New Orleans (AFP) – The Super Bowl hype began in earnest on Monday with the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles facing the media and each other at the Superdome – the venue for Sunday’s NFL showdown in New Orleans. It was clear from the outset that the local fans in Louisiana are rooting for the Eagles to end the Chiefs’ dream of an unprecedented ‘Threepeat’. Not that the Chiefs are worried about being the villains of the piece.
What began as ‘Media Day’ – a way to promote the game to the largest audience possible – has become, in recent years, an event in itself. Several thousand fans paid $20 for tickets in the stands to watch the players face a barrage of questions for an hour at a time. When quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ top starters were introduced on to the podium to shake hands with their Eagles counterparts, both teams in all-white tracksuits, there was noticeable booing in the crowd, made up mainly of local fans. The reaction raised the question of whether the Chiefs, by becoming the first dynasty since the decline of the New England Patriots of the Tom Brady era, have taken on their role as the team NFL fans love to hate.
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If they have, it doesn’t seem to bother Mahomes. “I don’t even think it’s embracing being the villains, we embrace who we are,” Mahomes said. “I believe we play the game the right way, we believe that we play with a lot of heart and a lot of passion for the game and we win football games. If winning football games makes you a villain, we’re gonna keep going out there and doing it,” he added. The quarterback confessed that he too was a Patriots ‘hater’ but now has an appreciation of what they were able to achieve under coach Bill Belichick. “I was a Cowboys fan growing up and I used to hate the Patriots, but I think now, more than anything, I appreciate the greatness of the Patriots more now when I see how hard it was to do what they did.”
Some of the anti-Chiefs sentiment has taken the form of suggestions from online fans that they benefit from favorable treatment from referees, and in an exchange with a student reporter, tight-end Travis Kelce’s response suggested those theories may have needled the team. Asked what question he would ask the media if the tables were turned, Kelce said, “Hmmm, I guess I’d ask why are you guys leaning into this whole ref thing?”
But while many may have tired of the sight of the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, this is their fourth appearance in five seasons, and the experience of the big game could prove to be valuable. “I think it does feel different. It is not so overwhelming or like you are wide-eyed about everything,” said kicker Harrison Butker, who already has three Super Bowl rings. “We are obviously very grateful and very hungry, but we’ve been here before and we know how to handle it,” he said.
The Eagles also have experience of the biggest game in the sport, having been one of the Chiefs’ victims, losing by three points, two years ago in Arizona. So it would have been no surprise to them that many of the questions during ‘Opening Night’ are of a light-hearted variety, even if the era of some media wearing fancy dress appears to be drawing to a close. Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts was asked how he terms the team’s trademark play on short and goal, where Hurts is pushed the final yard into the end zone. Some have taken to calling the move the ‘tush push,’ while a more elegant phrase, linked with the city of ‘Brotherly Love,’ is the ‘Brotherly Shove.’
But Hurts said he has little time for such descriptions of a play that has brought him and his team such success. “I don’t call it that,” Hurts said. “You call it that. I call it the quarterback sneak. I keep it very standard,” he said.
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