Super Bowl LVII is over and in the history books. An offensive shootout between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Kansas City Chiefs led to a dramatic football game that the Chiefs narrowly won - although the game became controversial with a hotly contested backup source. With the Eagles being the near-unanimous pick on the preview panel for this game, it's safe to say the result was somewhat unexpected.
No one predicted it would be worse than Madden 23 coins.
Every year, EA simulcasts the game about a week before the Super Bowl. Sometimes the result can be close to being correct. Other times, like last year's completely wrong prediction that the Bengals would beat the Rams, it's dead wrong. The latter ended with Super Bowl LVII.
This year, Madden NFL 23 predicts the Eagles to win 31-17. To its credit, this moment seems possible. It was a 24–14 Hawks lead going into halftime (the Chiefs would have scored 17 points had they not missed a field goal in the first half). It is very realistic to believe that both defenses tightened up in the second half and the Eagles scored another touchdown to bring the score within 31 points.
But in reality, it is not so. The Chief's offense exploded in the second half to tie the game as the Eagle's Jalen Hurts struggled to find the end zone. With two minutes left in the game, the score was tied at 35:35. Some sneaky meta plays by the Chiefs led to a last-second field goal that made it 38–35. Again, Madden picked the wrong winner, but it also reversed his prediction by simulating a one-sided blowout in Philadelphia.
Part of the problem is that this game is both underrated and overrated by Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. While EA only released a few stats and plays in its mock video, it predicted Mahomes would intercept CJ Gardner-Johnson. In fact, the Chiefs had no turnovers all night (although the Eagles did). Otherwise, it was predicted that Mahomes would only have one touch in the game; He threw three in the game itself.
The simulation got one thing right about Mahomes. He's pitching a sub-par game for a quarterback, with him projected to have 249 passing yards — well below his season average. Mahomes was short in that regard, but more seriously. He left the game with 182 passing yards and completed 21 of 27 passes (Maddon allowed 29 of 39).
It was a little more accurate when it came to Jalen Hurts, who predicted 282 yards for the Eagles star. It actually ends up with 304. It also suggests that Hurts will have a historic game in rushing yards, although he will be a little overzealous on that front. In the simulation, the quarterback threw an astonishing 88 yards, which would have broken the Super Bowl record. While Hurts fell short of those heights, he did break the Super Bowl record for rushing yards with 66 yards. Although perhaps no simulation could have predicted he would get 3 rushing touchdowns himself (Madden projects he would get 1).
At least one player's numbers come pretty close. The simulation showed Eagles catcher A.J. predicted a good game for Brown, for 114 yards and a touchdown. Brown scored a touchdown and carried the ball 96 yards. He caught eight passes in the game, which isn't too far off the actual number: six.
Overall, this year's event was another loss for Madden's annual sim. You have to squint to see the connection between video games and reality, even if it's a statistic or two. buy madden nfl 23 coins Ultimate Team on mmoexp and you can learn more, maybe the Chiefs need to improve - or at least make the referee AI worse - in the 2024 edition of the game.
