Top storylines surrounding Super Bowl LVII

Will it be dubbed the Andy Reid Bowl? The Kelce Brothers Bowl? The Banged-Up Quarterbacks Bowl?

Or, as officiating has (in)effectively gone this post-season, just another Make It Up As We Go, Home-Cookin’ Bowl?

Sunday produced the NFL’s two participants for Super Bowl LVII. The NFC champion Philadelphia Eagles will face the AFC champion Kansas City Chiefs a week from this coming Sunday, at State Farm Stadium in suburban Phoenix.

On Monday morning the Eagles were listed as a two-point favourite.

For starters, no one should be surprised by this matchup. Each team was the No. 1 playoff seed in its conference. Each has looked the part for months, with each losing only once since mid-October, at least when its starting quarterback could play. And those quarterbacks were universally regarded among the top 3-4 performers in the league this past regular season.

Beyond such justifications, as usual there’s a handful of intriguing storylines accompanying this matchup, underscored only eleventy-billion times on Sunday’s telecasts, and which will be driven deeper into your skull over the next fortnight.

The top four:

1. ANDY REID

The 64-year-old has been head coach of two NFL teams. Namely, the Eagles from 1999-2012, and the Chiefs since 2013.

In Philadelphia, Reid was regarded as an offensive whiz whose squads almost always were good, occasionally bordering on great — eight double-digit-win seasons, 19 playoff games, five NFC championship games, one Super Bowl appearance (a loss to New England) and 130 wins over 14 seasons — but none could ever get over the proverbial hump and win a league championship.

Owner Jeffrey Lurie fired Reid exactly 10 years and one month ago, after Reid’s last two Philly teams failed to post a winning record.

Just five days later, the Chiefs gobbled him up, hiring Reid to be their head coach. And in Kansas City the native Californian has been even more successful (.722 win percentage, compared to .583 in Philly) and, yes, he finally got over the hump three seasons ago by winning Super Bowl LIV.

Following Kansas City’s dramatic 23-20 victory over Cincinnati on Sunday night, Reid was asked what it means to play his old team.

“I had a great time there. Fourteen years — long time, huh?” he said. “I’m happy for them, I’m happy for the city. They’re passionate. They love football. I can’t wait until (we) clash. It’s going to be awesome. What a great Super Bowl it will be.”

He’ll probably only be asked to reiterate that only a hundred times until kickoff. And not just by Philly-based reporters.

2. THE KELCE BROTHERS

Oh, brother, are you ever gonna get tired of hearing about this:

They’re brothers, don’t ya know. From the Cleveland suburbs. And they’ll become the first set of brothers in 57 years of Super Bowls ever to play on opposite teams.

As it happens, the head coach of the team that drafted Jason in 2011 — the Eagles, in the sixth round, 191^st overall — was Reid.

Two years later, and less than four months after joining the Chiefs, Reid was head coach when K.C. drafted Travis, in the third round, 63^rd overall.

“I have invested time in both those two,” Reid said Sunday night, “so I feel like I am part of the family.”

But how’d you like to be the Kelces’ mom, Donna Kelce? She was asked last Friday by NFL Network about the prospect of her sons squaring off against one another in Super Bowl LVII.

“Oh wow. It’s your dreams coming true,” she said. “I know they’ve been thinking about this since they were 10 years old, but the scenario was that they would be playing for the same team, and it would be the Browns. But that didn’t work out.

“They won’t be on the same field at the same time … It’s, like, elation but also (as mother) you have to worry about somebody’s going to come out a loser, and that’s going to be rough. But there won’t be any fisticuffs (between them) on the field!”

3. BANGED-UP QUARTERBACKS

You know the deal already.

Kansas City QB Patrick Mahomes somehow played, and hobbled around through much of the Chiefs’ two playoff victories, on an injured right ankle, reportedly a high ankle sprain. It limited his mobility and passing accuracy, which he barely overcame.

Philadelphia QB Jalen Hurts suffered a sprain to his right throwing shoulder in a win at Chicago in mid December. In two playoff wins he seemed to run with heightened, safety-conscious choosiness, and his accuracy was off too (only 60% completions) in Sunday’s 31-7 win over the San Francisco 49ers.

Given two weeks of prep time, probably both will be healthier than we saw on the past two weekends, in Super Bowl LVII.

4. WILL OFFICIATING IMPROVE?

Let’s frickin’ hope so.

No offence to either of these Super Bowl teams, but no doubt owing in part to (a) increasing incompetence, (b) the random, over-intrusiveness of central replay command in New York, and (c) perhaps to too many episodes of inadvertent home-team bias that officials in all sports too often nowadays seem helpless to avoid (hello, basketball!), both the Eagles and Chiefs received oodles of help from officials on Sunday.

Fans of the Niners and Bengals were losing their minds on social media at the perceived unfairness. Understandable, too, considering nine penalties were called on the Bengals compared to four on the Chiefs, and 11 were called on the 49ers compared to four on the Eagles.

Perhaps all penalties were deserved, with no infractions missed. But if you watched both games, who outside of Eagles or Chiefs fans believes that?

As it happens, by annual NFC/AFC rotation the Eagles are the designated home team in Super Bowl LVII.

Good luck, K.C.!

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 torontosun.com/newsletters/

JoKryk@postmedia.com

@JohnKryk