The Super Bowl will feature the NFL’s top two teams in the regular season.
The Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs are the only two clubs in the league to have 14 wins this season, and it’s only the sixth time since the 1970 merger that the two teams with the best records in regular season face off in the NFL Championship Game.
The last time was in 2013, when the Seattle Seahawks smashed the Denver Broncos 43-8. Both teams had 13 regular season wins.
This final result is relatively common in this kind of situation, since the average point difference in the five games between the two best teams in the regular season is 21.
The closest game was the Washington Redskins’ 37-24 victory over the Buffalo Bills at the end of the 1991 campaign. The other three games played in these circumstances are as follows: the San Francisco 49ers thrashed the Miami Dolphins 38-16 after the 1984 campaign, the Dallas Cowboys outscored the Broncos 27-10 after the 1977 season, and the Oakland Raiders crushed the Minnesota Vikings 32-14 to conclude the 1977 season. 1976 season.
Since the rankings were established in 1975, this is the 15th time that the best teams from each association have met in the Super Bowl. The last time was after the 2017 season, when the Eagles clinched their first Super Bowl title by beating the New England Patriots 41-33.
It’s also the third time the two teams heading to the Super Bowl have had at least 14 regular-season wins — though the Eagles and Chiefs needed a Game 17 victory to do so. The Atlanta Falcons and Broncos achieved it in a 16-game schedule in 1998, and the Dolphins and 49ers in 1984.
The Chiefs and Eagles were also in full control of their destinies early in the NFL playoffs; they have never trailed in a postseason game. This feat has only been accomplished three times before: in 2004 (Patriots vs. Eagles), 1991 (Bills vs. Redskins) and 1966 (Green Bay Packers vs. Chiefs).
The airway
Patrick Mahomes will try to do something the NFL has never done: lead the league in regular season passing yards and win the Super Bowl.
Mahomes has amassed 5,250 yards in the regular season — 511 more than his closest pursuer, Justin Herbert, which is the biggest gap between the two leaders since the 699 yards between Kurt Warner and Peyton Manning in 2001.
The only other player to make it to the Super Bowl with more regular-season airborne yards than Mahomes was Manning, with 5,477, in 2013. His Broncos, however, lost 8-43 to the Seahawks in Super Bowl.
It was one of six occasions, before the one to come, where the player who led the NFL in passing yards also appeared in the Super Bowl. All of those quarterbacks lost. The others are Tom Brady (2017), Brady (2007), Rich Gannon (2002), Warner (2001) and Dan Marino (1984).
Keep an eye on Kelce
Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is enjoying a prolific career in postseason play, perhaps second only to legendary Jerry Rice.
Kelce caught 127 passes in 17 playoff games for 1,467 yards and 15 touchdowns. The only player with stats better than that is Rice, with 151 catches for 2,245 yards and 22 majors in 29 playoff games.
The Mahomes-Kelce duo is also one of the best in history, having scored 13 touchdowns in playoff games. Only the Brady-Rob Gronkowski tandem surpasses it in this chapter, with 15.