We’re ranking the four possible Super Bowl LIX matchups, listed in order of how much fun they’d be for a person who doesn’t care for any of the involved teams.
Three of the four remaining teams were elite all season, and the fourth is a worthy story with a good enough quarterback that while it’s unlikely to win the whole thing, the chances are much, much higher than zero.
As conference championship pairings go, the NFL has done well this year.
The Chiefs will host the Bills in the AFC championship, the teams’ fourth playoff matchup in five years. Josh Allen beats Patrick Mahomes in the regular season and loses to him in the playoffs, a trend he can reverse at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday in a game the NFL and CBS have hoped for all season.
In Philadelphia, the Eagles take on the Commanders in the rare NFC East game that doesn’t feel like it’s being force-fed to a national TV audience. The NFC will either send Saquon Barkley or Jayden Daniels to the Super Bowl, and that’s a pretty good outcome for a nation that wants to be entertained.
You’ll watch anyway. But behold the definitive ranking of the four possible Super Bowl matchups, listed in order of how much fun they’d be for a person who doesn’t care for any of the involved teams.
1. Eagles vs. Bills
In pure efficiency terms, these are the two best teams left. Opta Analyst’s EVE (efficiency vs. expected model), in fact, indicates the Eagles are the best team in the NFC, period.
A team with an MVP candidate running back isn’t just an analytics darling, either, and the Saquon Barkley-led Eagles are lots of fun to watch. A tailback like Barkley and two wideouts like A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith make for a watchable offense.
It would be best, for most of the viewing public, if the Bills could finally beat the Chiefs in the playoffs and take the AFC’s spot in New Orleans. Josh Allen has the hard-to-pin-down feeling of being the next elite quarterback whose Super Bowl win is inevitable but hasn’t quite happened yet. Most right-thinking people would rather Allen get a shot at glory than watch a fifth Patrick Mahomes Super Bowl appearance.
The matchups in an Eagles-Bills game would be neat. The Eagles defense prefers to stay light around the line of scrimmage with a 43% heavy box rate in the regular season – seventh lowest in the NFL. (That’s how often the defense outnumbers the offense between the tackles near the line.) But to stop the human battering ram Allen and his friends, defenses have loaded up the box against the Bills all season: Buffalo faced a 50.9% heavy box rate – the eighth highest – as teams geared up for Allen keepers.
Despite all of those defenders at the line, the Bills allowed the lowest sack rate in the league at 2.3%. The Eagles, as usual, are a great pass-rushing team, blitzing less often (20% of the time) than any team except the Jaguars but still generating pressure at an above-average rate.
It would be compelling TV to watch tackle Jalen Carter (56 pressures, 9.0 adjusted sacks) and the Eagles attempt to get after one of the most untackle-able quarterbacks the league has had in many years. Among QBs with at least 30 scrambles during the regular season, only Lamar Jackson averaged more scramble yards per carry (8.43) than Allen (7.98).
Meanwhile, Buffalo’s defense could have trouble against the Hurts-Barkley rushing attack. The Bills like to play heavy up front (with a 50.4% bad box percentage, the league’s eighth highest) but still have lousy run defense stats across the board. Not ideal against Barkley! We’d all get to watch a Super Bowl with some good, old-fashioned, efficient toting of the rock.
2. Commanders vs. Bills
We’re still making our best effort to keep the Chiefs away. The Commanders would be heavy underdogs against either Buffalo or Kansas City, but the allure of watching Daniels try to become the first rookie Super Bowl-winning QB is strong.
Just by appearing, he’d be farther along than any rookie before him. And the Bills’ shoddy run defense would provide some reason for optimism that he could win. There’d be lots of narrative juice behind a Super Bowl that is guaranteed to produce a first-time winner of some sort: either a rookie quarterback or the Bills, who are sitting on that infamous 0-4 mark in the game.
It would also just be good fun to see how the Commanders tried to deal with Allen and the Bills’ committee of running backs: James Cook, Ray Davis, and third-down specialist Ty Johnson. Washington’s run defense is simply not good, having surrendered 4.7 yards per run play in the regular season (fourth worst in the league) and ranking 30th in run defense EVE.
WORST DEFENSIVE EVE AGAINST THE RUN
The Commanders’ path to the Superdome would run through Tampa Bay, Detroit, and Philadelphia, three teams with significantly run-based identities. Getting past the Eagles would require doing something about Barkley, who put 296 yards and four touchdowns on them across 54 carries in two regular season games. The notion of the Commanders somehow surviving that only to then face Allen and the Bills (third-best 42% run success rate) is amusing.
Meanwhile, the Commanders would send out Daniels against that mediocre Bills rush defense. Plus, how about Terry McLaurin going up against a Bills team without an elite cornerback and with two important defense backs currently in the concussion protocol? Among receivers with as many targets as McLaurin’s 117, the Commanders No. 1 receiver’s 66.7% burn rate trails only Ja’Marr Chase. How about a matchup against Rasul Douglas, the Bills cornerback who allowed a 56.5% burn rate on 46 defense targets?
3. Commanders vs. Chiefs
Arguably, this is the worst-case scenario. Imagine Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo getting a crack at a rookie quarterback – even one with Daniels’ rare poise – and think about a variety of Chiefs blitzes slowly unraveling Daniels over the course of the night.
That would be no fun, and Mahomes would walk to his fourth title. But on a more optimistic note, the slim possibility of Daniels being the man to humble Mahomes and Andy Reid in the Super Bowl is tantalizing. Let’s balance the upside and downside and rank this game in the No. 3 slot among the possible matchups, but it’s the least likely scenario per our projection model.
CHANCES OF REACHING THE SUPER BOWL
Matchup-wise, this combination of teams would be intriguing because of how the Commanders have dealt with pressure. Teams have calculated all season that the best way to bother Daniels is by sending the house. Washington has faced a blitz on 37.5% of its snaps, fourth-highest rate in the league, but only allowed a roughly average pressure rate of 41.9%.
The offensive line has done a solid job preventing pass rushers from getting into Daniels’ face with any frequency. Could Washington continue to hold up against a Chiefs defense that blitzes often (37% of the time) and generates consistent pressure (43.7%)? The Chiefs just sacked C.J. Stroud eight times, and a Spagnuolo defense that reaches the Super Bowl will presumably not have stopped generating pressure against Allen.
For citizens ready to watch something new happen in the Super Bowl, Commanders-Chiefs would either go very well or very badly. Daniels will shine or just get sacked a bunch in a loss.
4. Eagles vs. Chiefs
Nobody needs a sequel of the Chiefs’ win by a field goal two years ago. Neither offense is as good as its name-brand stars indicate, with success rates hovering around league average for each (41.3% for Kansas City, 39.9% for Philadelphia).
Eagles vs. Chiefs II could be more of a slog than the 38-35 decision the Chiefs won in Super Bowl LVII. It would be supremely annoying to watch the Chiefs, whose 6.1 yards per pass play were 11th worst in the league this year, magically turn things on against Philly. Not every number supports that conclusion – in particular, the Eagles’ run game is much better than the Chiefs’ – but it would be hard for Philadelphia to win a ground-and-pound game against K.C.
The Eagles understandably ran the ball just 50% of the time this year, less than any other team. That may not be tenable once Mahomes has put an inevitable couple of touchdowns on the board in the first half.
