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Philadelphia – The matchup for Super Bowl XLVII has finally been decided. The Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles won the conference championship on Sunday and advanced to Super Sunday.
The final game of the 2022 NFL season promises to offer some rich subplots while featuring two of the league’s biggest stars, chief QB Patrick Mahomes and TE Travis Kelce. Roster – probably why Philly was slotted as an early favourite.
We’ll have two weeks to analyze the matchup, but for now, here are 32 things we’ve learned from this season’s conference championships.
1. The Chiefs will make their fifth Super Bowl appearance (third in the past four seasons). They have won it twice.
2. The Eagles will be in their fourth Super Bowl appearance (second in the past six seasons). They won once.
3. Super Bowl 57 will be the first matchup for the No. 1 seed since the Eagles and New England Patriots faced off in Super Bowl 52 following the 2017 season.
Four. Overall, Super Bowl 57 will be the 14th Super Sunday matchup since 1975, when the NFL first seeded the playoff field.
Five. No top-seeded team has won a game since the Eagles in 2017.
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6. All-Pro Philadelphia C’s Jason Kelce and All-Pro Kansas City TE’s Travis Kelce will be the first brothers to face each other in the Super Bowl.
7. Travis Kelce made some more history on Sunday. He now has the second-most receiving yards (1,467) in playoff history. He was already second on the reception leaderboard (127). Both are postseason records for tight ends, only Hall of Famer Jerry Rice overall.
8. Kelce also scored on Sunday and had 15 TD catches in his playoff career. He is tight with Rob Gronkowski in his end, trailing only Rice (22) overall.
9. Kelce and Mahomes now team together with 13 playoff TDs. Only Gronkowski and Tom Brady (15) hold more records.
Ten. Chiefs Andy Reed will be the first head coach to face the team he coached in the Super Bowl since Seattle Seahawks’ Pete Carroll’s loss to the Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX.
11. Before Reed coached Philadelphia for 14 seasons, the last coach to face a team that Reed led to a Super Bowl was Dan Reeves of the Atlanta Falcons, who lost to the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 33.
12. Philadelphia’s Jaylen Hurts recorded his 15th rushing touchdown of the season on Sunday, setting a new record for a quarterback in a single season (including the playoffs). Cam Newton held the previous mark (in 2011 he was 14 and a regular all his season).
13. Philadelphia’s Myles Sanders became the first RB to rush multiple TDs this season against the San Francisco 49ers.
14. The Eagles are just the fifth team since the AFL/NFL merger in 1970 to advance to the Super Bowl by 21 or more points over the previous two games. His four predecessors in them all held the Lombardi Trophy.
15. “Barrowhead?” What is it now?
16. Sunday was Cincinnati Bengals’ quarterback Joe Burrow’s first playoff loss after starting 3-0, and his only other postseason setback was technically Super Bowl 56. It was the neutral site (SoFi Stadium).
17. Burrow’s five wins in the playoffs represent half of Cincinnati’s total in the franchise’s 55-season history.
18. Mahomes is currently 10-3 in his postseason career. He was the winning quarterback in more than half of Kansas City’s 19 playoff victories during his 63 his season with Kansas City.
19. The first fumble of 49ers rookie QB Brock Purdy’s career was a very eventful play as he injured his throwing elbow when he was strip-sacked by Eagles LB Herson Reddick. With Purdy and backup Josh Johnson (concussion) injured, San Francisco finished with his 69 netting his passing yards.
20. The Eagles’ top rusher in both playoff games this season? not Sanders. In the divisional round he tried Kenneth Gainwell, who ran 48 yards on Sunday after a 112-yard effort.
twenty one. San Francisco didn’t allow a 100-yard rusher all season, but Philadelphia’s 148 yards on Sunday’s ground was the second-most allowed by the Niners during the 2022 campaign.
twenty two. For the second time in the past three seasons, the league’s No. 1 offensive team has reached the Super Bowl. Both times it was Kansas City, losing to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl 55.
twenty three. Reid will become the ninth player in NFL history to head coach in four Super Bowls.
twenty four. Reid’s 21st postseason victory broke a tie with Hall of Famer Tom Landry to secure second place in the league. Only Bill Belichick, 31, has more.
twenty five. However, Reid is the only NFL coach to have at least 10 playoff wins with two different franchises.
26. Reed’s 37 playoff appearances are now trailing Belichick (44).
27. Sunday was the 14th playoff appearance for Chiefs All-Pro DT Chris Jones. His two sacks for Burrow were the first of his postseason career. Jones has recorded his 56.5 regular-season sacks in the last five his seasons, including his 15.5 in 2022.
28. A notorious failure in the 1987 AFC Championship Game cost the Cleveland Browns their (still long-awaited) first Super Bowl trip. Will Bengals DE Joseph Ossay forever be considered in the latter goat category after a second-half hit to Mahomes set up KC’s game-winning field goal on Sunday? For Ossai’s sake, let’s hope his career is as long and thriving as Viner’s.
29. It’s the same number Burrow has been sacked in his three-year career (153 including the playoffs), and Sunday marked the first time he’s dropped back three times in a row.
30. The four quarterbacks who started Sunday (Barrow, Hurts, Mahomes and Purdy) represented the youngest quartet in the conference championship round since the merger, with an average age of 25 years and 98 days.
31. Super Bowl 57 will be Arizona’s fourth and the Cardinals’ third at State Farm Stadium. The last two games played at the venue — New England’s victory over Seattle in Super Bowl 49 and the New York Giants’ upset of the previously undefeated Patriots in Super Bowl 42 — have been his signature moments in Super Sunday classics. One. Hopefully the Chiefs and Eagles, on the whole, will give us something that feels like a pretty boring NFL postseason overall.
32. Last but not least, heading into Black History Month, Super Bowl 57 will also welcome the first matchup between two black quarterbacks. Clearly, this is a remarkable achievement. Especially considering he comes 35 years after Washington’s Doug Williams won the Super Bowl and the game he became the first black quarterback to be named MVP. Perhaps we can now discuss quarterbacks simply on their merits. Also, hopefully we can find a quarterback who has had a better start to his career than Mahomes without being so cautious about the color of his skin.
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Follow Nate Davis of USA TODAY Sports on Twitter @By Nate Davis.
This article first appeared on USA TODAY: 32 things I learned from tapping Super Bowl 2023: Subplots galore
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