Edwards: How Chiefs Handle Saquon Barkley Will Be Critical To Outcome

It's the JR Sport Brief Show here with you coast to coast on the Infinity Sports Network. We're getting closer and closer to the Super Bowl.

And right now it's time to have a chat with someone who's been a member of both organizations. You can catch him on television on ESPN. You can catch him all over the place. His name is Coach Herm Edwards. How are you, coach? I'm well, like everyone else, anticipating probably a pretty close Super Bowl. The last time these guys played, obviously, went down to the final possession. And we know the story when Patrick Mohns has the ball at the end of games. He seems to always win those types of games. But it was a very, very good football game for the most part. A high-scoring affair.

It wasn't a boring Super Bowl by any stretch of the imagination. I think if you're Philadelphia Eagles, you're going to look back at it. There's a couple miscues. Obviously, the big fumble that the Chiefs ran in for score. You know, that kind of turned the tide.

And then having a 10-point lead at halftime and really giving that up in the second half. I mean, those are the two things that I kind of look at. What do you expect this time around that's going to be different? Obviously, we have a different piece than Saquon Barkley involved. Yeah, well, you just said it.

That's different. He is a very explosive player. How the Chiefs handle that, I think, is going to be critical. As well as how the Chiefs handle the running game of the Kansas City Chiefs. Andy Reid is a fabulous football coach. He's not going to allow that front four of the Eagles to really dominate the game by just rushing the quarterback all day.

So I think he'll have a plan for him. Andy will to slow this team down. The way you do it, you've got to run early.

Kind of set the stage for that. Make them play the run early and then do what you do in the passing game. I think if you're Philadelphia, you enter this game with a lot of confidence with your defense in this sense. When you think about playoff competition, they've taken the ball away 10 times. Now, that's not on interceptions alone. That's fumbles. That's caused fumbles. I mean, that's work.

That's working to get those. I mean, that's taking the ball away from the opponent when he has it in his hands, whether it's a running back, wide receiver, quarterback. They strip the ball. They punch the ball out.

So ball security would be critical. Philadelphia enters the playoffs with 10 takeaways, as we know. But they also enter the playoffs with a kicker that has not been very good down the stretch, missing four opportunities to make kicks. One happened to be a field goal.

But here's the one that bothers you. Extra points. There's three extra points.

I would suggest this. If he misses the first one and they score, I'm going for two the rest of the game. I'm not even going to mess around with it. Because right now, I mean, that could be critical when you think about a game of this magnitude and it went down to a field goal last year. Oh, excuse me. Prior to when these guys played before, you're trusting your field goal kicker.

I don't know about that. Coach Erm Edwards is here with us. Catch me on ESPN.

Right now is the JR Sport Brief Show. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you are leaning to the team that you used to coach and scout for in the Chiefs. Well, I'm leaning for both parties in this sense. If the Philadelphia Eagles play like they did against Washington, they win this game. They win the game. If the Kansas City Chiefs are in a one score game and Patrick Mahomes has the ball, we know the story.

They'll win three in a row and create history. I'm very fortunate, as you mentioned, I got my first job as a coach and a scout with the Kansas City Chiefs. But the team that I played for was the Eagles and it's kind of ironic. I actually played in the first Super Bowl for the Philadelphia Eagles. It was 44 years ago and here's the kicker. It was in New Orleans. I've never liked that stadium since we lost the Super Bowl there, Super Bowl 15 against the Raiders. So now they're going back. Fifth Super Bowl by this organization and they're going back to the spot to kind of like, well, can you erase the bad memories of the Eagles of 44 years ago?

We'll see. Well, Herman, you talk about your time with the Eagles. Everybody remembers the miracle at the Meadowlands. You coached and scouted with the Kansas City Chiefs. When it comes to your own personal feelings and when you sit down and watch, are you just like, man, I'm a winner either way? How do you look at that?

Correct. I'm the type of guy, look, I don't get into, as well during the season, who wins, who doesn't win. I've coached and I've played at that level and I understand how difficult it is, first of all, to get to where these two teams have gotten to.

But how hard is it to win a game? I don't root against anybody to lose. I just watch the game.

I'm like a fan. I watch the game and I have a job of really breaking the game down when it's all said and done and trying to make sense of what happened and trying to give the fan bases of these teams some information. Just some information from the coaches and from a player's eye and kind of break it down that way and tell them why it happened. We can always see what happened, but why did it happen?

No one knows. You try to figure that out. And I think if you've coached and played as long as I have, you kind of understand why certain things happen.

