Welcome to the Super Bowl – the biggest party in sport is here!

They attack from every level, with premeditated angles, lockdown coverage and designed starting alignments built on no-stone-unturned film study, primed to combat any blocking eventuality or late audible in order to reach their target.

That’s just the camera operators seeking to get a shot of Taylor Swift…we haven’t even got onto Steve Spagnuolo’s exotic blitz packages.

Both will be salient at Super Bowl 59, one a beacon of unprecedented global reach, the other a defining factor in who lifts the Lombardi Trophy at the end of the night on February 9.

The gumbo is cooking, the jazz is playing, the voodoo is brewing and New Orleans is ready as the Super Bowl returns to town for a record-tying 11th time.

• The numbers behind Mahomes and the Chiefs’ dominance
• Super Bowl 59: All you need to know
• Why Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans could be the best yet
• Stream the NFL and more with NOW

Thirty-two teams began, 284 games have been played, the NFL visited Brazil, London and Munich, Saquon Barkley invented the backwards hurdle, the Detroit Lions scored off a fake fumble play named ‘stumble bum’, the Minnesota Vikings recreated High School Musical, the New Orleans Saints were Super Bowl contenders for two weeks, Jameis Winston did snow angels, Jayden Daniels threw a Hail Mary, Sam Darnold was reborn, and the Aaron Rodgers experiment in New York failed… miserably. Now just two remain.

The Kansas City Chiefs, striving to become the first team ever to win three Super Bowls in a row; and the Philadelphia Eagles, seeking revenge for their defeat to Andy Reid’s Championship monster at Super Bowl LVII two years ago.

Behold the greatest sporting party on earth – where attendees of Lester Hayes using stickem, Jeff Hostetler defying the odds and Chuck Nolls’ Steel Curtain-level knowledge unite with witnesses/sufferers/disciples of the Tom Brady and Bill Belichick dynasty, Odell Beckham Jr one-handed catch recruits, modern natives of the Mahomes dictatorship, adopted ‘started watching because of Taylor’ Chiefs heads, Sweet Caroline-lured UK game-goers and Justin Jefferson-inspired Griddyers to create a generation-merging cocktail like no other.

Everybody is invited, everybody is wanted, everybody deserves to watch together as one to enjoy the NFL’s showpiece finale, no matter where in the world, no matter if the fandom be new or old.

In just a few days, an unnerving slot shall appear on your Sunday evening schedule as the curtain closes on the 2024 season. Families shall be reunited, in-law relationships shall be repaired, television remotes shall be surrendered for another offseason, sleep patterns shall be restored, and the world will be a worse place.

But first. A game of football. THE game of football.

At the tip of the iceberg in New Orleans is the prospect of history as the Chiefs vie to become the first team ever to win three straight Super Bowls and the first three-peat team in a major American sports league since the Los Angeles Lakers ruled the NBA in 2000, 2001 and 2002. They are the ninth back-to-back Super Bowl champion, and the first of which to make it to three successive Super Bowls as they prepare to play in their fifth championship game in six seasons.

Mahomes was a first-ballot Hall of Famer before he played a single snap in the 2024 season, probably even before the 2023 season. His Mount Rushmore greatness has long been undisputed, the only question mark being to what extent his greatness will dare reach. He will become just the third quarterback to start in five Super Bowls behind Tom Brady and John Elway, doing so before the age of 30, while he and Andy Reid look to become the third quarterback and head coach tandem to win four Super Bowls.

The Chiefs have won 107 games since their taper faded mohawked magician took over as starter under center in 2018, the most by any team across a seven-year span in NFL history, as well as reaching the AFC Championship Game every year in that period. For the best part of a decade, no other side has learned to navigate playoff football with more command nor the same notion of inevitability as the modern era’s conqueror and successor of Brady’s New England Patriots.

It is when Travis Kelce’s campaign begins these days, it is where Chris Jones kicks into destructive top gear, it is where Reid dusts off the shelved pages of his playbook, it is where Spagnuolo feasts on all hopes of slaying the Super Bowl monster, it is where Mahomes always finds a way. The Chiefs offense can limp through a season, like it just did. They can live off one-score games, like they just did – 12 times, to be precise. They can survive on Spags stardust, like they have for the last two seasons. But the guarantee of a Mahomes moment remains.

Standing before Philadelphia in their bid to lift the Lombardi Trophy is what will be remembered as one of the league’s great dynasties. Standing before Kansas City in their bid for immortality is a team led by Saquon Barkley, who has ploughed through the NFL since escaping the shackles of a downbeat New York Giants team, his freedom even championed by Big Blue fans willing to admit his alien gifts deserved better.

The Eagles running back finished the regular season with 2,005 rushing yards, just 101 shy of Eric Dickerson’s single-season record, and now needs just 30 more rushing yards to break Terrell Davis’ all-time single-season record (including playoffs) of 2,476. He is the footballing embodiment of heavyweight boxing’s one-punch jeopardy, an unwavering threat of field-flipping and game-altering chaos, torching the league’s best defenses behind Jeff Stoutland’s prized offensive line. Football wanted to distance itself from multi-year contracts for veteran running backs out of fear over longevity and value in a pass-first league; Barkley thought otherwise.

