NEW ORLEANS — For five days, the talk of the Super Bowl here in New Orleans, featuring the Chiefs for the fifth time in six years, had centered on the theme you might have expected.

Those guys again?

Nope.

It won’t be those guys again.

The postgame begs a much different question: Who the hell was that guy?

Patrick Mahomes turned in haunting performance, maybe the worst of his life, and the Eagles blew out the Chiefs, 40-22, in Super Bowl LIX.

The three-peat is dead, and the very reason the Chiefs came within one game of it is also one of the reasons they never had a chance of completing it on Sunday: Mahomes.

For now, here are five observations that stood out from immediately after the game:

1. The Patrick Mahomes dud

Early this past week, a reporter asked Mahomes what game sticks in his mind more than any other.

Easy, he said.

Tampa Bay. That blowout in Super Bowl LV.

He’s going to have a new No. 1 now.

We’ve seen off-nights. We’ve not seen that — whatever that was.

The offensive line didn’t do Mahomes any favors, but this was about as bad as we’ve ever seen him play. It’s hard to describe because, well, we so rarely have to describe it.

He threw a pick-six in which — even if cornerback Cooper DeJean had not picked it off — his intended receiver had no chance of a catch. He threw another interception late in the first half, one that all but sealed it, and it might’ve been worse than the first.

The Eagles offered him a reprieve with a busted coverage, and he even threw wide of a wide-open DeAndre Hopkins.

Everything I’ve just summed up, by the way, came in the first half.

And then, on the first drive of the second half, he just bypassed a wide-open Xavier Worthy in favor of, uh, stepping into pressure.

2. Chiefs’ offensive line gets dominated

So much for that feel-good story of a Band-Aid solution.

That solution ran out of its adhesive.

Mahomes played spooked after the first quarter. The KC offensive line gave him a reason to be nervous.

The Eagles dominated up front — the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency left side of Joe Thuney and Mike Caliendo gave up a combined eight pressures ... in the first half.

Through 2 1/2 quarters, the Eagles had brought pressure on more than half of Mahomes’ dropbacks. And you know how many times they blitzed to create that pressure?

Zero.

Zero!

They weren’t outnumbered. They were just out-manned.

The Chiefs have covered for their makeshift offensive line by turning to quick throws, but when you can leave seven in coverage and still get in the backfield, it makes those short throws a little easier to defend.

3. How Jalen hurt the Chiefs

The Chiefs weren’t dominated up front on just one side of the ball.

It was both.

The Eagles’ offensive line bossed the first half in pass protection, and particularly early.

Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts had far too much time to throw, and while that would be an important note for any quarterback, there’s literally no quarterback it’s more important. Hurts is the fifth-best quarterback in football when he’s not pressured, in terms of FTN Network’s DVOA.

But when he’s pressured? He’s the very worst among quarterbacks who appeared in at least 10 games this year.

It’s a night-and-day difference, and the Chiefs allowed Hurts to shine in the light.

The Chiefs did well against star running back Saquon Barkley, who on Thursday won the NFL’s Offensive Player of the Year honor.

But that’s why the Eagles were here, in the Super Bowl: If you devote your attention to stopping one thing, it opens up something else.

4. Digging a hole

There’s a surprising fact if you’ve only casually followed this team over the past six years.

Mahomes has been pretty average — lousy, even — in the initial three quarters of Super Bowls. It didn’t get any better Sunday.

His rating in those three quarters over five Super Bowl appearances now: 70.17.

And that even includes the late third-quarter drive he capped with a pretty remarkable throw to Xavier Worthy, perhaps the only bright spot.

The Chiefs have done just enough to overcome those three-quarter duds three times. But the Eagles were precisely the wrong team to play catch-up against.

Why? It puts their two strengths into play: the run game, and their pass defense.

They ran the ball more frequently than any team in the NFL, and they had the league’s No. 1 pass defense.

When the Chiefs trailed by 17 midway through the second quarter, it highlighted those two strengths.

I don’t know whether to attribute it to nerves, to bad opening scripts or to good opponents — which, yes, you tend to see at the Super Bowl. But I do know it’s unusual, and something, if the Chiefs are fortunate enough to return to another Super Bowl, they have to properly diagnose.

5. Travis Kelce’s present — and future

This Chiefs team will look a lot different a year from now. They have prominent free agents. They, as always, will have limited cap space.

But the most influential player into how different they would look is quite clear.

Travis Kelce.

The playoff monster was absent from the first half — like, literally, in terms of the box score. He did not catch a pass in the first two quarters. Oh, but he was targeted. Mahomes went to him on the first drive, and he dropped a throw over the middle. Mahomes returned to him on a third-down pass later in the half, only to throw the ball at his feet.

It was a series of missed connections, and how often has that been the description with those two?

And now we have to ask an honest question. Will we see that connection again?

Kelce, 35, said this week that he would return for 2025, but what else can he say when he’s put on the spot. He’s smart enough not to create a storyline during Super Bowl week.

But he will be a storyline of the weeks to follow.

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