Biden hid secret confidential documents in a place where they were not discovered for over 8 years.. right in his garage. Hunter took them there in broad saylight and no one even noticed. The FBI, CIA, Mossad and The KGB are all jealous of Biden’s ability to steal and hide confidential documents. He even hid some at the University of Pennsylvania.*********************
PHILADELPHIA—The NFC Championship between the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers was billed as a meeting of two of the best-built teams in the NFL, football machines that gain yards in a variety of ways and yield them hardly at all. Then the 49ers, after navigating a season in which one quarterback after another went down with injuries, lost the one who had somehow gotten them to the brink of the Super Bowl.
The Eagles beat the 49ers 31-7 on the strength of an imposing defense and patient, ground-based offensive attack. They were unquestionably helped along by an injury to San Francisco quarterback Brock Purdy, the rookie who had risen from being the last player selected in last year’s draft to leading the 49ers’ title run.
Purdy’s injury was the final chapter in a season-long saga that saw the 49ers effectively run out of quarterbacks. Purdy had stepped in for Jimmy Garoppolo in December after Garoppolo, who had taken San Francisco to an NFC title game win three years ago, broke a bone in his foot. Garoppolo, in turn, had replaced the season-opening starter Trey Lance, who went down with an ankle injury in September.
Purdy’s unlucky break came by way of a blow to his arm that sidelined him for much of the first half and left him visibly limited when he returned. His own backup, Josh Johnson, is a journeyman who has played for an NFL-record 14 franchises and who, in a grim coda, left the game with a concussion.
“I wish we had another shot at it with everybody,” San Francisco running back Christian McCaffrey said after the game. “But that’s life. That’s the way it goes.”
The Eagles now advance to their first Super Bowl since 2018, when backup quarterback Nick Foles led them to a win over Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. The NFC’s top overall seed, they have spent the season charting a favorite’s path.
Philadelphia’s offensive line, headed by 12th-year center Jason Kelce and buttressed by a gigantic former rugby player, paves the way for one of the NFL’s most reliable rushing attacks. Wide receiver A.J. Brown believes himself to be always open, and seems largely right. Head coach Nick Sirianni keeps his offense on the field to pick up key fourth downs. And Jalen Hurts, the quarterback who at the University of Alabama once got benched in a national championship game, emerged this year as an MVP candidate.
Jalen Hurts runs the ball against Dre Greenlaw of the San Francisco 49ers.PHOTO: TIM NWACHUKWU/GETTY IMAGES
Though the Eagles struggled to throw the ball for much of the afternoon on Sunday, they found traction with their ground game, and their defense overwhelmed a 49ers team forced to turn to its fourth quarterback of the year. Philadelphia tallied 148 rushing yards, and San Francisco managed just 83 yards passing.
The game tilted the Eagles’ way as soon as it started. On Philadelphia’s game-opening touchdown drive, Hurts converted a crucial fourth-and-3, dodging San Francisco pressure and lofting a pass to DeVonta Smith, who brought the ball down with one hand for a 29-yard gain. Then, the first time San Francisco had the ball, the Eagles’ Haason Reddick swerved around the end of the line to strip-sack Purdy, smacking his throwing arm and forcing him from the game.
“Just pain, really, all over,” Purdy said postgame.
A glimmer of hope, for the 49ers and for some suspense, came in the second quarter, when the 49ers evened things with a 46-yard touchdown drive. Forty four of those yards came on catches and carries from McCaffrey, who pinballed off a pair of attempted Philadelphia tackles for a 23-yard score.
But the Eagles answered twice before halftime. With less than two minutes on the clock, running back Miles Sanders burst through a hole the Philadelphia line had opened on the left end for a 13-yard touchdown. After Reddick recovered a fumble from Johnson, Sanders’ backup Boston Scott flipped the script: 10 yards, inside the right pylon.
That was enough. In the second half, the game turned into a slog, with the 49ers running players sacrificially into a Philadelphia front unconcerned with the pass. Johnson left after a blow to the head, and Purdy returned but attempted only two throws the rest of the game. Frustration boiled over in the fourth quarter, when 49ers offensive lineman Trent Williams dragged an Eagles player to the ground after a play, setting off a scuffle that ended with two ejections.
“You don’t ever want anybody to get dinged or get hurt. I hope he’s okay. It definitely did change the game,” Sirianni said postgame. “But those guys’ job is to hit the quarterback, affect the game, and they sure did that today.”
For San Francisco, what had the shape of the storybook season now turns to an offseason of suspense. Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, future-Hall-of-Fame quarterbacks rumored to be considering new homes, both have ties to the Bay Area.
For the Eagles, Sunday’s win means that a season of dominance will end in a chance at the championship. Philadelphia won its first eight games of the regular season, and 13 of its first 14, before Hurts missed two late contests with a shoulder injury. Its roster features eight players named Pro-Bowlers, the most of any team in the NFL.
Despite the Eagles’ flash at the skill positions—Hurts, Brown and Sanders are among those named to the Pro Bowl—they are shot through with an old-school sensibility. If the well-worn idea that playoff games are decided in the trenches is true, no team in the league is better suited for them.
Philadelphia Eagles linebacker Haason Reddick, right, causes a fumble by San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy.PHOTO: SETH WENIG/ASSOCIATED PRESS
According to the metric expected points added, which adjusts for the situational importance of plays, the Eagles’ rushing attack was far and away the most valuable in football over the regular season. Their pass rush, meanwhile, registered 70 sacks, 15 more than any other team’s total. They have added six more over the playoffs, most among postseason teams.
