Eagles Defense Cement Themselves As One Of The NFL’s All-Time Best
Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Cooper DeJean (33) celebrate his touchdown with safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson (8) after an interception against the Kansas City Chiefs during the first half of the NFL Super Bowl 59 football game, Sunday, Feb. 9, 2025, in New Orleans. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)
I guess the old saying is true, defense does indeed win championships. After a season of dominant performances from the Philadelphia Eagles defense, Vic Fangio’s unit capped off the year with an incredible showing in Super Bowl LIX against the two-time defending champions Kansas City Chiefs.
While the score of the Super Bowl may read the Eagles winner 40-22, this game was not even close and that was in large part due to the defense. The defense sacked Patrick Mahomes six times in the win, the most Mahomes has ever been sacked in a game, one off from tying the record for most sacks by a team in a Super Bowl.
On top of that, they also forced three turnovers, one for a touchdown, forcing Mahomes to throw two interceptions and fumble once. The only reason people feel like this wouldn’t be considered the greatest single performance from a defense not only in a Super Bowl but in a game ever, is likely due to the 125 yards of offense and two touchdowns that the Chiefs scored in the final three minutes of the game.
If you take out those two drives where most of the Eagles starters were not playing, here are the Chiefs’ offensive numbers for the game. 148 passing yards, 27 rushing yards, one total touchdown, three turnovers, and six first downs. That’s just an incredible showing.
When the Eagles were truly playing with their full starting lineup, the Chiefs couldn’t move the ball and looked like a completely different team than normal. The first nine drives for Kansas City went like this. Punt, punt, punt, interception touchdown, punt, interception, punt, punt, turnover on downs.
Right away in the Super Bowl, you felt that the Eagles’ defense looked dialed in. They were dominating at the line of scrimmage getting right in Mahomes’ face right away forcing him to make bad passes and allowing the Eagles to get an early 10 points from their offense.
The fourth drive of the game for the Chiefs is when the Eagles’ defense fully looked like they could do whatever they wanted. After already forcing three punts, they began the next drive with back-to-back sacks, one by Josh Sweat and then the second from Sweat and Jalyx Hunt. On third and long Mahomes rolled out and threw a questionable pass that was lurked incredibly by rookie Cooper DeJean for a pick-six.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY COOPER DEJEAN‼️ #EAGLES pic.twitter.com/hC8WpaAk3N
— Philly Sports Reports (@PhlySprtsReprts) February 10, 2025
Just an incredible play by a rookie nonetheless. On the next drive, the Eagles shut down Mahomes again with another sack this time from Milton Williams. The Eagles then punted right back to Kansas City but forced them inside their 10-yard line, and because of this and the fact the rush was getting to Mahomes so quickly, he made another bad throw into the hands of All-Pro linebacker Zack Baun. That allowed the Eagles to cash in for sic two plays later and extended the lead to 24 at the half.
The Eagles’ defense continued to dominant after halftime, allowing just one touchdown drive when the full defense was out on the field. They were stopping the Chiefs with sacks, interceptions, and incomplete passes and even got them to turn the ball over on fourth down thanks to a great pass breakup from Avonte Maddox.
After that turnover on downs, the Eagles went and scored another touchdown right away and it made the score 34-0 Eagles with 2:40 left in the third quarter, basically putting the game away then. To me, that’s one of the craziest parts as the game was essentially over with nearly 18 minutes left of game time.
The majority of these drives were not even long which once again increases the impressiveness of this performance. The Chiefs only had the ball for just over 23 minutes of game-time and had eight drives that went four plays or less and resulted in zero points. Adding onto the craziness of this defense, the Eagles did not blitz once across all 42 of the Chiefs dropbacks.
The Eagles did not blitz once across 42 dropbacks in Super Bowl LIX, just the 4th defense to not blitz in a game in the NGS era.
— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) February 10, 2025
Relying on their front four, the Eagles generated 16 pressures and sacked Mahomes six times, his most in a game in his career.
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Vic Fangio deserves more than a raise, this man deserves to call himself the best defensive minds in the league. After getting ran out of town in Miami last year, he took a broken defense in 2023 and turned them into the No. 1 Scoring and Total Defense, becoming just the third team since 2000 to win the Super Bowl when being No. 1 in those categories. Games like Super Bowl LIX will go down in Eagles history as not only an incredible championship win, but one of the greatest performances from a defense to cap off an already incredible season.
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Matt Brown
Matt has been a Philadelphia sports fan all his life and spent four years at Penn State University majoring in Broadcast Journalism and minoring in Sports Studies. He previously covered Penn State’s field hockey, men’s and women’s basketball, and baseball teams while writing for a Penn State blog called Onward State. He has now covered the Phillies, Eagles, and Sixers for Philly Sports Reports since October 2024 and wants to pursue a career in Sports Journalism.
