Eagles' Brandon Graham: Chiefs 'got blessed' Super Bowl 57 field was slippery
The Kansas City Chiefs were able to neutralize the dominant Philadelphia Eagles defense en route to a Super Bowl 57 win, but if you ask one Eagles player about the game, he said Patrick Mahomes and company got lucky.
The Eagles came into the championship game with the best defense in the league, leading the NFL in yards given up with a league-high 78 sacks entering the game. But it was a different story in the Super Bowl, as the Eagles didn't record a single sack as the Chiefs won 38-35.
Now over four months later, Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham said it wasn't the Chiefs offensive line that halted them, but it was the field.
"You need that traction to be able to get off the block and we were slipping a lot," Graham said in an interview on Sports Take with Derrick Gunn & Rob Ellis. "I don't make excuses. I just know that that's what was being talked about, us trying to get out of our own head a little bit, too.
"I'm telling you that O-line, they got blessed, I'll say that."
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Why blame the Super Bowl 57 field?
One of the most talked about points from Super Bowl 57 was the condition of the field, which took nearly two years and cost more than $800,000 to grow. But players on each team were seen slipping throughout the game. Several Eagles players also changed cleats during the game because of the field. "The Sodfather" George Toma, the longtime groundskeeper who has prepared and then consulted the NFL for every Super Bowl field, later said the field was overwatered.
When the Eagles looked at the film of the game, Graham said he noticed if players weren't slipping, they would've gotten to Mahomes.
"When we looked at the film, man, it was a couple of times where it was if Sweaty don't slip, boy, strip sack," Graham said. "Oh my God, especially that first drive when he threw it across the middle to (tight end Travis) Kelce. He was right there. He slipped. We could not believe it."
Even though the field could be blamed for Philadelphia's woes, Graham admitted the same issues could've been going on with Kansas City, and they prevailed.
"Like I said, credit to Kansas City. It's all love," he said. "Them boys played too, they played on that surface too."
Graham and company will get another shot against the Chiefs on Week 11 of the upcoming season, when they'll visit Kansas City on Monday Night Football.