Tom Brady against Nick Foles, one half of that equation was exactly what many people would’ve picked before the season but the other half… the other half was most definitely not. Yet come Super Bowl 52 both quarterbacks stood up with fantastic performances. This was a game for the offences. 1151 combined yardage in this one and there’d never even been a Super Bowl to top 1000 yards before.

Nick Foles was MVP on account of playing for the winning team. It would’ve been Brady if the Pats had won. It’s usually a quarterback and with numbers such as these, SB52 wasn’t gonna be any different. Brady threw an unbelievable 505 passing yards with 3 TDs and no picks. He completed 28/48 passes, missing a few that he’d have expected to make but it’s the Super Bowl and the Eagles have a damn fine defensive unit there. Foles was similar: 28/43 for 374 yards with 3 TDs and 1 INT. He missed some open dudes but he’s a backup QB coming in hot for the playoffs. That he completed any passes at all was a shock – remember when Carson Wentz went down and the Eagles were supposedly fried?

Look, you don’t win a championship without having some supreme talent. Quarterbacks, more than almost any other specialist position in sports, are dependent on scheme and circumstance. Nick Foles was a Pro-Bowler in 2013, don’t forget. He threw 27 touchdowns and only two picks, including seven in a single game against the Oakland Raiders one time. But he struggled to back it up the following year, granted they were still 6-2 when he got injured (and went on to miss the playoffs with Mark Sanchez taking snaps). Chip Kelly then made the call to trade Foles to the Rams for Sam Bradford the next season, a damning move for Foles, perhaps, except that Kelly also traded LeSean McCoy so this was all about how he was gonna maximise his *HIGH-PACED, UP-TEMPO OFFENCE*. Chip Kelly was fired in week 16 with a 6-9 record.  

Then Foles sucked at the Rams? So did every other quarterback in those days, Case Keenum’s done pretty well since leaving as well. Jeff Fisher is not a coach renowned for getting the best out of players. At Kansas City he was only a backup. Returning to Philly he was still a backup. Point being that a good quarterback for one team might be terrible for another. NFL offences are notoriously complicated – ask Jarryd Hayne. They require all sorts of people to perform like clockwork. A great coach will find a way to make that work but an average one may not see the forest through the trees.

Doug Pederson is a great coach. He proved that here in only his second season. Things may go bad for him from here but he won the Super Bowl against the finest head coach of his generation (if not all time) and he did so with his backup quarterback against the finest quarterback of his generation (if not all time). Spare the cliché… but Doug Pederson is the real MVP. Shout out to Nick Foles for getting it done though.

Incredibly, with roughly five minutes gone in the final quarter, so about ten minutes left in the entire game, the Patriots had yet to punt, yet to turn the ball over and yet to allow a sack… and yet they’d only just taken the lead – 33-32 – for the first time in the contest. Eventually Brandon Graham came through with that crucial play to tick one in both the ‘sacks allowed’ and ‘turnover’ columns but Nick Foles threw a pick as well. Didn’t get sacked but then the Pats’ main weakness is their front seven. Can’t apply the pressure that they want and all that. Up against Lane Johnson and the rest of that Philly O-Line they simply couldn’t do it.

So the turnover battle was tied at 1-1. Philly needed a couple late defensive stands to hold on. This is all misleading. It was a game which Philly controlled for most of the way on the scoreboard and, after all, there’s a reason teams punt the ball – you’re trying to give the other buggers as long of a field to work with as possible. Nick Foles’ pick was going deep down the field, it might as well have been a punt itself. And the Patriots… they only had one turnover but they also missed a field goal and failed on fourth down once.

Those are two possessions in which they moved the ball and got nothing for it. 74 yards on the missed FG drive and they woulda got something close to that had Gronk been able to haul in that deep fourth down throw. Although the story of that drive was on the previous play when a tricky design saw Danny Amendola throwing to Tom Brady wheeling around the side… and Brady, 40 year old Tom Brady, couldn’t get his mits on it. Gisele Bundchen once famously yapped at angry fans after a previous Super Bowl defeat that her husband can’t catch the ball himself (ouch to Wes Welker…). Well, turns out a few years later that she’s right.

If you wanna look at it that way then the Eagles really did win the turnover count. They also scored a very timely touchdown right before the half which didn’t give New England enough time to respond before the clock ran out, one more possession with nothing but yardage to show for it. Philly scored points on eight of their ten drives, including all four in the second half.

Oh and the touchdown before the half? Fourth and goal at the one yard line. Pick… pop… kapow… Trey Burton to Nick Foles for the score. Tom Brady dropped his trick play, Nick Foles caught his. This was a Super Bowl of enormous proportions but tiny margins.

This was just a terrible matchup for the Patriots too. A dodgy pass rush up against the best performing offensive line of the 2017 season. Up against an offence that plays super aggressive, the best team in the NFL at converting on third and fourth down. For real, too. The Eagles converted 41.7% of their third downs during the regular season (eighth best) and 60.5% of them during the playoffs (first best). Only the Packers went for it on the fourth more often and Philly were much more successful on them (17 of 26), as well as being perfect on all three in the playoffs.

The Eagles also couldn’t stop Brady – until it mattered – but they were at least able to get some pressure on him. They kept Rob Gronkowski out of it until the second half (when he was superb) and they were able to run the ball better, ensuring they kept their defence that crucial bit fresher than New England. 34 minutes in possession against 26 mins. You can make an argument that Tom Brady deserved MVP even though he lost because you take him out of there and the Pats lose by 40. But that’s not how these things work, which is fair enough.

Ultimately, that was the difference. As impressive as those offensive numbers may have been, as tight as the game was going all the way down to the line… the Eagles were slightly better in all the areas that mattered. Think of the usual things people throw out there as match-winning factors. The turnovers? Technically tied but the Eagles won the tie-breaker. Third and fourth down conversion? Yup, that’s the Eagles. Fourth quarter defensive stops? The Eagles did that too. Protect the quarterback? Done. Nobody usually considers the trick play battle either but the Eagles made it happen there while the Patriots did not.

Then there’s special teams arm-wrestle, nothing magnificent there on either side but the Eagles averaged almost ten yards more on kick returns and New England cocked up a long snap and missed a short field goal. Meanwhile Jake Elliot, after the turnover, hit a 46 yard field goal with a little over a minute remaining that extended the lead to eight points (thus ensuring a two-point conversion buffer for even if the hail mary throw had come good at the end) when a miss would’ve given the Patriots the ball back at the 27 instead of the 9 where they ended up after that ill-fated lateral thing on the kickoff return. Give that one to the Eagles for sure.

Then there was Doug Pederson vs Bill Belichick and… oh what do you know? Philadelphia Eagles once again.

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