The betting line can’t seem to make up its mind, opening one way, flip-flopping to the other, and teetering for now on the Philadelphia side of the Super Bowl fence.
For all intents and purposes, next Sunday’s big game between the Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs (Sunday, Feb. 12, 6:30 p.m. ET on FOX and the FOX Sports App) will be a pick ‘em, as it should be for a clash between a pair of No. 1 seeds with an outstanding season’s résumé behind them.
Just know this, though. Whoever ends up being the underdog team according to the oddsmakers and the smart money and the predicting prognosticators, even if it will be as an underdog in name only, you can be sure they’ll be using it as an added dose of Super Bowl motivation.
Because these two teams like it. They like having an excuse to get angered and fired up, and there is no surer way of guaranteeing that in sports that telling a bunch of intense competitors that they’re not expected to win.
The line is now at -1.5 for the Eagles, and could go any which way between now and game time depending on injuries and updates and maybe even if the mattress guy put down a few tens of millions.
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Think about what being an underdog means to the Chiefs and the Eagles. Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean. Teams like this, and competitors like these, don’t react with “oh yeah, you’re probably right” when told, albeit indirectly, that general opinion believes there is someone else that’s better.
Good luck telling that to Patrick Mahomes, he of a career record standing at 64-16, lightly recruited as a QB out of high school, told repeatedly to stick to playing safety or to throwing a baseball, but who backed himself.
Mahomes didn’t much enjoy being called the underdog against the Cincinnati Bengals, but liked what it brought out of him, as he hobbled around “Burrowhead” (yeah, right) and painfully shuffled to a late scramble that forced a game-deciding penalty call.
“The guys were probably the most pumped I’ve seen going into a football game,” Mahomes told reporters. “No one picked us to win, if so it was like 5 percent of people. We think we’ve built up enough respect to have a chance to go out and win every game. Whenever you feel like you’re the underdog … it gets our guys ready to go.”
Good luck telling Jalen Hurts you don’t rate his chances. Hurts fought his way through adversity at Alabama, famously getting subbed out during the national championship game, then was doubted in his early time with the Eagles, even after producing plenty of optimistic moments last season. How’d do you think he’ll respond to having his mettle questioned?
“This guy leads,” Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said of Hurts. “He brings this calmness to the entire team. He plays great football. He’s as tough as they come.”
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The underdog mentality is one of the mysteries of sports. Because it isn’t about effort. There is no shortage of that, it’s the Super Bowl for goodness’ sake and all that comes with it. Everyone is going to be giving their absolute maximum, which is 100 percent by the way, not 110, despite what coaches everywhere would have you believe.
So, why then, are teams able to conjure a little bit of additional performance when the underdog tag is bestowed upon them? Maybe it has something to do with pressure, or the lack of it. Instead of defending a status, you are on the attack to try to make that lofty perch your own. Maybe. A mystery, as I said.
Well, the bulletin board is full. In Philly, it is always full. It is always feisty in Philadelphia, the city of “Rocky” and Vince Papale and where hundreds of German Shepherd dog masks are being snapped up as we speak. Brotherly Love HQ is an underdog because it doesn’t like to position itself as anything else.
The Eagles played and acted like an underdog five years ago, the time of the Philly Special, even when they were a No. 1 seed with stacked roster and were bouncing off a 38-7 thrashing of the Minnesota Vikings in the NFC Championship Game.
The Chiefs have been an underdog franchise for much of their existence, much less so in the modern era of dominance since Mahomes got drafted and everything changed.
History doesn’t know quite what to make of the whole underdog deal. Since the beginning of Super Bowl time, the favorite has won it all 36 out of 56 times. Recently though, the favorite’s status has counted for little. Of the last 15 Super Bowls, eight have been won by the underdog.
Proving, perhaps, that every dog has his day. And every day, as this ultimate showdown approaches, the two teams seem intact on retaining the mentality of the ‘dog.
