Tag: Super Bowl MVP

MIAMI — Eli Manning’s recent retirement had me thinking about the two Super Bowls Manning’s Giants won — Super Bowls XLII and XLVI — and the weight his performances had in those wins. Unless a quarterback throws up all over himself on the field, quarterbacks will always lead the charge when it comes to Most Valuable Player awards in the season’s biggest game, and Manning was, for the most part, perfectly adequate.

In those two Super Bowls, Manning combined for 49 completions in 74 attempts for 551 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. He had great throws in both Super Bowls — the David Tyree helmet catch in Super Bowl XLII, and this insane 38-yard completion to receiver Mario Manningham on the Giants’ game-winning drive in the second Super Bowl win. That’s still one of the best throws I’ve ever seen.

Eli. pic.twitter.com/w4nEQnwyBD

— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) January 22, 2020

Not unlike Patrick Mahomes’ performance in Super Bowl LIV, really. Mahomes was a turbo-charged version of Manning, completing 26 of 42 passes for 286 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions. He also added nine rushing plays for 29 yards and a touchdown. Like Manning in his day, Mahomes had a couple of crucial shot plays — a 44-yard pass to wide receiver Tyreek Hill with 7:13 left in the game, and a 38-yard completion to receiver Sammy Watkins with 3:58 remaining — and those plays were the difference-makers that erased the two picks when it came to Mahomes’ MVP equity.

All well and good — I wrote yesterday that Mahomes was utterly brilliant when he had to be. But was he the most valuable Chiefs player in that game? The argument can be made for at least three other players.

Right tackle Mitchell Schwartz allowed exactly zero total pressures — no sacks, no quarterback hits, and no quarterback hurries — on 52 pass-blocking snaps against San Francisco’s furious pass rush, per Pro Football Focus. It was an astonishing performance that the tape backs up.

Running back Damien Williams gained 104 yards and scored a touchdown on 17 carries, and his was the five-yard touchdown reception with 2:44 left in the game that put the Chiefs up, 24-20, for the lead they would never lose again.

But the guy I’ll choose is defensive lineman Chris Jones. And the reason I brought up the Manning comparison is that, in both of those Giants Super Bowls, defensive lineman Justin Tuck could have — and probably should have — been the MVP. It was Tuck, over and over, who pushed the middle of New England’s offensive line in both games, forcing Tom Brady out of the preferred vantage point he gets when he steps up in the pocket to throw. And it was Tuck who forced the intentional grounding penalty in Super Bowl XLVI that gave the Giants two points with a safety because Brady heaved the ball out of his own end zone. Tuck had two sacks, two quarterback hits, and a forced fumble in XLII. He had two sacks, two tackles for loss, and three quarterback hits in XLVI. In both games, he was the game-wrecker who made the difference.

Another interesting connection is that the guy who ran the Giants’ defense in XLII was Steve Spagnuolo, the Chiefs’ current defensive coordinator. When Spagnuolo took the Kansas City job before the 2019 season, it’s easy to imagine him watching Jones’ tape and thinking to himself, I’ve got my next Justin Tuck.

If that was indeed the theory, the theory proved true — though Jones, the fourth-year man from Mississippi State who has been one of the league’s more consistent interior disruptors over the last three seasons — wreaked his particular havoc in different ways. In Super Bowl LIV, Jones was credited with no tackles, one assist, no sacks, no quarterback hits, and three passes defensed. If you looked at the stat sheet, you might imagine Jones dropping back into zone blitzes and deflecting balls in coverage.

But that’s not what happened. Jones’ three pass defensed were all tipped passes at the line of scrimmage, and he was absolutely brilliant at disrupting 49ers quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo in that regard.

The first deflection came with 5:27 left in the game, and the 49ers up 20-17 with second-and-5 at their own 25-yard line. Jones (No. 95) isn’t going to get to Garoppolo in time to create pressure, so instead, he drops and deflects.

The second deflection came with 1:49 left in the game, the Chiefs now up 24-20, the 49ers with first-and-10 at their own 49-yard line. Once again, Jones is a primary point of focus for the 49ers’ offensive line, preventing him from collapsing the pocket. So again, Jones gets his hand up, and San Francisco has to go back to the drawing board.

The third deflection came on the very next play, and this one almost ended the game for good. Jones got the heel of his hand on a Garoppolo burner, and cornerback Kendall Fuller nearly came away with an interception.

The 49ers failed to score on either of those drives as the Chiefs were busy scoring three touchdowns in a five-minute stretch in the last 6:13 of the game. Without Jones’ efforts, it could well have been a very different story

But wait, as they say, there’s more! PFF gave Jones credit for just one quarterback pressure, but it provided a huge result. With 14:15 left in the first half, Garoppolo tried to get the ball out under pressure — first from Jones, and then from defensive lineman Mike Pennel. Instead, Garoppolo threw up a prayer that was intercepted by cornerback Bashaud Breeland.

INTERCEPTION.

Breeland takes it back for the @Chiefs! #ChiefsKingdom

📺: #SBLIV on FOX
📱: NFL app // Yahoo Sports app pic.twitter.com/HMA5XXYWO7

— NFL (@NFL) February 3, 2020

“You’re at the point in the season where sacks don’t really count and they don’t matter,” Jones said after the game on a virtuoso performance that sadly left him lacking on the stat sheet. “As long as you affect the game in any type of way, that’s what matters. As long as you can put your team in a position to go out there and make a stop, that’s what matters. Sacks, tackles, none of that matters.”

Chris Jones is exactly correct, and his words bring his performance into more specific relief. The tape does an even more convincing job. And if you want to look at players who had a dominant effect on the result of Super Bowl LIV without the negative plays created by their quarterbacks, Chris Jones — just as could have been said of Justin Tuck — should have received more serious consideration.

Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”