admittedly it mattered of course, but not to the tune and manner by which they were dominated from start to finish. Sometimes you just gotta tip your hat to the other team and move on. The linebackers and dline for Tampa were special in this game. The db's were fine, not special, but didnt need to be because their front 7 dominated them and made it easy for them. Thats the recipe for success in Dallas.
Trent Dilfer said on Fox Sport Radio just after the super bowl (I think it was the Doug Gottleib Show) that KC struggled so bad because Todd Bowles completely blindsided them by doing things on defense they hadn’t done all year long. He said all the film study that Andy Reid did leading up to that game was worthless and only led him into doing the wrong thing over and over.
I can’t remember all of how they played it differently, but he explained it pretty well. It could probably be found in the pod casts of the Gottleib show in the few days after the super bowl.
Doing things that you never do can really screw up your opponent. It is a big part of why Philly won the super bowl. They switched to Foles at QB because Wentz got hurt right before the playoffs. They played the final reg season game against Dallas and didn’t change the offense and Foles couldn’t run it very well. Then for the first playoff game Pederson switched what they were running to better fit Foles and blindsided teams in the playoffs. In just 3 games, defenses couldn’t figure it out quickly enough and they continued to win. The next year teams figured it out and they never were quite the same.
When Bowles switched up everything they were doing on defense... KC was effectively dead in the water... or at least their game plan was shot.
Throw in KC losing both OT’s and they didn’t have a prayer in the SB. It is the only way that Mahoney and that offense were going to be held to no TD’s.
Tampa is good on defense but they weren’t anywhere nearly as good as they looked in that game. They had a huge edge because it was essentially like KC had game planned for a completely different team... and then they lost their second OT.