Eagles’ Darius Slay reacts to comments by 49ers’ Brandon Aiyuk

Brandon Aiyuk, like so many fans, wonders how the NFC Championship Game might have turned out had the San Francisco 49ers not lost their third- and fourth-string quarterbacks—the only two available—to injuries in the game. Rookie Brock Purdy suffered a torn UCL in the first quarter and could not throw the football. His backup, Josh Johnson, exited in the third quarter due to a concussion.

Aiyuk has little doubt that if Purdy had never suffered his injury, it might have been the 49ers, not the Philadelphia Eagles, preparing for Super Bowl 57.

“We literally just played a football game for pretty much a half a football with no quarterback,” Aiyuk shared this week with Brad Graham of TheSFNiners. It’s the craziest thing. … We have a talented football team. We have, hands down, the best football team in the league. Hands down. Hands down. I’m not even about to argue with anybody who thinks they should argue that.”

Aiyuk believes the Eagles got lucky. He feels their game plan would have been able to take advantage of Philadelphia’s weaknesses. The 49ers just never had a chance to prove it.

“They talk about them being a good defense. I’m not sure,” Aiyuk told Graham. “I think the pass game, this Kansas City pass game, will expose what we thought we were going to be able to expose before some unfortunate circumstances happened. So we’ll see. But like I said, you got to get lucky to win the Super Bowl, and they just got extremely lucky last week.”

Philadelphia did win, though. That is the reality. Eagles cornerback Darius Slay is more concerned with what did happen than what could have been and feels luck had little to do with the outcome of the NFC Championship Game.

“We’ve had the No. 1 defense in the passing game for, I think, almost the whole year,” Slay said, speaking with the media and responding to a question about Aiyuk’s comments on Monday during the Super Bowl Opening Night in Arizona. “I don’t know. That was weird. Yes, bad sportsmanship. Bad.”

A follow-up comment pointed out that Aiyuk was likely suggesting that the 49ers lacked an opportunity to play their style of football for four quarters.

“What kind of chance they gonna get? The first time they dropped back, we’re going to break their quarterback—both of them. So I don’t know what chance they would’ve got. But shout out to him.”