‘He’s just getting started’: Rookie Drew Mukuba changed the Eagles’ win with his first NFL interception

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Drew Mukuba was trying to respond to questions from the crowd of reporters around his locker stall inside the visitors’ locker room at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday, but the rookie safety had competition.

“Yeah, Drew,” Mukuba’s Eagles teammates were yelling over the player who changed the game with an interception of Patrick Mahomes when the Kansas City Chiefs were threatening to take the lead early in the fourth quarter.

The book on Mukuba, the Eagles’ second-round pick out of Texas, is a player who, despite being undersized for a typical NFL safety, has a knack for being around the football. He proved that scouting report to be accurate when he intercepted a pass and returned it for a touchdown in his preseason debut, and it took just seven-plus quarters for him to make a big impact with another turnover during the real stuff.

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A 13-play Chiefs drive set up a second-and-goal from the 6-yard line. The Eagles sent five rushers and were in man coverage on the five Chiefs players running routes while Mukuba was roving near the goal line reading Mahomes. His safety partner Reed Blankenship was matched up with tight end Travis Kelce, who faked right, cut left, and had some space.

Mahomes delivered a pass that squeaked past the outstretched left arm of Jalen Carter and arrived to Kelce a little low but catchable. The ball ricocheted off Kelce’s hands, then his upper chest, and into the waiting arms of Mukuba, who collided with Blankenship and then darted up the Eagles’ sideline.

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Those same Eagles who were shouting over him in the locker room? They were probably the same Eagles who were ribbing him back on the sideline after the play because he was chased down by an offensive tackle, Josh Simmons. Mukuba thought he was in the clear for a pick-six, but instead he was knocked out of bounds at the Eagles’ 41-yard line, forcing a struggling offense to eventually work for the put-away points in an eventual 20-17 victory.

“I was just doing my assignment, trying to find where 87 was at,” Mukuba said. “I knew that’s where they were going to try to go down there in that red zone.

“I seen they threw the ball, broke on the ball, and the ball was in the air. I feel like I do good around the ball, so the ball happened to find my hands. I’m really mad I got caught at the end still, but it was a good changing point in the game. I felt like that’s what we needed as a team to finish the game out.”

The Eagles weren’t their best on offense Sunday in their Super Bowl rematch, but they were solid defensively. They held Mahomes to a completion percentage of just 55.2%, his third-lowest total since the beginning of the 2022 season. They pressured him much more often than they pressured Dak Prescott last week, in part because Carter was on the field. If not for Mahomes’ escapability with his legs, the Chiefs may not have scored 17 points.

The Eagles also got major individual contributions in key spots, and a few of those came from Mukuba. Besides his turnover, Mukuba made a critical open-field tackle to stop Marquise Brown for no gain on a third-and-1 from the Kansas City 36-yard line. The Chiefs opted to go for it on the next play and were stopped, setting up a go-ahead Eagles field goal early in the third quarter.

Mukuba wasn’t perfect in his debut last week. He’s off the field in the base defense package in favor of Sydney Brown, who is known as a better run defender. But Mukuba is on the field for the more frequently used nickel personnel. He made some plays last week against Dallas, but defensive coordinator Vic Fangio also noted that the rookie “had a couple major busts that hurt us and could have hurt us even more.”

Mukuba, who also had a half-sack on a delayed blitz as part of his six tackles, felt he left some plays on the field again Sunday. There were moments on the sideline that he was down after a missed play, and Blankenship, a team captain, helped keep him on track.

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“I don’t want him to get down in the dumps, and the plays that he missed, they were just whatever,” Blankenship said. “It’s football. It happens. You always need that encouragement and positivity on the sideline and I just want to give it to him. I know everybody else gives it to him, but I know he listens to me a lot and I’m always going to be there for him.

“He’s just getting started. The sky’s the limit. He’s doing everything right. He’s smart, we have great conversations. … It’s just instincts. That’s what got him here. We need guys like that and he’s one of them.”

Mukuba called days like Sunday a “confidence booster.”

“As I play and as I make the plays that I make and be in the positions, I gain more confidence just being out there and getting comfortable,” he said. “And I feel like sooner or later I’m going to get really, really comfortable, and then it’s going to be scary.”

For now, the Eagles will let their rookie safety grow on the job. His knack for the football and his natural instincts far outweigh his minor mistakes. Turnovers, Mukuba said, are “the name of the game.” Sunday’s helped turn the tide. What was looking like a four-point Chiefs lead was instead a 10-point Eagles lead five minutes of game time after Mukuba’s pick. The Eagles were up two scores with just under eight minutes to play.

Momentum is mostly a fake and fickle thing, but Mukuba’s play resulted in an energy shift. Defensive tackle Jordan Davis felt it and wanted to be a part of it. He was on the trainer’s table during the play getting a cramp rolled out, but he got off the table to join in on the fun.

“Takeaways are everything in this game,” Davis said. “It’s a game of margins. It’s a game of inches.”