Chiefs at Eagles

This year's Super Bowl is in Arizona, Phoenix area. A nuetral site with no homefield advantage. It should be good weather for football. Let's look at the stat profiles.

Please see the weekly Predict Report, which includes a stat matchup table at the bottom of the page. Eagles are strong in a few key areas. First, they run the ball -- a lot, almost 32 times per game. Opponents have to respect the run and try to stop it, which opens passing lanes. This enables an effective passing game.

Here we see passing offense, our killer stat, offense. Both teams rank high with Eagles 3rd and Chiefs 2nd.

On D, a slight edge to the Eagles on our killer stat, defense. The Eagles lead the league ranking first with the Chiefs not far back at 10th.

With high ranks of 3 and 1 on offense and defense, Eagles lead the league on the difference stat, offense minus defense, our killer stat. This is the most important stat in the game and using this one stat only, projects Eagles in the Super Bowl. It's close for the AFC too as it had Chiefs only a whisker behind the Bills who got knocked out by a hot Bengals team.

Part of the Eagles strong defensive passing game comes from the sack, where they get to opposing QBs 4 times per game. That's a lot of pressure. But Chiefs QB Mahommes doesn't get sacked much, he's a magician on the field. We don't know how his ankle is holding up but we do know he will give it all he's got.

If you look at our predict reports on a regular basis, you may have noticed the little blurb which comes after the division schedules. On the current report this includes the following text: "THE NFC CHAMPION SHOULD BE PHILADELPHIA. THE AFC CHAMP KANSAS CITY. FAVORED BY 4 POINTS, THE SUPER BOWL CHAMP WILL BE PHILADELPHIA."

On the website page Archive, where we have links to all past reports, the Eagles show up as conferene favorites after just two games in the unweighted report for games of week 3 and stay there the rest of the way. Chiefs first show up as conference favorites in the week 11 report. They both made it to the big game. Doesn't usually happen.

Our computer likes the Eagles by 3.5 (or 4 points if you round it off like our report does). I'll go with the Eagles as well with the disclaimer that anything can happen. I hope it's a well-played game on both sides -- with no glaring mishaps by the officials because this is a textbook matchup of the two best teams in the league.

Bill Sanders for BudGoodeSports.com
dr.bill@wrsanders.com

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