win in this league. It’s a struggle every week to win in this league, and just because we’re not winning a certain way or the way people perceive that we should win doesn’t mean that we can’t.

“Long story short, you can’t be great without the greatness of others.”

And that’s become his constant mantra.

A coach who’s so often been in the spotlight – whether it be woofing at opponents, woofing at fans, for bringing his kids to the podium at news conferences – has successfully turned it around on his magnificent team and hardly been a story himself.

Aside from the fact that he’s now only the second Eagles coach to win a championship in the past 64 seasons, something even the great Andy Reid couldn’t manage in Philadelphia.

“I’ve been saying it a lot today and throughout the whole year that, ‘You cannot be great without the greatness of others.’ That applies to coaches, that applies player to player,” said Sirianni.

“This is the ultimate team game. And I know that it takes selflessness.”

And that approach was reflected by a team built in the trenches. Reflected by Hurts, a gritty QB who always prioritizes winning over all else – even if his stats, if taken out of context, would suggest otherwise. Reflected by running back Saquon Barkley, who piled up all kinds of numbers after joining the Eagles in 2024 but did so with a humble attitude that immediately made him beloved among his new teammates – and an advocate for his coach.

“A year ago, I probably despised him,” Barkley said of Sirianni this week. “But now our relationship has grown so much. He genuinely cares about players and that don’t get talked about enough.

“He’s an awesome person.”

Super Bowl 59 was something of a microcosm of Steady Sirianni. He certainly wasn’t happy with the offensive pass interference flag against receiver A.J. Brown on Philly’s first drive, a penalty that negated a conversion on fourth down and forced the team to punt.

“Mad about that at first but, again, these (officials) are making split-second decisions. And that was an All-Star crew out there,” said Sirianni.

“I thought they did a good job, regardless of what I thought about that one.”

From that point forward, the Eagles just steadily wore down the Chiefs on both sides of the ball, one line mauling Kansas City’s defensive front while the other constantly roughed up quarterback Patrick Mahomes without any blitz assistance.

“We do what we think we need to do win,” Sirianni said of the approach to rush just four defenders, “not what anybody else thinks we gotta do to win.”

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By halftime, the Eagles led 24-0, though their coaches were urging them to be ready for anything given Mahomes’ historical penchant for digging out of double-digit Super Bowl deficits. And that message apparently also sank in as the advantage bulged to 34-0 before K.C. finally got on the board in the waning ticks of the third quarter.

It was quite the culmination for an organization that appeared to be in crisis by the end of the 2023 campaign, when the team lost six of its final seven games – trounced at Tampa Bay in the wild-card round – before the retirement of team leader Jason Kelce.

But Sirianni said matters maybe weren’t as dire as they seemed.

“We had great OTAs, we had a great training camp, we were developing as a team. And just because the outside world tells you to feel a certain way doesn’t mean we were feeling that way, right? We knew we had a special team, we knew we had a group of guys who could do some special things,” he said. “It was just putting your head down and working.”

And just about everything did, Barkley seemingly the capstone piece the offense needed, and new coordinator Vic Fangio turning the defense into a juggernaut – one that beat down Mahomes constantly Sunday night. And that allowed the Eagles to do what they couldn’t in Super Bowl 57, a 38-35 loss to Kansas City.

“When we won the NFC championship game in 2022, there was so much joy – and I don’t want to say there wasn’t joy this year – it was like, ‘Alright, let’s go, we’ve gotta go finish the job now,’” said Sirianni.

“And that’s what we did.”

A job very well done by coach and team.

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NEW ORLEANS – The Birds have slain the beast, prevented history in the process and turned in one of the most dominant Super Bowl performances of all time. 

The Philadelphia Eagles throttled the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 on Sunday in Super Bowl 59 at Caesars Superdome to deny the Chiefs becoming the NFL’s first-ever “three-peat” Super Bowl champions.

The Eagles didn’t let the Chiefs being on the brink of history – or the last Super Bowl between the teams two years ago, a 38-35 loss for Philadelphia – affect their performance. Philadelphia snatched the pen to write its own version of history and did the football equivalent of drawing on the Chiefs’ forehead. 

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes ran for his life all game, and the Eagles’ defense deserves the credit for making him jumpy from the start. Josh Sweat led the team with 2 ½ sacks, and Milton Williams had two. The team’s six sacks were one off the Super Bowl record for most sacks in the game. Williams’ strip sack of Mahomes in the fourth quarter, which he recovered, was the exclamation point on the commanding defensive effort. 

