Op/Ed: Super Bowl

The AFC and NFC championship has finally wrapped up, the final teams remaining are the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots. With the Super Bowl looming, two Royal Page sports reporters give their opinion on who will win.

Charlie McNeil- New England Patriots.

If the Eagles actually were a good enough team to be in the Super Bowl it would be a tough match for the Patriots, sadly we don’t live in that reality. They have multiple problems on the coaching

The Eagles main weakness is their QB, Nick Foles, even though he had a good game against the Vikings, he hasn’t been able to prove that he is able to have back to back games and with an abysmal 56.4 percent completion rate this year he hasn’t looked at his best.

Compare this to Tom Brady, who is the greatest football player of all time. This year he has averaged a higher completion percentage than his career average. While on the Patriots he led the team to five super bowl wins and his team has an overall record of 196 wins and 55 loses. He is experienced which is more than we can say for Foles.

The run game of Philadelphia is elite but the run game of New England has matched them for stride this year, Dion Lewis rushed for 864 yards this season and Rex Burkhead rushed for 264 yards in only 64 attempts.

Many people have pointed to the Patriots defense as a large problem but they have made acquisitions to fix that, adding James Harrison and continuing to develop players such as Devin McCourty and Kyle Van Noy.

David mentions in his portion that the Patriots looked awful in their game against the Jaguars, but they ended up winning the game and we cannot decide the outcome on last weeks performance.

In David’s article there is one large if, IF the Eagles play like they did last week, I will tell you the Patriots will play at least as good as last week, if not 100 times more. They have shown they can play like Patriots teams of the past and they will most definitely will play like that in Super Bowl 52.

The Patriots are great on the offensive end of the ball, their defense is becoming better and better, they are playing as David says an “overrated defence” and are going to blowout the Eagles for their sixth Super Bowl victory.

Final Score: Patriots 31 Eagles 14

David Campbell – Philadelphia Eagles

My pick to win Super Bowl 52 is the Philadelphia Eagles. This is hard to say as the Eagles crushed the Vikings in the NFC Championship game. As a Viking fan, I’m going to swallow my pride and pick the team that beat us, to take the W, in our home stadium.

Yes, the Eagles have lost their star Quarterback Carson Wentz due to a torn ACL, but the Eagles are the fire that will burn the Patriots “first order” down. The Pats are favored by 5.5 points, according to WestGate SuperBook.

However, I believe that plays in the favor of the Eagles. They have been underdogs this entire postseason, and they haven’t shied away from it. Instead, they have embraced it and because of it, every team has overlooked them. This will happen in the Super Bowl.

The Patriots flat out looked awful in their game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. They honestly did not deserve to win that game. They were trailing almost the entire game, they came back because the Jaguars offense isn’t good. Now they are playing an offense that just put up 31 points on the best defense in the league, the Vikings.

The bottom line is that if the Eagles play like they did on Sunday night, it will be an easy win and maybe even a blowout. Everyone is like “oh it’s the Patriots, they are not going to lose, they have Brady and Belichick.”

But people do not understand, the NFL is changing, if you look at three of the four teams, they got this far because of their defense. Teams are not relying on their QB as much. Defense wins championships and the Eagles have the better defense.

One thing I will say bad about the Eagles are their fans. Did you know that their stadium has a courtroom, judge, and jail, just in case any fans get arrested. I hate 90% of Eagles fans. They are honestly the worst people on the face of the planet.

This doesn’t take away from their team’s talent though. The Eagles are still the better team and I have to look passed the fans and pay more attention to the players to see what they can do.

Charlie will probably talk about how Nick Foles isn’t good enough and how the Patriots won last year. However, Foles is playing just as good as Brady is right now and because of that the offensive battle is neutralized even.

If you want to say that the Patriots defense is good and the Eagles defense is overrated, you are wrong and should never watch football again. The only chance the Pats have at winning this game is their offense, which is going to be shut down by the nasty front seven the Eagles have.

What I am trying to say is that the Eagles are balanced on both sides of the ball, and just a good offense will not win a Super Bowl. The Patriots are a phenomenal, which is why they are here in the first place, but there is no way the Eagles lose this game, it just won’t happen.

FINAL PREDICTION: Eagles 31, Patriots 10.