After a long, surprisingly exciting regular season and an unfortunately rote postseason, we’ve finally reached the culmination of the NFL’s long run of games.
The Philadelphia Eagles are looking to avenge their Super Bowl LVII loss to the Kansas City Chiefs. Meanwhile, Patrick Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid seek to be the first NFL team to ever three-peat.
With that in mind, and since EA hasn’t released their own simulation, we powered up our PS5 and set up our own Madden NFL 25 Super Bowl simulation. This is the first time Tom’s Guide has run this simulation, so let’s see how accurate our game ends up being.
For our settings, we set the game to All-Madden with 10-minute quarters and sat back for some Super Bowl ad-free entertainment.
One annoying thing we learned is that you can’t pause a Madden simulation. This means there were no breaks and no pausing to look at stats as the game progressed. A request for next year’s Madden, perhaps.
Let’s see how Super Bowl 2025 will play out according to Madden 25...
Madden 25 Super Bowl: First Half
One of the strange things about Philadelphia in Madden 25 is how un-Eagles-like the play calling can be. There is no real ‘Tush Push’ play in the game and this simulated Eagles team likes to pass versus the real life run-heavy offense they actually run.
One of the strange things about Philadelphia in Madden 25 is how un-Eagles-like the play calling can be. There is no real ‘Tush Push’ play.
In the game’s opening drive, the Eagles threw seven passes to three Saquon Barkley runs, the last of which was intercepted by the Chief’s Nick Bolton. Kansas City immediately capitalized with a short drive that ended in a Kareem Hunt touchdown.
The Eagles nearly give it away again on a long Jalen Hurts run that ends in a fumble at the 2 yard line of the Chiefs, though it is fortunately recovered by the Eagles. They use that good fortune on a swing pass to Barkley for their first touchdown.
From there the teams traded touchdowns until halftime with the Chiefs going into the locker room up 21 to 14.
Xavier Worthy of the Chiefs claimed two of those touchdowns, though Hollywood Brown is doing most of the work getting the Chiefs up and down the field.
At this point in the game, Saquon, the best running back in the league, has run the ball four times with one touchdown catch.
Meanwhile, Mahomes is on fire, having thrown 19 straight completions, which would break not only a Super Bowl record but also an NFL record, that Lions QB Jared Goff just set this past year when he threw 18 straight passes without an incompletion against the Seattle Seahawks in October.
Madden 25 Super Bowl: Second Half
The offensive fireworks stalled to open the second half as both teams went three out and Mahomes came back to earth throwing three straight incompletions.
After the Eagles punted back to the Chiefs, they pinned Mahomes and the offense on their own 2-yard line. It didn’t matter; Mahomes marched Kansas City down the field with 12 straight passing plays.
Controversially, Mahomes hit DeAndre Hopkins on a huge play that got the Chiefs to the Eagle’s 15 yard line. The refs threw a flag for holding against the Chiefs, but somehow the penalty yardage was added to the original line of scrimmage, moving the Chiefs up to the Eagle’s 20.
Was it ref bias on the part of the Chiefs, who have been accused of playing in rigged games all season? Or just a Madden glitch that went awry at the wrong time for Philadelphia? Who’s to say? I lean toward conspiracy.
Was it ref bias on the part of the Chiefs, who have been accused of playing in rigged games all season? Or just a Madden glitch that went awry at the wrong time for Philadelphia? Who’s to say? I lean toward conspiracy.
Either way, four plays later Hopkins caught a 2-yard pass and the Chiefs went up 28 to 14 over the Eagles.
The teams traded punts before another pass-heavy drive that finally features Saquon gets the Eagles to within seven. Barkley has now run the ball five more times.
The Chiefs responded with another long touchdown drive that ended with a Pacheco rushing tuddy and only 1:53 remaining on the clock.
The Eagles tried but didn’t seem to have any urgency. After almost throwing an interception that would have been a pick six, Hurts managed to get the Eagles offense to the Chiefs eight yard line. With 4 seconds left, he threw a weak checkdown pass to his tight end Calcaterra who was immediately tackled at the five.
With that tackle, the Chiefs become the first franchise in NFL history to three-peat in the Super Bowl.
Meanwhile, the best running back in the league ran the ball only nine times for 30 yards, which we doubt will be the case come Super Bowl Sunday.
Meanwhile, the best running back in the league ran the ball only nine times for 30 yards, which we doubt will be the case come Super Bowl Sunday.
The game was exciting until it wasn’t, which feels like how the real Super Bowl is likely to go, if the real Chiefs manage a similar feat.
After throwing for 390 yards and three touchdowns, Mahomes earned his fourth Super Bowl MVP award. However, I would argue Hollywood Brown was the real driving force behind getting the Chiefs the win.
For many, this will take an undesirable Super Bowl match-up and make it even more unsatisfying with a team that became the villain of the NFL through surprisingly rote and boring play this year somehow ends with an 18-2 season and another championship. Let's hope Madden got this one wrong.
Madden Bowl 2025: A couple more
Just for fun we decided to see who would win in a best two out of three. I didn't change any settings between the games.
Game two couldn't have been more different for Philadelphia at least. This time the Eagles remembered that they have Saquon Barkley who rushed for 161 yards including a 69 yard that should have ended in a touchdown. He scored two rushing TDs and had 3 catches for 32 yards. On the other side, Mahomes threw for 405 yards and six touchdowns.
It was not to be however as he also had a fumble that was returned for a touchdown and a late interception that let the Eagles escape with a 45 to 42 win in a fairly exciting, offensive game.
Game three became a de facto rubber match. Who would take it all?
In contrast to the first two games, the first half of game 3 was slow. Both offenses moved the ball until the red zone. There were four made field goals, three going to Kansas City and each team scored a touchdown.
The second half was nearly all Chiefs as they scored twice in the third to go up 29 to 10. Philly finally got its act together and mounted a furious comeback with two straight TDs to get to 24 points. However, with less than 2 minutes left the defense failed to stop the Chiefs from getting a first down that iced the game. Final score: KC 29 - Philadelphia - 24. Once again the Eagles forgot about Barkley who touched the ball 6 times and only rushed for 9 yards.
The Chiefs took two of three in our sims and only the second game was really interesting, mostly because Saquon finally got some play.
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