While Eagles fans everywhere were watching the Super Bowl LIX tape and highlights on loop in the days and weeks that followed their 40-22 romping of the dynasty Kansas City Chiefs, Steve Spagnuolo, who was on the losing end of it, admitted it took him a while to look back on it himself.
"I'm gonna be honest with you guys. It took me...I didn't look at that tape until like 17 days after the game," the Chiefs defensive coordinator told AllPHLY host Anthony Gargano and NFL analyst Brian Baldinger in an interview published last Tuesday. "I just couldn't...Listen, it just stung. I watched bits and pieces of it, Baldy, but I didn't sit down and analyze it until, I think I was at the combine.
"But anyway, I have done it," Spagnuolo continued, and he was highly complimentary of the Eagles, Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts, their stacked offensive line, and superstar running back Saquon Barkley throughout the conversation – with the acknowledgment that the Chiefs' defensive gameplan was dedicated to containing Barkley at the risk of getting attacked elsewhere, which Hurts went on to do.
"We just felt like going into the game that we had to somehow not allow them to be two dimensional, because I've been there, you can't defend them. They get the run going, and then [Hurts is] throwing the ball, and he gets out of the pocket. I did think we did a fairly good job of that...But to the credit to the quarterback, the rest of those guys that were playing on offense, they made some key throws, and I thought Jalen did a great job really in critical situations of beating us or getting first downs with his feet.
"I thought that was really, really challenging, and that's what happens in this league nowadays with these athletic quarterbacks. I mean, you can take away runs, you can cover really well, have them all covered, and when they say 'Hey, I'm gonna get the first down with my feet,' and they're able to do it because your lanes are out of whack or something happens, then it becomes challenging. I give them a lot of credit for what they did." [AllPHLY]
Spagnuolo started his coaching career with the Eagles in 1999 as an assistant and then as the defensive backs and linebackers coach under Andy Reid and late defensive coordinator Jim Johnson during the team's breakout into success in the early-mid 2000s.
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He reunited with Reid in Kanas City years later as the Chiefs' defensive coordinator, which aligned with their own emergence into a dynasty with three Super Bowl titles and five trips to it in six years.
Spagnuolo said he keeps his ties to the area and the Eagles organization though, so while the recent Super Bowl loss on his end was tough, he was glad to see Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie on the field after the final whistle.
"Listen, it's not a fun thing to go through when you lose. It's a bigger downer" Spagnuolo told AllPHLY. But he added that he could walk away being happy for people that he cares about.
You can check out the full interview with Spagnuolo down below, where he talks about the Super Bowl from his perspective, his start with the Eagles, memories of Reid and Jim Johnson in Philly, and the coaching tree that spun out from under Reid that includes him, Buffalo's Sean McDermott, and Baltimore's John Harbaugh:
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