To pull off their Super Bowl upset Sunday night, the Philadelphia Eagles out-Patriots-ed the New England Patriots. The stories we all know by heart about the Patriots are the ones we’re telling about the Eagles this morning. How they’re never out of any game, even if they’re missing a star player. How they come up with critical plays at the exact moment when they need one. How they leverage a coaching advantage by taking risks the other team is afraid to take.
The Eagles won a shootout Sunday night by slipping off their underdog masks and playing like they had nothing to lose.
The Patriots weren’t out-schemed. They weren’t overwhelmed by a dominant defensive line, as they were during their Super Bowl defeats against the New York Giants. They were out-executed. Bill Belichick’s team made sloppy mistakes throughout the game and left the door open just wide enough for the Eagles to fly on in. For a team whose mantra is famously “Do Your Job” — for a team that relies on a nearly mechanical emphasis and focus upon getting the little things right — the Patriots were napping at work far too frequently to win.
Doug Pederson’s team didn’t win the Super Bowl as a result of the Patriots’ mistakes; the Eagles won because they executed in many of the exact ways in which the Patriots specifically struggled. Philadelphia didn’t play a perfect game, but it was far more consistent and made critical plays far more frequently than the Patriots.
More Patriots than Patriots
Where did the Eagles outdo the Patriots? Let’s run through some of the ways the Eagles stood out — and the Patriots fell short — in Super Bowl LII:
Third down. We’ll get to Nick Foles‘ game later, but the biggest question about Philadelphia’s quarterback heading into the contest was whether he would be able to keep up his stunning performance on third down after posting a perfect passer rating and converting nine of his 11 third-down tries against the best third-down defense in recent league history during the NFC Championship Game.
Foles and the Eagles’ offense delivered in spades. The Patriots weren’t expected to be as stout as the Vikings, but the same offense that went 1-of-14 on third down on a Christmas night struggle against the Raiders went 10-of-16 (62.5 percent) on third downs against the Patriots. Philly converted a pair of third downs to start its first drive, including a third-and-12 to Torrey Smith, and went on its way from there.
Last year, Hightower came up with the strip sack of Matt Ryan that gave the Patriots a crucial short field during their comeback. Against Seattle, Butler came up with the most famous interception in recent league history. This year, with the Patriots about to launch their own would-be comeback drive late in the fourth quarter, it was the Eagles who came up with a critical turnover exactly when they needed a big play when they shifted Brandon Graham inside for a strip sack of Brady.
New England simply didn’t have the bodies. Hightower was playing out of position and got hurt. Trey Flowers had a great postseason but was erased from existence on Sunday night by Halapoulivaati Vaitai and the Eagles’ offensive line, which went with six offensive linemen for several plays with some success, including the 21-yard touchdown from LeGarrette Blount. The Eagles have a great offense, and the Patriots’ defense couldn’t keep up. Gilmore had a great game, but the Patriots will need to address their front seven this offseason.
Brady’s bunch
With even a little bit of resistance from their defense, the Patriots probably would have won this game. That’s how incredible their offense performed. Given that the Eagles came into the game ranked fourth in scoring defense and fifth in defensive DVOA, I think you can make a reasonable case that this was the best offensive performance in any loss in NFL history, let alone Super Bowl history.
The big number here is 600: The Patriots became the first team in league history to rack up 600 yards in a game and lose, finishing the game with 613 yards from scrimmage. The 600 Club had previously gone a combined 38-0-1 before Sunday, with the previous record for most yards in a defeat coming when the 49ers racked up 598 yards in a 34-31 loss to the Bills in September 1992.
Yardage isn’t the best statistic, though, and a better measure might be that the Patriots never had to punt on Sunday. They scored six times, missed a field goal, had a drive end on downs, fumbled away the ball, and had a possession end at the conclusion of each half. Teams occasionally lose without punting, but it’s usually because they turn the ball over a bunch. The Pats turned the ball over only once.
At the same time, though, Foles isn’t a creation of his coaches. The 29-year-old deserves a ton of credit and was counted out by a ton of people after his ugly end to the regular season, myself included. When I wrote that the Eagles still had a chance to win the NFC after Carson Wentz‘s injury, that argument was predicated upon home-field advantage, a great defense and Foles doing just enough to win games.
