5 Stats About Super Bowl LIX That Will Blow Your Mind
Normally, we’d spend the week before the Super Bowl clowning on how terrible the Pro Bowl was, calling NFL award winners frauds, and of course, talking about the game itself.
Unfortunately for the NFL, the Luka Doncic trade echoed around the sports world and drowned out Super Bowl talks for multiple days. Then, one of the craziest NBA trade deadlines in history transpired up until 3 PM yesterday (stay tuned for my final thoughts about the trades). Tomorrow, Luka, Anthony Davis, and Jimmy Butler all make their debuts, making today one of the only days of the last two weeks that we can talk about football without distraction.
Thus, to set the stage for the Super Bowl preview that Ben and I will be releasing tomorrow afternoon, I thought I’d find five of the most absurd statistics surrounding this year’s Super Bowl matchup between the Chiefs and the Eagles.
Let’s get into it.
1. A Tale of Two Conferences
Since 2003, only six quarterbacks have represented the AFC in the Super Bowl while a whopping 19 have made it out of the NFC. Here’s the list (the year represents the year that each season started).
In this 22-year span, Brady has reached the big game eight times, Mahomes has made it five times, Peyton Manning has made it four times, and Big Ben reached the finals three times. Joe Burrow and Joe Flacco were the only one-offs.
Now, here’s the list for the NFC.
Eli Manning, Russell Wilson, and Jalen Hurts are the only quarterbacks on this list to reach multiple Super Bowls in this span and only Eli won multiple.
All in all, since 2003, the AFC is 13-8 in the Super Bowl.
2. Eagles Rushing Rampage
Philadelphia has defied the conventional definition of explosive offense this season and has generated the majority of their chunk plays by means of Saquon Barkley’s breakthrough runs as well as the occasional Jalen Hurts long scramble. As a result, the Eagles have the chance to break several monumental rushing records on Sunday.
After surpassing this year’s Ravens team for the most rushing yards in a single season (regular and post) last week with 3,731, Philly can leap the 1982 Commanders for the most rushing yards in a postseason (792) by rushing for at least 110 this season. They’ve easily cleared 110 in every game this postseason.
They can also break the 1997 Broncos' record of 12 rushing TDs in a single postseason if they reach the endzone three times on the ground in the Super Bowl and can break their own record of 42 rushing touchdowns in a single season if they score four times.
Finally, Saquon Barkley—who was held out of the Eagles’ week 18 game in which he would have had the chance to break Eric Dickerson’s single-season rushing record—is only 30 yards away from passing Terrell Davis for the most rushing yards in an entire season (2,477). He should make history this Sunday.
3. Champs Doubling Down
Philadelphia vs Kansas City is the Super Bowl game for the second time in three years, making it the fifth repeat Super Bowl matchup where the games were within eight years of. Here are the other matchups.
As you can see, in the four other Super Bowl rematches, the team that won the first game also won the second game. What’s even more insane is that in the last five of those games (both Chiefs vs Eagles and Patriots vs Giants as well as the second 49ers vs Bengals), the team with fewer regular season wins won the game.
Obviously, history is on Kansas City’s side here as they prevailed 38-35 over the Eagles in 2022.
4. Stop at the Red Light
I got deep in my bag for this one. It occurred to me that the three teams that the Eagles have lost to this year—the Falcons, Bucs, and Commanders—all have red as their primary color.
It turns out that tracing back to week 13 of last season, Philadelphia has lost to San Francisco, Arizona, Tampa Bay twice, Atlanta, and Washington. In those losses, they’ve allowed 33.3 points per game which is miles worse than their 16.9 average in the 21 other games in that span.
In totality, since week 13 of last season, Philly is 2-6 against teams with red as their primary color and 16-3 against all other teams. That has a 1.07% of occurring which is statistically significant.
You can probably see where I’m going with this. Kansas City doesn’t just wear red— they represent red. On Wikipedia, their primary color isn’t maroon or burgundy like some of these teams. It just says red. Chiefs fans are known as “Red Coaters,” and their mascot, Taylor Swift, has a famous album called “Red.”
Will the Chiefs’ colors be the reason they’re hoisting the Lombardi trophy at the end of the night? I don’t know about that. What I do know is that five of the six red teams that Philly has lost to in the graphic above scored at least 32 points in those games. Incredibly, the Chiefs were one of three teams (the 4-13 Patriots and the 4-13 Raiders are the others) that didn’t score 31 points in a game this season. Something’s got to give.
5. Mahomes’ Super Bowl Prophecy
This last one is just ridiculous. In his seven-year career as a starter, Patrick Mahomes has reached the Super Bowl five times. That’s a 71.4% success rate of making the Super Bowl. In his career, he has a 66.6% completion percentage.
Miraculously, Mahomes has a better chance of making the Super Bowl than he does of completing a mere pass. Yes, you read that correctly. If you’re looking to make money by sports betting, you’d rather bet on Mahomes to win the AFC than for him to throw the ball to one of his receivers.
No NFL quarterback has ever achieved such a feat in their first seven seasons. No player has ever reached the Super Bowl four times in their first seven years because only the Chiefs have ever done it.