Either of the AFC finalists the Eagles would face in the Super Bowl—the Kansas City Chiefs or Cincinnati Bengals—will have the more playoff-tested quarterback. Kansas City’s Patrick Mahomes has already played in two Super Bowls and won one; Joe Burrow has a Super Bowl appearance and a lengthening list of big-game star turns to his credit.
Under more competitive circumstances, today might have been a chance for Hurts to prove his bright-lights bona fides. He’ll have to settle for the win, and a chance to do so under a stronger glare in two weeks.
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When Patrick Mahomes steps onto a football field, he looks unstoppable. His dazzling throws and astonishing escapes from pass rushers have made playing quarterback look more like wizardry.
Mahomes took over the league the moment he became a starter in 2018, and since then he has laid waste to almost everyone in his path. The most glaring exception is the quarterback and team that stands between the Chiefs and the Super Bowl. Again.
When Kansas City hosts the Bengals in Sunday’s AFC Championship, the Chiefs will get another crack at the one team that has dominated them in the Mahomes era. They’ve met three times over the past two seasons, including in this same game last year. Cincinnati has won each time.
Mahomes now has a nemesis. It’s Joe Burrow.
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But Burrow hasn’t gone 3-0 by himself, and those three victories are instructive for understanding the forces that will decide whether the Bengals or Chiefs will play in the Super Bowl. And one of the biggest takeaways from those Cincinnati wins—all of which were second-half comebacks—is how players other than Burrow came through with big plays and in pivotal moments.
The past Bengals-Chiefs matchups show how Cincinnati’s defense is quietly very good and that there are few playmakers who can bust a game open like wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase. The games are a roadmap showing that it’s possible to contain Mahomes—at least for a half—but it still takes a handful of big plays to topple him.
“We know them. They know us,” Burrow said. “It’s going to be fun.”
Patrick Mahomes is 0-3 against the Bengals in the past two seasons.PHOTO: JAY BIGGERSTAFF/USA TODAY SPORTS
When Burrow and Mahomes first met late last season, the Bengals were still primarily known as a team that hadn’t won a playoff game in decades. After going down by 14 points, Burrow and Chase demonstrated why that was about to change.
Chase was just a rookie, while Burrow was near the end of his first full season, after his rookie season ended with an injury. But the former college teammates and national champions at LSU were already rising to the top of the NFL. In the 34-31 win that ended on a field goal as time expired, Burrow and Chase connected on 11 passes for a whopping 266 yards and three touchdowns.
There wasn’t just one way the pair could beat defenses—they had the entire bag of tricks. One touchdown was a 72-yarder in which Chase took a medium length pass and somehow sliced through six Chiefs defenders who surrounded him to race for the score. Another was a 69-yard bomb that saw Chase zip past defensive backs down the field.
Ja’Marr Chase scored on a 69-yard pass in a win over the Chiefs on Jan. 2, 2022.PHOTO: DYLAN BUELL/GETTY IMAGES
“That’s why we picked him,” Cincinnati coach Zac Taylor said of Chase after the game. “The chemistry that he and Joe have together has probably helped accelerate his development.”
The two teams met a few weeks later in last season’s AFC Championship, and the Chiefs looked like they were en route to a romp. They led 21-3 in the first half and were up 21-10 right before the break when Mahomes marched the offense to the Cincinnati 1-yard-line in less than a minute.
When the Chiefs opted to run another play with five seconds left, Mahomes threw to a receiver who was stopped short of the end zone. Time expired for the half before Kansas City could run another play.
That was just the window the Bengals needed, and what unfolded during the second half was completely jarring. The only thing that stopped Mahomes in the first half was a clock, but in the second half, he looked like he forgot how to play football. The QBR metric rates quarterbacks on a scale from zero to 100. His play in the first half earned a rating of 98. In the second half and overtime, that figure was 1.4, according to ESPN Stats and Info. He went from nearly perfect to almost as bad as possible.
“In the second half we were just off a tick and sometimes that’s all it takes to lose a football game,” Mahomes said afterward.
The Chiefs’ first five possessions of the second half resulted in four punts and an interception. Meanwhile, Burrow delivered the Bengals the lead. Only a late field goal by Kansas City tied the game up—before another Mahomes interception in overtime paved the way for the Cincinnati win.
What’s less heralded than Burrow’s touchdown passes from both of those meetings last year is the play of the Bengals defense. In each of the games, Burrow was capable of engineering double-digit comebacks because his teammates on the other side of the ball held Mahomes to three second-half points each time.
Joe Burrow is seeking to lead the Bengals back to the Super Bowl.PHOTO: DYLAN BUELL/GETTY IMAGES
In the most recent showdown, in December, the Bengals came back—again—to win 27-24, handing the Chiefs their only loss in a span of 11 games. Burrow could thank his defense for one game-changing play. In the fourth quarter, a Cincinnati linebacker punched the ball out of the hands of star Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce. After the fumble, Burrow did what he has so often pulled off against this team and led a late touchdown drive.
If anything, Cincinnati’s defense has only gotten scarier. It gave up just 16.8 points per game in its four regular-season contests after playing Kansas City and is coming off a 27-10 win over the Buffalo Bills where Josh Allen was stifled throughout the game.
Mahomes, on a bum ankle, will try to break through that. And despite all of Burrow’s success against Kansas City, he is fully aware that there’s one team that has been to five straight AFC Championships—and it’s the Chiefs.
“To me,” Burrow said this week, “they’re still the team to beat.”
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