Super Bowl LVII pits the Kansas City Chiefs against the Philadelphia Eagles at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., on Sunday.
The NFL’s championship game is the crown jewel of the NFL andisone of the most watched sporting spectacles around the world.
This year’s edition has all the makings to live up to the hype as it features the top seeds in both the NFC and AFC.
The Eagles were perfect through the first eight games of the season and finished with a 14-3 record to win the NFC East and have home field through to the NFC Championship game. They were led by 24-year-old quarterback Jalen Hurts, who threw for 3,701 yards with 22 touchdowns this season and had a 14-1 record.
The Chiefs fought through tough competition from the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals during the regular season to land the top spot in the AFC with a 14-3 record. They are led by superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who threw for 5,250 yards with 41 touchdowns and won his third MVP award on Thursday.
With both teams representing the best and brightest the NFL has to offer, here are some interesting facts about Super Bowl LVII.
Thequarterbacks
Super Bowl LVII features two of the premier young quarterbacks in the NFL. It also marks the first time that two Black starting quarterbacks will face each other in Super Bowl history.
Sunday’s game will be the 12th time a Black quarterback has started the Super Bowl and regardless of who wins, it will be only the fourth time a Black quarterback wins the game, joining Doug Williams (1987), Russell Wilson (2013), and Mahomes (2019).
The pair also marks the youngest combined age of starting quarterbacks in Super Bowl history. The combined age of 51 years and 337 days between Mahomes and Hurts beatsout the matchup betweenSan Francisco 49ers’legend Joe Montana and Miami Dolphins’ legend Dan Marino (51 years and 350 days) in 1984.
Mahomes and Hurts were named asfirst- and second-teamAll-Pro quarterbacks respectively this season and Sunday’s matchup will be the sixth time in NFL history the first and second All-Pro quarterbacks go head-to-head in the Super Bowl.
The two quarterbacks had 80 combined rushing and passing touchdowns in the regular season, the third most in Super Bowl history. In the previous five times the first- and second-team quarterbacks went head-to-head in the Super Bowl, the second-team quarterback won every time.
After winning the 2022 NFL MVP on Thursday, Mahomes has an opportunity to become the first quarterback to win multiple league MVPs and multiple championships within his first six seasons of his career. Meanwhile, Hurts’ 16-1 record including the playoffs this season gives him the opportunity to join Montana(1984)as the only quarterbacks to go 17-1 with a Super Bowlvictory
Both quarterbacks are on hot streaks coming into Super Bowl Sunday with Hurts on an eight-game winning streak and Mahomes on a seven-game winning streak. It’s the fifth time in Super Bowl history where both quarterbacksenterwith a seven-game-or-more winning streak, the last being where Mahomes had his 12-game streak broken by Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2020.
The teams
Super Bowl LVII features the league’s top passing offence in the Chiefs going up against the top passing defence in the Eagles.In the two previous occasions where the top offence met the top defence, the defence won both times (Buccaneers in 2002, Seattle Seahawks in 2013).
The two clubs were also successful in putting pressure on the quarterbacks as the Eagles and Chiefs finished first and second respectively in sacks, combining for a record 140 sacksduring the season, including the playoffs. This will be the third time the top two sack leaders meet in the championship game, with the others being Super Bowl XLII’s New York Giants victory over the New England Patriots, and Super Bowl XLV’s Green Bay Packers victory over the Pittsburgh Steelers.
This will also be the first Super Bowl where both teams entered without trailing at any point in thepostseasonsince 2004 between the Patriots and Eagles, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. The only teams to never trail en route to a Super Bowl victory are the Packers (1966), Dallas Cowboys (1971, 1977), Dolphins (1973), and Washington (1991).
The coaches
Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni and Chiefs head coach Andy Reid have a history with both teams and with each other.
Reid spent14 seasonsas head coach of the Eagles, taking them to four consecutiveNFC Championship games between 2001-2004 and qualifying to the big game in 2004. He will become the second coach in NFL history to coach for and against a franchise in the Super Bowl, joining Dan Reeves with the Denver Broncos.
Sirianni got his start in the NFL as an assistant coach with the Chiefs in 2009 under head coach Todd Haley. He made his way up through the organization, eventually becoming the wide receivers coach in 2012 before he was fired by an incoming Reid in 2012.
The 41-year-old head coach is in his second season with the Eagles and can become the ninth head coach in NFL history to win a Super Bowl within his first two seasons as a head coach and be the fifth youngest head coach to win all-time.
The matchup of Reid versus Sirianni marks the second largest age gap at 23 years which just ranks behind Patriots head coach BillBelichickversus Los Angeles Rams head coach Sean McVay’s age difference of 33 years in 2018. However, Sirianni and Reid’s NFL season experience gap of 22 years equals Belichick and McVay of the same year.
