NEW ORLEANS — Turn into the right corridor on the lowest floor of the Superdome, follow the heavy bass music thumping in the background and when the cigar smoke is at its thickest, legends say the Philadelphia Eagles players are still celebrating in the locker room.
There was one Eagle whose spirit would’ve been enough to keep a thousand parties alive for the rest of time: second-year pass rusher Nolan Smith. He spent the majority of his postgame in a similar manner he did during the Eagles’ 40-22 beatdown of the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX — hyping up his fellow defensive linemen who owned their corner of the locker room. Smith, Jalen Carter, Jordan Davis, Milton Williams, Josh Sweat and the rest of the Eagles’ d-line didn’t stray too far from each other postgame, which fit their raucous performance during the game.
The Eagles’ plan for this game didn’t deviate much from their plan all season. This isn’t a team that likes, or needs, to blitz a whole lot in order for them to play stalwart defense. In fact, according to data provided by TruMedia, the Eagles did not blitz Patrick Mahomes on a single one of his 42 dropbacks during the Super Bowl. With just pure four-man rushes, the Eagles were able to pressure Mahomes on 42.9% of his dropbacks and sacked him a whopping six times to force him into one of the worst games of his career.
“We liked our matchups up front,” star defensive tackle Milton Williams said. “We came in and dominated like we set out to do … we watched film and we liked what we saw. We knew we were gonna be able to get ours.”
When asked specifically what the Eagles saw up front on film coming into the game, Williams gave a similar answer to his fellow linemen. “We got dawgs!” Williams exclaimed. “We got dawgs everywhere! Everybody got a chip on their shoulder. Everybody’s been told what they can’t do, and we just came together.”
That’s a bit simplified, but when a team solely deploys a basic, four-man rush package for an entire game, it really does just take players winning their individual matchups. Four-man rushes mean there’s always going to be a rusher or two getting double-teams from the opposing blocking scheme, but in this specific instance it didn’t matter. The Chiefs had some serious offensive line issues coming into the game and the Eagles took over and smashed them over the head with no remorse. By the time the game was at halftime, the Chiefs had just 20 net passing yards on 17 dropbacks — 1.2 yards per dropback for Mahomes!
This was an all-time masterclass in how to bring a great quarterback to his knees.
“Hey, we just did our job,” Davis said through a massive grin. “That’s all that matters — we just did our job. We didn’t care what the other team was doing, we didn’t care what the offense was doing, we didn’t care what the situation was. We were worried about what the defense was doing.”
Six sacks, 35.7% dropback success rate, 226 net passing yards and two interceptions on the best quarterback in the world. Without any blitzes. That’s the story of the game.
“We’re just a dominant defense,” the veteran defensive end Sweat said. “The sacks are going to come to whoever the dude runs into.”
Sweat was about to enter a long-winded answer about the pass rush and the defense and how they repeatedly hit the Chiefs’ offensive line with a Louisville Slugger, but before he could finish Smith and Williams mobbed Sweat, yelling the clearly beloved moniker of “BIG DADDY SWEAT” over and over again as the music blared in the background.
All in all, Williams summed up the Eagles’ day on the defensive line in the hallway outside the field shortly after the final buzzer sounded.
“Best in the muthaf***in world. Come on now!”
