If Kansas City loses to his old team, the Eagles, he’d still have just one Super Bowl win from 10 conference-championship game appearances
Who’s under the most pressure to win Super Bowl LVII? That’s easy. Andy Reid.
It’s got to be him.
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With a loss to the slightly favoured Philadelphia Eagles this Sunday, Reid would conclude his 24th NFL season as head coach with just one Super Bowl victory to show for four league championship-game appearances.
But, so much worse than that, the Kansas City Chiefs’ head coach since 2013 would have only one Super Bowl championship from a whopping 10 career conference championship game appearances.
In comparison, at the other end of the made the most of his opportunities spectrum, New England head coach Bill Belichick has had nine Super Bowl appearances, and six wins, from 14 championship-game appearances.
If you’re even average at mathematical fractions, you know that 6-out-of-14 (43% success rate) is way better than 1-out-of-10 (10% success rate).
Reid never had a Tom Brady, or anyone approaching the best QB in pro football, while in Philly. His best was Donovan McNabb, who was named to six Pro Bowls, but never was in the conversation as one of the top few passers in the NFL, circa 1999 to 2009.
But since 2018 Reid has had Patrick Mahomes as starting QB. He’s as exciting and reliably dominating a passer as the NFL ever has seen after five seasons of play. And a loss to the Eagles — a 1.5-point betting favourite — would drop Reid/Mahomes to a 1-3 record in Super Bowls, and to one Super Bowl win from five AFC championship-game appearances (2018-22).
As head coach of the Eagles from 1999 through 2012, Reid led some great Philly teams to five NFC title-game appearances, but they advanced to the Super Bowl only once, following the 2004 season, where the Eagles lost by a field goal to Belichick’s Patriots.
Look, there’s no added pressure on the Eagles to win Super Bowl LVII on Sunday.
Few predicted the last off-season the Eagles would get anywhere near this far. Vegas bookmakers did not even list Philadelphia among the top 13 (of 32) clubs in terms of Super Bowl odds this past off-season.
Who was the No. 1 betting fave? Reid’s Chiefs, slightly ahead of the Buffalo Bills.
Should K.C. lose to the Eagles, the Chiefs probably again would be one of the favourites to reach Super Bowl LVIII, next February in Las Vegas. In which event the pressure for Reid to not only advance to that Super Bowl, but win the thing, would be greater than ever.
And with a highly motivated Josh Allen-led Buffalo Bills team, a highly motivated Joe Burrow-led Cincinnati Bengals team — and other rising teams such as the Baltimore Ravens, L.A. Chargers and Miami Dolphins — all standing in the way.
So, yeah. Pressure’s on Andy this Sunday. Big-time.
CANADIAN VIEWERSHIP UP
NFL TV viewership in Canada continues to rise.
After a 1.8% rise in overall viewership during the regular season, the average audience for the two conference championship games a week ago Sunday was up 5% on CTV and RDS, according to Numeris stats provided by Bell Media.
The overall average audience for the NFC and AFC title games on Jan. 29 was 2.5 million viewers — gigantic viewership numbers in Canada for any telecast.
The evening AFC championship game between Kansas City and Cincinnati drew an average audience of 2.8 million, with 7.6 million Canadians catching at least part of the game, and a tick under 4 million watching the thrilling second half.
The afternoon NFC championship game between Philadelphia and San Francisco drew an average audience of 2.1 million.
For perspective, late Sunday afternoon games during the regular season drew an average audience of 839,000, and Sunday-nighters drew 555,000.
And the average audience for first-round (i.e., wild card) playoff games on Jan. 14-16 weekend was 1.5 million, with the most-viewed game in Canada being Miami at Buffalo, with 1.8 million, Bell Media said.
THE LINE
By Monday afternoon, the Eagles remained a 1.5-point favourite to beat the Chiefs. The over/under (projected combined point total) was 50.5.
‘CANADIAN FRENCH’
The NFL says Sunday’s championship game will be broadcast live in “10 different languages” from State Farm Stadium in suburban Phoenix. One is “Canadian French,” per the league. The others are Arabic, Danish, English, Finnish, German, Hungarian, Japanese, Spanish and Swedish.
Approximately 200 countries and territories will televise the game live.
PREGAME MONOTONY
Apparently, enough people still watch all those hours of pregame programming, especially on the root American network carrying the game (in this year’s case, FOX).
FOX is bragging it has 7½ hours of pregame coverage, beginning at 1 p.m. EST. Whew.
FIRST SUPER ROSTER MOVES
Kansas City on Monday made the first significant roster moves by either team since their conference championship victories.
The Chiefs reportedly placed injured receiver/kick-returner Mecole Hardman on injured reserve, and activated running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire.
Hardman returned to action against Cincinnati, after having sat out for 11 straight weeks with a pelvis injury. He aggravated that injury against the Bengals, however, and did not practise last week.
Edwards-Helaire, who began the season as Kansas City’s No. 1 running back, has missed the Chiefs’ last nine games with an ankle injury. The move at least gives him a chance to return to action in the Super Bowl.
EXTRA POINTS
Both teams flew into Phoenix on Sunday, and all players and coaches were scheduled to attend their first of four consecutive days of media availabilities at Monday’s media night … One of the few noteworthy comments made last week by an Eagles or Chiefs player or coach was by Philly head coach Nick Sirianni, who confirmed that as much or more than actual games, he relishes the “grinding and dissecting through all the film, and finding the little things that you need to find, to help the players be successful, (to) put them in good positions, (to) help them understand the opponent.”
John Kryk writes a weekly newsletter on NFL matters. That’s where you can first see his straight-up picks each week. You can have the newsletter automatically dropped into your email inbox on Wednesdays simply by signing up — for free — at https://torontosun.com/newsletters/
JoKryk@postmedia.com
@JohnKryk