Mahomes had two touchdown passes in the final three minutes to make the game appear closer than it ever really was.

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Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, aside from one ill-advised interception while facing a free blitzer, played with poise and finished 17-for-22 passing for 221 yards with two touchdowns to go with one rushing score. He was the game’s leading rusher with 72 yards on the ground on 11 attempts. After the Eagles took over on downs late in the third quarter, he found DeVonta Smith (four catches, 69 yards) on a go route down the seam for a 46-yard touchdown to make it 34-0.

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Running back Saquon Barkley, who set the all-time record for rushing yards in a season (including playoffs) during the game, did not unleash a breakout run as he’d done all postseason – sometimes multiple times in those games. He finished with 57 rushing yards on 25 carries but caught a team-high six passes for 40 yards. It marked his first time since Week 15 of the regular season without more than 100 rushing yards in a game. 

The Chiefs went from the verge of cementing themselves as the team’s most prolific dynasty to facing the prospect of becoming the first team to be shut out on the world’s largest stage. Kansas City started 0-for-8 on third down, and Xavier Worthy caught the team’s first touchdown to make it 34-6 with 34 seconds left in the third quarter. 

Down the field, Mahomes had nobody to throw to. Travis Kelce (four receptions, 39 yards) was a non-factor; his first catch came with three minutes remaining in the third quarter and the game already decided. And the lack of rushing attack was one of several factors that allowed the Eagles’ pass rushers to tee off on Mahomes all game. 

Mahomes showed up to the stadium Sunday wearing an Eagles shade of green. But it was the Eagles’ defense who had him feeling green. 

Eagles rookie cornerback Cooper DeJean, celebrating his 22nd birthday Sunday, returned an interception – the first of his career – for a touchdown halfway through the second quarter to make it 17-0 after his Eagles teammates had sacked Mahomes on the previous two plays. 

Two series later, Zach Baun intercepted Mahomes – feeling pressure again – over the middle to give the Eagles the ball back at the Kansas City 14-yard line with 1:45 left in the half. Hurts found a wide-open A.J. Brown for a 12-yard touchdown two plays later and the blowout was in full force, 24-0, with 95 seconds remaining until halftime. 

Over the first 30 minutes, the Eagles completely suffocated the defending champs. The Chiefs had one first down, on their first drive, at halftime. With Mahomes sacked three times, Kansas City had 23 net yards of offense. Meanwhile, Philadelphia had 179 net yards and ran nearly twice as many plays (39-20) and held possession twice as long. The 24-point lead was the steepest margin at halftime in Super Bowl history. 

Not much changed for the better for the Chiefs in the second half. Once again, the Eagles sacked Mahomes on consecutive plays to force a punt. 

Both teams punted following their first offensive possessions of the game. An offensive pass interference penalty on Brown as the Eagles converted a fourth-and-2 did no favors to the narrative – which the NFL tried to dispel the entire week – that the Chiefs receive preferential treatment from the referees. However, Brown shoved his left hand into Chiefs cornerback Trent McDuffie’s helmet to trigger the flag.  

The Eagles were on the other side of flag luck when Hurts overthrew Dallas Goedert on third-and-5, but the tight end took a shot to the helmet from McDuffie to keep the drive alive. The scoring then began, as Hurts found Jahan Dotson for a 27-yard touchdown to the one-yard line, and Philadelphia executed its patented “tush push” for a six-point lead with 6:15 left in the first quarter. 

Kicker Jake Elliott made all four of his field-goal attempts (48, 29, 48, 50) to round out the scoring for Philadelphia. 

The Chiefs were undisciplined penalty-wise, notably Nick Bolton’s penalty for unnecessary roughness for nailing Barkley in the back following an incompletion with the Eagles backed up toward the end of the first half. 

The vastly pro-Philadelphia crowd was persistent throughout the day in the “Big Easy,” starting “E-A-G-L-E-S” chants more than two hours before kickoff. Those fans also made their disdain of the Chiefs well-known throughout Sunday – from player introductions to the cheerleaders receiving a bombardment of boos while descending an escalator to field level. By the fourth quarter, they mockingly performed the “tomahawk chop” Chiefs fans do in support of their team. 

And they went into the New Orleans night chanting as the champs for the second time in eight seasons. 

NEW ORLEANS – Jalen Hurts is a Super Bowl MVP.

The Philadelphia Eagles quarterback was named MVP after the team obliterated the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl 59.

