FMIA: Jonathan Gannon on Philly’s Defensive Breakdown, and More from My Super Bowl Notebook

Cleaning out the Super Bowl 57 notebook, starting with the incredulity, even a week later, of how Kansas City won—and Andy Reid’s “Beautiful Mind Board:”

Three years ago, I rode to work one morning with Andy Reid before the Kansas City-San Francisco Super Bowl. We ended up in his office suite, and I got a look at a huge white board that took up most of one wall. On the board were maybe 30 diagrammed plays, in different handwriting and different colors—from he and his offensive assistants.

“We’re a democracy here,” Reid said that day. “Every coach’s ideas count.”

Last week, I asked one of the coaches, senior offensive assistant/QB coach Matt Nagy, about the process. “He has about 27 different markers on his board that you can pick from and he wants you to space out the colors so you don’t have two black diagrams next to each other,” Nagy said. “By the end of the week, you get to Thursday or Friday and it looks like probably what you saw. It can look very confusing. That’s why we call it the ‘Beautiful Mind Board.’”

Corn Dog, the play I wrote about last week, the play that turned the Super Bowl to Kansas City’s favor, was born there. But here’s the other part of why it worked: By the time KC lined up at the Philadelphia five-yard line and called Duo Left 35Y Corn Dog (thanks to NFL Films for the Patrick Mahomes wiring that filled out the call) three minutes into the fourth quarter, it had been 1,242 plays since Reid called for this particular motion—the odd Jet Motion reverse, from wide right to the right tackle, then reversed back to the original position wide right.

I can’t fault Eagles players and coaches for Corn Dog. How could Philadelphia have seen this coming? Kansas City had called it one time all season—in the