Last fall, after having coached across four decades in the NFL, the great Bill Belichick took up work in the football media.
Thankfully, the stoic Hoodie didn’t adopt the media’s love for sensationalism.
In recent days, weeks and months, while others were chalking up the Kansas City Chiefs’ many successes to good luck or referees’ decisions, Belichick leaned into his expertise.
He cued up the football film, and delved into the games’ intricacies.
Running viewers through the key plays, he showed how in crucial late-game moments, the Chiefs made sharp football decisions and moves. Also, without being snide about it, he explained how Chiefs opponents erred in similar high-pressure moments. Therein lay the difference, Belichick said, to many of the outcomes.
How dull. How drab.
In his preview of Sunday’s Super Bowl in New Orleans, Belichick dished up more football oatmeal.
He said the game will be decided in the final minute and pointed out that K.C., which seeks to become the first franchise to win three Super Bowls in a row, doesn’t crack under extreme duress very often.
“Whether it’s offense, defense, special teams, Kansas City’s had a great knack of making those big plays at the right time,” said the coach on the weekly show “Inside The NFL,” broadcast by the NFL Network and CW.
Will the Philadelphia Eagles outperform coach Andy Reid’s Chiefs in these moments of truth?
Belichick didn’t drop any hints, but he has praised coach Nick Sirianni’s team throughout the year. He often has celebrated Eagles defensive tackle Jalen Carter and cued up examples of how Carter’s “club move” and other skills can set up teammates and cave in the opponent’s blocking.
Nor did Belichick dispute the opinion of colleague Chris Long, a former defensive lineman and two-time Super Bowl champion, that the Eagles have the league’s best roster and top offensive line. Like everyone else, he’s a big fan of Saquon Barkley, the running back who has run wild in his first year with the Eagles.
The Eagles will be playing in their third Super Bowl in eight years. They beat Belichick’s Patriots seven years ago in a shootout and lost to Reid’s Chiefs two years ago.
The Chiefs have won three Super Bowls in the past five years, losing one Super Bowl to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Belichick is the rare outsider who can understand that kind of stretch in great detail. Over a four-year span, his Patriots won three Super Bowls, each by a margin of three points. The third of those victories came against Reid’s Eagles, who couldn’t overcome four turnovers.
So it wasn’t surprising that when previewing Sunday’s game, Belichick focused on a Chiefs trait: the ability to nail the crucial late-game details.
“These guys are just so good at situational football,” he said.
Long, a son of Raiders Hall of Fame defensive tackle Howie Long, interjected that Chiefs opponents have helped out by wilting in crunch-time moments. Long pointed out that in last year’s Super Bowl, a blown assignment by a San Francisco 49ers guard enabled K.C.’s best -rusher, Chris Jones, to run free and force Brock Purdy into an enormous incompletion.
Also, Long and Belichick agreed that in a big moment of an AFC playoff game three years ago, the Cincinnati Bengals blundered by sliding their protection away from Jones.
As if to say thank you very much, Jones responded by overwhelming an inferior right tackle and sacking Joe Burrow.
Long called that Bengals error “jaw-dropping” and “ridiculous.”
He said of the Chiefs: “They wait for other teams to make mistakes.”
“But,” said Belichick, “the other teams keep making them.
“And,” he added, “Kansas City doesn’t make too many of them. They’re there to capitalize on it.”
The Eagles, for sure, are more talented than the Eagles team that lost a squeaker to the Chiefs in Super Bowl 57.
They have a better offensive line and quarterback, compared to Kyle Shanahan’s two Niners teams that Reid’s club overcame in Super Bowls 54 and 58.
Sirianni’s hire last offseason of Vic Fangio, one of the better defensive coordinators in NFL history, has provided several windfalls.
If the Eagles can handle the pressure moments a little better than so many other Chiefs opponents have in big games, they’ll raise the franchise’s second Lombardi Trophy.
Otherwise, it’ll be hail to the Chiefs once again.
