How Do Eagles Stack Up to Pats’ Past Super Bowl Challenges?

With one week to go until Super Bowl 52 the Patriots-Eagles matchup is becoming pretty clear. Any consolation Patriots fans might’ve taken from facing Nick Foles instead of Carson Wentz went(z) out the window after Foles systematically destroyed a vaunted Minnesota Vikings defense in the NFC Championship.

Then came this quote from respected analyst and former Patriots staffer Mike Lombardi:

“[The Eagles] really don’t have an identity offensively. They are very unpredictable and they play left-handed. Belichick is so good at making a team play left-handed, but it is kind of hard to make a left-handed team play left-handed.”

Hmmm, that’s not good for my pregame stress levels.

Let’s take a look at how the Eagles stack up against the Patriots previous seven Super Bowl opponents by my favorite stats — points and DVOA efficiency.

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Obviously the late-season quarterback change adds a dynamic that the Patriots have never seen before in a Super Bowl. And if not for the explosion against the Vikings we all might be feeling a little better about a team that struggled to move the ball for large stretches of the divisional round against the Falcons.

But from first blush it would appear that this Eagles team is as well-balanced of any the Patriots have seen in the big game, including the two best — St. Louis and Seattle. But considering the Patriots won both those games, including last year’s against the dominant Falcons offense, maybe we should read too much into any of this.

On paper, those Giants teams look like the biggest pushovers of them all but both times New York pulled off upsets by dominating with their defensive front and getting clutch, mistake-free play from their offense. The Eagles seem very capable of putting up a similar performance.

When you boil it all down it goes to Bill Belichick’s “stats are for losers.” The Super Bowl is a game of matchups and after a week of watching the Eagles combined with Lombardi’s quote it seems more and more likely that this might be the hardest overall challenge that the Patriots have faced in their eight Super Bowls. This is only exacerbated when taking into account who the Pats have lost along the way this season.

The absences of Julian Edelman and Dont’a Hightower loom large. The Pats have gotten by this season without their two biggest Super Bowl playmakers but the Eagles will stress the Patriots in ways where they could really miss them in this one.

We know the Patriots will be well-prepared for the Eagles, including their Run-Pass Option that is deadly effective, especially against a team that isn’t the most athletic at the second level. Here’s what Devin McCourty had to say about that:

“You can’t free up and just go to the ball because you still have to cover your guy because he’s not blocking. He’s running a route. So for you, it’s a pass play. For the six or seven guys in the box it might be a total run look, so you might not gain any help underneath because they’re playing the run. Individually, matchup-wise, if we’re in man-to-man or it’s a zone and a guy is in our zone we’ve got to be sound and be able to play what we’re getting. It’s a run-pass option, so it could be a run. But if you’re getting a pass play in coverage then you need to play the pass. When the pass comes up you’re ready to play, and the guys up front that play the run have to play the run.”

The Eagles don’t come in with a top-ranked offense like the 2016 Falcons or a historic defense like the 2014 Seahawks, but it’s not the vaunted teams that give the Patriots problems, it’s the ones that play out of their minds in a one-game situation and the Eagles have the pieces for that game.

But maybe just maybe we’re due for a Super Bowl where the Patriots play out of their minds and it doesn’t come down to the final play?