Should we abide by the old adage, defense wins Championships. By the time the night draws in on February 9, we may be inclined to agree. Enter Fangio and his No 1-ranked unit, fronted by the NFL’s club-and-clobber wrecking ball Jalen Carter, fleet-footed Hulk Jordan Davis and the Moto GP-esque corner bend and skr skr home-stretch speed of Nolan Smith as Philly’s Georgia Bulldog spine.

Behind them lies reinvented All-Pro linebacker Zack Baun, who has done everything and anything from rushing the passer to dropping into coverage this season, and Defensive Rookie of the Year finalists in Quinyon Mitchell and Cooper DeJean at corner, all three combining with Fangio’s appointment to crown another masterful offseason from Howie Roseman.

On the opposite sideline will be Spagnuolo’s all-shape-shifting, all-blitzing, all-disguising, all-pressuring crack team, whose execution of their defensive coordinator’s genius verges on robotic such has been their efficiency over the past two seasons. They are the face of a rebranded Chiefs team, from pyromaniac offensive freakazoid to steely, tempo-controlling wall of resistance.

Jones and George Karlaftis anchor a defensive front that thrives on the rotational offerings of Mike Danna, Charles Omenihua and Tershawn Wharton – the latter enjoying a career year as one of Kansas City’s unsung heroes after arriving undrafted in 2020 – while Trent McDuffie has transitioned from inside to outside corner seamlessly with an expert knowledge in every NFL wide receiver’s gameday cologne of choice such is his suffocating coverage style.

It was Spags and his blitz that ultimately booked Kansas City’s return to the Super Bowl in the AFC Championship Game as he swarmed Josh Allen on fourth-and-five with two minutes remaining to force the decisive incompletion (with some help from a Dalton Kincaid drop downfield). When the Chiefs need them, they are there. On Sunday, they need them to decipher a Jalen Hurts and Barkley-powered read option system that has taken down most of the league.

There are stories to be told everywhere. Jordan Mailata, the Australian former rugby player who decided one day he would become an elite NFL left tackle, and who quotes Batman villain ‘Bane’ while manhandling defenders. DeAndre Hopkins, the three-time First-Team All-Pro Chiefs receiver who arrived in a mid-season trade and is set to play in his first Super Bowl after 186 career games (including playoffs), across which he has amassed more than 13,000 receiving yards. Cam Jurgens, the absurdly instant answer to Philadelphia’s fearful job of finding a long-term successor for Jason Kelce at center.

It is a week where the stars align, on and off the field. From Bradley Cooper to Jalen Hurts, The Fonz to Mahomes, Kevin Hart to AJ Brown, Cam from Modern Family to Kelce, the former all a fan of either the Eagles or Chiefs.

A week of savvy product placement and PR Olympics as the most coveted marketing window on the planet (take a moment to think of the TV producers tasked with politely asking athletes to remove branded clothing during interviews). A week when media questions can range from Vic Fangio’s match coverage to blind snack rankings (the latter for which I volunteer). A week of Kendrick Lamar, a week of wondering whether Kelce wins again before proposing to Taylor on the field. A week of Tom Brady getting ready to commentate on the man coming for his GOAT title.

It is a week of noise and narratives, posing the ultimate test of a player’s ability to tune into what matters most, the same game of football they have played since they were five.

The UK’s nocturnal animals gear up for one final Sunday blowout, flocking to watch parties while treating the Super Bowl’s chicken wing-enthused eating traditions as the perfect hiatus from their New Year resolution diets, downplaying the necessity of sleep ahead of the least productive working Monday of their year. New Orleans meanwhile attaches its Mardis Gras vibrancy to football festivities as the world returns to the Crescent City, where a beignet and Bourbon Street bonanza awaits within a picture of resilience and staggering rebuild almost 15 years removed from Hurricane Katrina.

The NFL is a Pandora’s Box of mystery and mayhem, with a proclivity for ‘any given Sunday’ twists. Look back to the opening weekend of the season and you may remember Tyreek Hill being detained by police on the way to work or Dak Prescott signing a new four-year $240m contract extension with the Dallas Cowboys to become the highest-paid player in NFL history. On the same day the league announced that Kendrick Lamar would perform the Super Bowl half-time show at the height of his feud with Drake, before Deejay Dallas broke free for 96 yards to score the first-ever dynamic kickoff return touchdown in the NFL.

And yet for the beauty of its unpredictable nature, come the end of the season, some things just stay the same.

“Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men throw, catch, run and hunt a ball for four quarters spanning roughly three hours, and at the end – Patrick Mahomes always wins. Or something like that.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because it was what I wrote in the immediate aftermath of the Super Bowl last February. The same sentiment could yet stand the test of time as the NFL endures another dose of deja vu such has become the dynasty dominance of Mahomes and his red arrows.

Hurts, who played the game of his life when the pair met two years ago, has other ideas. So, too, Barkley. So, too, Nick Sirianni. The Eagles are bigger and better, far too focused to fixate on revenge narratives and far too dangerous for the Chiefs to deliver anything less than their most complete performance of a season in which simultaneous dominance on both sides of the ball has been in short supply.

So here we go. A game to amplify footballing sovereignty. A game to overthrow the king.

Contrary to Kendrick, leave that TV on.

The Kansas City Chiefs face the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 59 at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans on Sunday February 9, live on Sky Sports NFL and Main Event from 10pm ahead of kickoff at 11.30pm; Tom Brady features on commentary while Kendrick Lamar headlines the half-time show