Another traditional National Football League power is having heightened troubles, showing further the new-look nature of the league this season.
The defending Super Bowl champion Eagles dropped their third-straight game, falling 22–19 in overtime to the Chargers on ESPN’s Monday Night Football. The three-game slide is Philadelphia’s first since late in the 2023 season, and follows the decline of the Chiefs, their Super Bowl LIX opponent in February, into mediocrity.
“FML,” tweeted former Eagles center and ESPN Monday Night Countdown personality Jason Kelce, normally a more ebullient character, after the game—abbreviating “fuck my life.”
Highlighting the Eagles’ loss to the Chargers was a wild second-quarter sequence in which quarterback Jalen Hurts, the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl LIX, threw an interception, recovered a fumble, and then lost the ball again in another fumble—all on the same play. According to Elias Sports Bureau research, Hurts is the first NFL player to commit two turnovers on the same play in its research dating to 1978.
That play also had significant fantasy football implications in a week-ending contest, and it was worth a negative four points in most leagues.
“Given Hurts was drafted as a top-four quarterback, that this was the final game before playoffs where many berths were decided, that Hurts ended with under one point overall, I argue this -4 point play is the most damaging fantasy football play of the year,” tweeted fantasy football expert and NBC Sports personality Matthew Berry.
The Eagles still have a far better likelihood of reaching the playoffs than the Chiefs do. Philadelphia has a 1.5-game cushion in the NFC East division over the Cowboys and a 93% chance of reaching the postseason, compared to Kansas City’s 11%.
The viewership implications of Philadelphia missing the postseason would also likely be somewhat less dramatic than those of the Chiefs. Kansas City has been in five of the ten most-watched NFL games through Week 13 this season, including four of the top five, while the Eagles have been in three of the top 10.
The struggles of teams such as the Chiefs and Eagles have been countered by unexpected rises by other upstarts such as the Patriots and Bears.
Looking Ahead
The ESPN broadcast of MNF, meanwhile, featured a public callout of what will be one of the biggest moments in the network’s history since its 1979 debut: its broadcast of Super Bowl LXI on Feb. 14, 2027, from SoFi Stadium in California.
The game will be the first Super Bowl in ESPN’s history, and it was part of a set of rights deals struck with the NFL back in 2021. ESPN installed a countdown clock to Super Bowl LXI at its Bristol, Conn., headquarters, and the game has long been positioned as a major priority for not only the network but also its corporate parent, Disney.
MNF announcers Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, however, gave the upcoming game an additional on-air boost.
“Will you be my date on Valentine’s Day?” Aikman joked to Buck.
“It’s looking that way, yes. … Have you seen the script? Do you know who’s going to play in that one yet? I saw it,” Buck responded.
That Super Bowl will also be shown on ABC and supplemented with a series of alternate feeds and ancillary programming.
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