Super Bowl Analytics: Eagles offense versus Chiefs defense

The excitement around the Super Bowl has continued to build in New Orleans with fans, celebrities and media pouring into the city all week. The actual game is the conclusion of a week-long celebration of football, fandom and, for this year’s event, everything that is great about The Big Easy.

It was anything but easy for both teams to make it to the Super Bowl with a chance to hoist the Lombardi Trophy. The Kansas City Chiefs once again fought off Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills while the Philadelphia Eagles didn’t have the luxury of a bye in the playoffs and fought off the championship-tested Los Angeles Rams in the Divisional Round.

As there is every year, the storylines around the game are loaded especially with the Chiefs going for the first three-peat (at least for a team) ever and the Eagles trying to stop them. There are some interesting prop bets for this year’s game as well and even the end zone ends up being a storyline.

Earlier we shared the analytics data matching up the Kansas City offense versus Philadelphia’s loaded defense. Of the 11 best players in this year’s Super Bowl, seven of them are from that matchup. That doesn’t mean the flip side doesn’t have great players and won’t be a huge story.

Throughout the NFL playoffs, we have shared prediction pieces using FTN’s DVOA metric. While that is not what the analytic was created for, it has been a fun way to analyze the most important games of the NFL season. As we found in the conference championship games, data can’t take into account things like the championship pedigree that Kansas City brings to the table.

Another way DVOA can be used is to help understand the nuances in a matchup between two teams. As a whole, FTN’s DVOA is a metric that breaks down the quality of play compared to the league average while adjusting for the strength of the opponents being played. DVOA is one of a couple of catch-all analytics measures that help us understand the beautiful game of football better.

We will bring you the final “Analytics Predicts” piece of the NFL season but we also wanted to provide you a more detailed look at how the Eagles offense matches up with the Chiefs defense within the data.

The following DVOA data includes the regular season and playoffs this year:

Philadelphia Offense: 14th
Kansas City Defense: 17th

With their ground-based attack, it is not a surprise to see the Eagles passing game ranked in the middle of the pack. With receivers A.J. Brown and Devonta Smith plus tight end Dallas Goedert, along with Saquon Barkley out of the backfield, Philadelphia has the weapons to take advantage of Kansas City’s weakness if they need to. Jalen Hurts could be the deciding factor in the game if the Eagles really need to take to the air and fly.

Eagles Offense vs Chiefs Defense - Run Game Rankings
Philadelphia Offense: 6th
Kansas City Defense: 9th

Somewhat surprising to see Philadelphia “only” ranked sixth since Barkley played 16 games this year and Hurts had a similar number of rushing attempts as last year despite missing two games. With Chris Jones controlling the line of scrimmage for the Chiefs and the great offensive line of the Eagles, those who enjoy line play are going to love this game.

Eagles Offense vs Chiefs Defense - Overall Rankings
Philadelphia Offense: 13th
Kansas City Defense: 12th

This is one of the times where the final numbers don’t match up with some of the numbers they are aggregated from. Philadelphia’s offense is better in both the run and pass games but ranked just behind Kansas City’s defense overall. There are a lot of nuanced reasons for that but wanted to call out what looks like an incongruency.

Overall, an interesting matchup when the Eagles have the ball with strength vs strength and weakness vs weakness. Can the Chiefs stop Barkley and Hurts in the run game or are they content with just limiting the passing attack? The line of scrimmage, as it often does, could decide the game.