Cover photo taken from Gwinnett Daily Post.
After 271 games and over five months of NFL football, we have made it to the big game. Tonight, the San Francisco 49ers take on the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas, Nev.
It’s a rematch of Super Bowl LIV — and the Super Bowl I predicted at the start of the season — between football’s two best teams with plenty of talent and storylines all over the place. Here’s my preview of each team and my prediction for who will hoist the Lombardi on Sunday night in the desert.
How the 49ers Got Here
You never wanna say that there was “never a doubt” … but there was truly never a doubt that San Francisco would get to this point. This had to be the year they put it together. Lo and behold, it was.
The 49ers were far and away the best team in the NFC — and the best team in the league, for most of the season — for a wide variety of reasons. Elite coaching staff? Check. Solid quarterback who runs the offense to perfection in Brock Purdy? You got it. Best running back in the league in Christian McCaffrey, who just won Offense Player of the Year? He’s here. Several elite offensive weapons other than him? You’ve got three of the best in Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk and George Kittle. And as has been the case for this entire decade, the defense is obviously outstanding.
Purdy has had his issues to be sure, but you really can’t ask much more of him than what he has provided all year long. 4,280 yards, 31 touchdowns and 11 interceptions — four of which came in one game — is sensational for a former Mr. Irrelevant. And although the large majority of both playoff games was shaky for Brock, he really turned it up and made every play when it mattered most, especially in the last drive against Green Bay and the 17-point comeback against Detroit.
It’s not a remote stretch to say San Fran’s offense is the superior one in this ballgame, thanks to the likes of CMC (2,023 all-purpose yards, 21 total touchdowns), Samuel (1,271 all-purpose yards, 12 total touchdowns), Aiyuk (75 catches, 1,342 yards and seven touchdowns) and Kittle (65 catches, 1,020 and six touchdowns). But to me, their success revolves around the offensive line. That unit has seen some struggles, especially in the postseason, and facing a tremendous front seven certainly won’t be easy. But if they can keep Purdy upright and let CMC do his thing, then the sky is truly the limit for this 49ers offense.
So, the road to Vegas has been much more straightforward for the Niners. They simply bulldozed their way through the NFC and made up for some tough losses to AFC teams like Baltimore and Cleveland. But to finally climb the mountain and claim that elusive sixth Lombardi Trophy, they’ll need to get past the man who ruined their dreams the last time they made it to this stage. And he will not go gentle into that good night.
How the Chiefs Got Here
You want the skinny? It’s called having a terrific, burgeoning young defense and the best quarterback of all time.
But it wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows for Kansas City in the regular season. Far from it. We’re barely a month removed from everyone writing the Chiefs off, whether due to a lack of weapons offensively or some strange losses down the stretch, and they’ve been underdogs in their last two playoff games. For some reason, Vegas thought some guy named Patrick Mahomes wouldn’t be able to play football on the road.
Spoiler alert: he can. Shocker, I know.
Yes, it was a down year for Mahomes. 4,183 yards, 27 touchdowns and 14 interceptions might just be a career year for most quarterbacks, but for #15, this was largely considered the worst year of his career. And yes, it was rough at times. But he has been exquisite in the postseason with four touchdowns, no turnovers and a 100.7 passer rating.
It helps that Travis Kelce has come alive in the playoffs as well. Like his quarterback, it was a bit of a down year with 93 catches, 984 yards and five touchdowns — again, ho hum for Travis, but a career year for anyone else — but he has 22 catches, 262 and three touchdowns in the playoffs. In the AFC Championship Game against Baltimore, he had what I consider to be his best game ever with 11 catches, 116 yards and a touchdown. After being the subject of plenty of discussion across the league and the nation this year for… obvious reasons… all it took was the lights to get brighter for #87 to return to form.
But to me, this Chiefs team is differentiated from its predecessors because of its defense. We saw flashes and glimpses of how great they could be last season, but they certainly weren’t the reason that Kansas City won the Super Bowl — they gave up 35 points in the big game, after all. But in year two or three for many of the young studs on that side of the ball, a switch has seemingly flipped. Trent McDuffie was a first-team All-Pro corner, L’Jarius Sneed has turned into the league’s best CB2 (and probably should’ve been an All-Pro as well), George Karlaftis has emerged as an effective edge rusher, all while the veterans like Chris Jones, Willie Gay and others continue to do their thing. This is a unit that hasn’t given up more than seven points in a second half since Week 13! And that includes back-to-back road playoff games against Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. They were the second-ranked scoring defense in the regular season, and have given up the fourth-fewest points per game in a postseason since 2000.
This was the worst year for KC’s offense in the Mahomes era. And the reason they’ve been able to still do their thing is in large part thanks to this defense, which might just be the difference maker once again on Sunday evening in Vegas.
Key Matchups
In my mind, there’s not necessarily a key matchup to look out for. I believe that this game will simply be decided by which defense comes out and plays the better football game.
Now, it’s a bit more nuanced than that because of the way these offenses operate, but my main point here is that neither team can win this football game if its defense doesn’t show up to play its best ballgame. We saw how that hurt the 49ers the last time these teams met up in the big game — up 20-10 with just over six minutes left, they gave up back-to-back-to-back touchdowns to wind up losing the game by two scores. This isn’t that kind of Chiefs team anymore, but you can’t allow something like that to happen.
The problem is that I’ve seen this “vaunted” Niners defense get violated like that in each postseason game thus far. They’ve given up 159 yards per game on the ground and their secondary hasn’t looked the part. So the “lack of weapons” on Kansas City’s offense almost doesn’t matter. I need to see this Niners defense be its usual self to believe that it even exists.
That is not the case, however, with KC’s defense, which I got into earlier. And that? That’s the difference in this ballgame.
My Pick
Two Weeks Ago: 2-0
Season Total: 175-99
Before I get into my pick for the game, I think it’s worth noting that I have not picked a Super Bowl correctly in seven years. The last team to not let me down was the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 50. It has been downhill ever since.
But if there’s any year for that to change, it’s this year. This is the matchup I predicted way back in September, and I’m going to stick with who I picked to win it all when the season got started. While my confidence might have wavered in that over the course of the season, it has never been stronger in the last two weeks.
Chiefs 24-20 49ers
Sunday, 6:30 p.m. ET, CBS
Here’s some food for thought. Tom Brady won seven Super Bowls. But in none of those seven seasons did I ever think his offense was anything crazy. The most explosive team he played on was the 2007 Patriots, and we all know how that ended. Instead, the Pats/Buccaneers won because of how solid Tom was in the postseason and how well their defense played all year long, and especially in January and February.
Why do I bring that up? Well, because that’s the story of the 2023 Kansas City Chiefs. This isn’t the explosive offense we’re used to. Not remotely. It’s dink and dunk and slice and dice and so on and so forth. And then their defense comes out and suffocates you. It’s like death by a thousand paper cuts, but if you were also blindfolded and deafened.
Ok, that’s a bit dramatic. But the point still stands. This Chiefs team will be remembered for how Patriot-like it was. And this Mahomes season will cement him as the second greatest quarterback of all time because of how much he carried himself like the GOAT.
Kansas City’s offense will do its thing with Mahomes, Isiah Pacheco and Kelce. San Francisco’s offense will also do its thing to a certain extent. But when the going gets tough, you know damn well that Mahomes is going to put together the difference-making plays that Purdy will be incapable of making against this unbelievable Chiefs defense.
And at the end of the night, it’ll be the little things done by Mahomes and his defense that put the Chiefs over the top, winning their second consecutive title and third Super Bowl in five seasons to establish … the last great American dynasty.
All stats taken from ESPN.
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