Brandon Graham believes that Chiefs’ o-line was blessed.

The fans were relentless when heckling the San Francisco 49ers after the excuses began pouring out following their NFC Championship loss. No fan base was more brutal than the Eagles themselves, as they believe they could have easily taken San Francisco with a healthy quarterback. Well, it appears that Philadelphia has created an excuse of their own after their Super Bowl loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

Brandon Graham, one of the biggest names on the Eagles top-rated defensive line, said that the Chiefs offensive line was blessed to play them on a bad field. Philly ended the regular season right under the all-time record for most sacks as a team but generated zero against the Chiefs. Graham said, “You need that traction to be able to get off the block and we were slipping a lot. I don’t make excuses. I just know that that’s what was being talked about, us trying to get out of our own heads a little bit, too.” He followed it up with, “I’m telling you that O-line, they got blessed, I’ll say that.”

The Chiefs also had to deal with the exact same problem, and there were, in fact, turf problems throughout the whole game. Turf problems didn’t just affect the offensive and defensive lines. The whole night, many players on both teams got caught in the dirt. There were patches of turf being pulled up, guys were falling, and it just wasn’t a very good environment for the players. You could also tell that most of the turf problems were coming from the painted areas, which is interesting to note with a problem like this. Whatever was in that paint didn’t do a good job on the field. However, both teams dealt with these issues, and part of the sport is adjusting to things on the fly. I’m sure the Eagles weren’t fans of Kansas City wearing t-shirts with “0 sacks” on them during their championship parade. Even though we are a few months past that, 

The problem with this claim is that many other teams can say the same thing. For example, the Buffalo Bills could say this was the reason for losing against the Cincinnati Bengals in the Divisional Round. After all, that game was played on a snowy turf field in New York. Buffalo ended that game with only one sack as well. 

Now, Graham did give Kansas City credit and admitted that they also played on the same field. He stated, “But you know, like I said, credit to Kansas City. It’s all love, you know what I’m saying. Them boys played too; they played on that surface too.” One can’t help but notice the irony in stating that the Chiefs were lucky after Philadelphia relentlessly heckled San Francisco players for being unhappy about all their quarterbacks being injured. At the end of the day, though, these teams can’t predict what will happen. As mentioned earlier, it’s a game about adjusting on the fly.