Behind Hurts and a dominant defensive performance, the Eagles flew out to a 24-0 lead in the first half.

Hurts rushed for a 1-yard touchdown and threw for a 12-yard score to wide receiver A.J. Brown in the first half as Philadelphia built a commanding advantage.

Hurts and the entire Eagles team kept flying in the second half. The Eagles quarterback tossed a 46-yard touchdown to wide receiver DeVonta Smith as Philadelphia padded its lead to 34-0 with under three minutes left in the third quarter. Hurts’ second touchdown pass closed the door on any chance the Chiefs had of coming back.

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The Eagles quarterback completed 17-of-22 passes for 221 yards, to go with two touchdowns and one interception. He rushed 11 times for 72 yards and had a rushing touchdown.

It’s the Eagles’ second Super Bowl title. Hurts joins Nick Foles as the only Eagles players in franchise history to be named Super Bowl MVP.

NEW ORLEANS – You could’ve listened to Taylor Swift’s entire “The Tortured Poets Department” album – bonus tracks, too – in the amount of time it took for Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce to catch a pass Sunday in Super Bowl 59.

Kelce and his quarterback, Patrick Mahomes, lacked any of their usual alchemy in a 40-22 disintegration at the hands of the Philadelphia Eagles. Mahomes didn’t connect with his favorite target until the third quarter, by which point the Eagles’ rout was in full motion.

A brutal night, really, for Kelce, and Eagles fans showed no mercy. When the video board showed Kelce’s superstar girlfriend, Swift, in the first half, Eagles fans booed. Swift looked perplexed by the crowd’s response.

Don’t worry, Tay, that’s just Eagles fans. They booed the Chiefs’ cheerleaders, too, when they weren’t joyously singing another round of “Fly, Eagles, Fly!”

Mahomes and Kelce might hear that earworm in their sleep.

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Patrick Mahomes weighs in on Travis Kelce’s future

Could this really be how Kelce’s incredible career ends?

Mahomes chimed in on the swirling rumors about Kelce’s playing future. A pregame report from the NFL Network hinted at possible retirement for Kelce, 35.

“He’s given so much to this team and to the NFL and been such a joy, not only for me to work with, but for people to watch,” Mahomes said, while adding that he’d leave it to Kelce to more specifically address his future. “He knows he still has a lot of football left in him. You can see it …, but it’s if he wants to put in that grind. It’s a grind to go out there and play 20 games, or whatever it is, and get to the Super Bowl.’

Kelce was not among the Chiefs players to come to the postgame interview room. He spoke briefly with a few reporters in the locker room, saying the blowout ranked as the Chiefs’ worst showing of the season.

Mahomes didn’t paint a rosier picture. He’s now 3-2 in his Super Bowl starts, with this defeat joining the Chiefs’ loss to Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl 55.

In both that game and this one, the Chiefs’ offensive line failed to adequately protect Mahomes, and he struggled under harassment.

How did this game compare to that loss to the Bucs?

“Both sucked,” Mahomes said.

Patrick Mahomes points to turnovers to explain Chiefs’ loss

Mahomes shouldered the blame for this result, pointing to his two first-half interceptions that gift-wrapped 14 points for Philadelphia. The Eagles put him under frequent pressure without needing to blitz, and, in Mahomes’ assessment, he made matters worse by forcing some throws.

“I can’t make bad plays worse,” he said.

Asked about Mahomes’ night, Chiefs receiver DeAndre Hopkins put it best: “He’s human.”

Even if he’d previously supplied superhuman performances.

It would have helped if Mahomes’ tight end had delivered more of a vintage effort.

In a fit of frustration during last year’s Super Bowl, Kelce bumped into Andy Reid on the sideline while giving his coach an earful. Reid joked it off after that Super Bowl 58 triumph against the 49ers in overtime, in which Kelce caught nine passes. A little more sideline fire might have helped on this night. The Chiefs never found a rhythm, with the line unable to protect Mahomes and the deficit mounting quickly. Kansas City offense had just 20 plays in the first half and moved the chains just one time before Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance.

Mahomes targeted Kelce twice in the first half. Neither toss found the mark. Kelce finished with four receptions to give him 35 catches in five Super Bowl appearances, making him the career record holder and moving him past Jerry Rice, who had the previous high with 33.

Any conversation of the greatest tight ends ever must include Kelce in the debate.

“He’s done enough to be a gold jacket guy, a first-ballot Hall of Famer, but I know he still has love for the game,” Mahomes said. “He knows he can come back here with welcoming arms.”

Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.