Maybe the Eagles won the Atlanta game that way, and maybe this all breaks differently if the duck Foles tossed up just before halftime is picked off by Keanu Neal as opposed to dropping into Torrey Smith‘s hands to help set up a field goal. Over the past two games, though, Foles has been a bona fide superstar. He finished with the second-best QBR over the conference championship and Super Bowl in the past 10 years, second to Matt Ryan‘s performance from last season. On Sunday, he won a game on a neutral field where his defense allowed one of the best quarterbacks in league history to rack up 600 yards of offense. The story used to be that the Eagles might be able to win despite Nick Foles. It was wrong. They just won a Super Bowl because they had Nick Foles.
What to do with the spare Super Bowl MVP you have lying around
Now, the Eagles find themselves in a funny predicament that just about every team in the league would love to worry about. While I joked about it during the game, there’s no quarterback controversy in Philadelphia. Wentz was the favorite to win league MVP before he went down with a torn ACL. Foles pieced together an incredible postseason, but Wentz is going to be Philly’s quarterback for the next decade.
The rest of the league just watched Philadelphia’s backup tear apart the NFC’s best defense and outduel Tom Brady in a shootout to win the Super Bowl. Foles is under contract for one more year at a cap hit of $7.6 million, with his contract set to void in April 2019. That’s big money for a backup (money the Eagles will never regret spending), but it’s well below market value for a starter, even as a stopgap or a bridge to a younger quarterback.
Given that the Eagles will likely lose Foles in 2019 to another team, should they at least be willing to listen to trade offers for their Super Bowl MVP?
The argument against the idea is clear. Wentz tore up his knee in mid-December, and while initial reports suggested it was a clean ACL tear, it also now seems likely that Wentz suffered damage to additional ligaments in his knee as part of the injury, which complicates his recovery period. There’s no guarantee Wentz is ready for Week 1 of the 2018 season, let alone prepared to play at a similar level to the MVP-caliber form we saw from him this past season. Foles is a hedge against any setbacks to Wentz. Eagles fans can sleep comfortably all spring and summer knowing the floor for their quarterback spot is Super Bowl MVP.
At the same time, though, trading Foles doesn’t preclude the Eagles from investing in another backup to replace Wentz. While Foles does deserve the credit I mentioned, the same infrastructure that helped raise both Foles and Wentz up during the 2017 season is set to return for 2018, with the Eagles likely to run this back with all three of their key offensive coaches, every one of their major receiving weapons, and all of their offensive linemen pending what Philadelphia does with left tackle Jason Peters, who is coming off of a torn ACL and MCL.
Philadelphia would save $5.2 million on its cap by trading Foles, which would be plenty of money to target a replacement. The Eagles are missing second- and third-round picks in this year’s draft as a result of the trades for Wentz and Ronald Darby, although they have an extra fourth-rounder from the Pats as a result of the Rowe trade. Howie Roseman is the most aggressive general manager in the league when it comes to swapping veterans, so I wouldn’t put the idea past him, even if the trade doesn’t actually happen.
Like anything, I think it depends on the compensation. Some team is going to have to give up a lot to make the Eagles think about it. Roseman probably would look toward the top half of the second round, where the Jets (37), Broncos (40) and even the Dolphins (42) could theoretically look Foles’ way. The Cardinals (47) have no apparent options at quarterback and the sort of cap stress that would make Foles’ relatively low salary palatable. The Bills have two back-end second-rounders at 53 and 56, and you wonder if they might call about Foles if they cut Tyrod Taylor. Or maybe the Eagles look to acquire a young downfield threat at wide receiver (assuming they plan on declining Smith’s option) or a tight end to replace free agent Trey Burton as part of the deal.
In the end, I doubt anything happens. The Eagles can’t really justify dealing Foles given Wentz’s injury unless a team blows them away with a trade offer, and given that we just saw Jimmy Garoppolo go for a second-rounder and Alex Smith join Washington for a third-rounder and Kendall Fuller, it’s difficult to see a team dealing a more valuable pick for Foles. The Eagles return virtually all of their core for 2018. At this point, even though he’s a backup, Foles is part of that core.
He probably deserves to have a shot at starting somewhere, but after he lived through the horror of a Jeff Fisher season, you can imagine Foles might appreciate his situation in Philadelphia. After he saved their season and helped lead the Eagles to their first Super Bowl trophy, he might be the only backup quarterback in football with his own statue in town. Covered in Crisco, of course.