You just kind of feel a bit, okay, this is why it happened. And errors are made. You know, football is a game of limiting, limiting the errors. We always say this in football, more games are lost than won. Spoken by Coach Herman Edwards here with us on the JR sport ratio coast to coast on the Infinity Sports Network. When you talk about what we're going to see from your perspective, you're a coach, you know what Andy Reid, you know what Sirianni is going through. It's crazy to think about the longevity of Andy Reid and what he's been able to accomplish.

301 victories. Do you think he will catch Shula, especially with Mahomes? He has a chance and I don't see him quitting anytime soon or retiring.

He still has energy. As long as you have energy, you can coach. As long as you have a good team, you feel good about coaching as well, right?

So I think no one ever would have thought that. Now, look, I'm not using this as a point, but it is, they play more games now than they did with Coach Shula and those guys coached. When I came into the league, we were only playing 14 games. And then they took it to 16 games.

And now it's 17 and they're getting ready to go to 18. I don't know if Andy will still be coaching, so that gives you more bites of the apple during the season. But with that being said, Andy's done a fabulous job.

He's a first ballot Hall of Famer along with his quarterback. So it'll be interesting. That's what records are for. Records are put out there for other guys to challenge it and try to break them. And that's what's so gratifying about sports.

It makes it so exciting. There's always a record to look at. And sometimes you say, well, no one will ever do that. Right? Well, after what we saw the New England Patriots do, we said, well, there ain't nobody to do that anymore. Not so fast. Patrick Mahomes is trying to win three in a row. No one's ever done that.

So kind of ironic. Well, on the other side of things, Nick Sirianni has gotten real high. When you look at the Super Bowl appearance, he's gotten real low, criticized for how they finished games and how close they played last year. And now they're back in the Super Bowl. What adjustments have you seen from from his perspective, from a coaching perspective that you think changed and put them back in his spot? First of all, let me say this about coach. When you sit in that seat, especially in Philly, that's a hard seat to sit in. Remember, they were tired of Andy going to playoffs. And Andy left and went to the Chiefs.

So, you know, it doesn't matter who you are. You don't take a personal sitting in that seat, in any seat when you're a head coach. But I think, coach, when you think about what he's accomplished at the time he's been there, always in the playoffs, he's gone to two Super Bowls now.

I mean, you know how hard that is to do? I think Philadelphia fans sometimes, and all fans, they get, you know, they just think it's their birthright after a while. When you get in the playoffs all the time, you should go to the Super Bowl, we should win. We just think like, oh, man, this is like, OK, this is not fantasy football.

This is real football. And I think the thing that I enjoy about him, he understands who he is. But more than that, the players trust him. At the end of the day, that's all that matters.

The outside noises really don't matter. As long as the locker room, the players, the culture of the team trust the head coach, obviously they have. And they are in the fact that the man has gone to two Super Bowls now. Coach Herm Edwards is here with us on the JR Sport Reef Show.

I got to ask you about something important, getting ready to go down shortly. We're going to find out who is going into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And now that we're talking about the NFC East and the Eagles, a lot of people have thoughts about whether or not Eli Manning deserves to be in a hall.

Where do you sit on that? Look, I'm never going to talk negative about any player going into Hall of Fame. I think if you're mentioned in that sense, you've earned the right to obviously, you know, be brought up in that conversation. You know, look, how they go about picking Hall of Fame players and coaches, I don't get into all that.

I mean, I don't have a vote. I just know this, that Manning family is pretty talented. It's a talented bunch. And I played against Archie Manning, right, when he was with the Saints. I go all the way back to the Manning family. My daughter goes to the University of Texas. She's a freshman there, works for the football team. They got a Manning and a quarterback. There's some, ain't there?

I don't know. All I know, if you're a Manning, you grow up, learn how to play quarterback, and you play it at a high level. And all those Mannings, all the ones that have played quarterback, obviously, have been pretty good. If he gets in, good for him. Yeah, we certainly see what Archie's getting ready to do down in Texas. And then Eli's son is throwing a ball around at the Pro Bowl.

So a long line there. Coach Herman Edwards has been joining us. We can catch you on ESPN. Where else can we follow you? Or is that it, Coach?

Well, that's it. I work for the worldwide leader. I'm either on television or on the radio all the time. I do some stuff for Good Morning America every Sunday. I come on that program about 7.40, I believe it is, Good Morning America.

Then I do ABC News at about 1. So my plate's full. I'm good. That's all I need.

I don't need a whole lot. I'm just trying to talk about football. Hey, Coach, you have to have some type of hat. You got a shirt.

You have something that has Eagles on one side and Chiefs on the other, right? Nothing split? Well, I got better than that. I got, here we go. Let me see. I got this. And I got that. Representing for both of them. I got them all now.

I got a few. We see that. Well, Coach, enjoy the game. We certainly are going to watch it as well. Thank you for the time. Always appreciate it. A pleasure chatting with you. Pleasure is all mine. Thanks for having me on.