The National Football League wrapped their biggest weekend and game of the 2024-25 season. This past Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 40-22, in New Orleans at the Caesars Superdome and claimed the Vince Lombardi Trophy for the second time in franchise history.
The Philadelphia Eagles stopped the Chiefs’ potential three-peat, shocking the world with a dominating performance against Kansas City. The Eagles controlled the game right from kick-off, scoring 34 unanswered points. Patrick Mahomes, starting quarterback for the Chiefs, and his offense tried to make a comeback, but it was too little, too late.
Jalen Hurts won Super Bowl MVP, the Most Valuable Player, throwing for 221 yards, two touchdowns, and rushing for 72 yards, with a rushing touchdown on top of all that. Defensively, the Eagles were successful. The defensive line sacked Mahomes six times, tying for second place for the most sacks in a Super Bowl game. The secondary was able to pick off Mahomes twice, one of them being returned for a touchdown by rookie cornerback Cooper DeJean.
“I was thrilled with the outcome. I did not expect such a blowout, and I kept thinking that Mahomes would lead a comeback, but it never happened,” Chris Owsik ‘26 said.
Owsik was more than excited that the Eagles were able to handle business and win the Super Bowl. He thought that the Eagles did everything perfectly and was surprised that they were able to stop Mahomes. This offseason, he believes that the Eagles need to keep one of their two coordinators. He also said they need to re-sign their All-Pro linebacker Zack Baun and try their best to re-sign their defensive end, Josh Sweat. With this plan, he believes that they can repeat as champions next season.
Before the game, Josh Loeffler, head coach of Loyola Men’s Basketball, was asked who he thought was going to win the Super Bowl, the answer was very clear to him.
“Birds…We need to avoid turnovers, block well against a very good d-line, and find explosive plays,” Loeffler said.
Loeffler is spending his fifth year on the Evergreen campus, the other four seasons as an assistant coach from 2013 to 2017, and one season currently as the head coach. Being born and raised in West Grove, Pennsylvania, he has been an Eagles fan his whole life. He believed that it would be a tough game but that the Eagles would come through and take vengeance against the Chiefs. He was correct about the Eagles taking revenge against the Chiefs, but the game was a blowout.
He said that the Eagles offense needs to use Saquon Barkley, their starting running back, for momentum and find a way to get big gains via passing. Defensively, he believes that Jalen Carter, one of the starting defensive linemen, needs to disrupt the offensive line and create pressure on Patrick Mahomes, the starting quarterback of the Chiefs. And that is exactly what Jalen Carter and the rest of the Eagles defensive line were able to do.
Before the game, Deandre Smith ‘26 had a lot of faith that his favorite team, the Kansas City Chiefs, would handle business in Sunday’s game.
“I’m rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs…defensively, [they need to] contain Saquon Barkley since he’s having an MVP-caliber season,” Smith said. He started liking the Chiefs after they won their second Super Bowl in 2023. Mahomes is the reason that Smith got into watching the team a lot more because of how entertaining the quarterback is to watch.
He believed that offensively, Mahomes was going to have to work his magic through the air with his passing to win against a stacked Eagles lineup. Smith mentioned Mahomes will also have to find his rookie wide receiver, Xavier Worthy, to create big plays.
Unfortunately for him, the Eagles were able to stack up six sacks and stop the passing game of Kansas City for the majority of the game. Defensively, he had one key point, and that was to stop Saquon Barkley, which Kansas City was able to do by holding him to a postseason low of 57 yards rushing on 25 carries.
After the game, I asked Smith what his thoughts were on the game. “I thought the game was very anticlimactic…the Chiefs didn’t perform as well as I thought they would,” Smith said.
He was appalled after watching Sunday night’s game. He believed that the Chiefs needed to better orchestrate the passing game on offense and should have done better on making defensive adjustments to not let Jalen Hurts run the ball as well as he did. This offseason, Smith thinks the Chiefs add a little bit more depth at receiver and keep their veterans to get back in the big game.
“I’m rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles because I root for the underdog…And I, like the rest of the U.S., am tired of seeing the Chiefs win,” Michael Watkins ‘26 said.
Watkins is not a Philadelphia Eagles fan–his favorite team is the Baltimore Ravens. He is rooting for the Eagles, though, to win the Super Bowl simply because he is tired of seeing the Chiefs win it over and over again. For the Eagles to be successful, he believes that the defense needed to continue to play aggressively and keep playing like a top-three defense in the league. They were able to do this against the Chiefs, as the Eagles secondary was able to pick off Mahomes twice and return one for a touchdown.
When talking about what the offense needs to do, Watkins believed Jalen Hurts needed to step up to win, which is exactly what Jalen Hurts did, completing 17 of his 22 passing attempts, garnering 221 passing yards, two touchdowns, and one interception.
Super Bowl 56 champion and current middle linebacker for the Los Angeles Rams, Troy Reeder, talks about what it is like to play in the biggest game of the NFL season.
“[The Super Bowl is] the biggest stage you can possibly play on as a football player…So many distractions surrounding the game, but at the end of the day, it’s about one team being remembered and etching their names in the history books forever,” Reeder said.
Reeder just finished his sixth season in the NFL, with his Rams being eliminated by the Eagles in the NFC Divisional game. Before being in the NFL, Reeder spent two years at Penn State University and three at the University of Delaware.
Eventually, he signed as an undrafted free agent with the Rams. Since then, Reeder has played five seasons with the Rams and one with the Los Angeles Chargers. In his career so far, he has recorded 310 tackles, five sacks, and two interceptions, according to ESPN.
Reeder believed the Eagles were going to be crowned as Super Bowl 59 champions, and he was right. He also said the Eagles needed to utilize Jalen Hurts’ legs and keep him out of difficult passing downs. Hurts was able to do so by rushing for 72 yards on 11 carries, scoring one touchdown, and extending drives by using his legs.
Next up for the NFL is free agency. NFL free agency begins Wednesday, March 12 at 4 p.m. where each team looks to build their roster in hopes of winning the next Super Bowl, the 60th one in the league’s history.
