There’s an entire Super Bowl yet to be played, and people are already swooning over Patrick Mahomes’ all-time greatness. He led the Kansas City Chiefs back to the Super Bowl for a second straight year after throwing for 241 yards and one touchdown to knock off Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens.
And that’s the selling point. That’s the astonishing performance that finally led to the “gotcha” moment in the greatest of all time debate between Mahomes and Tom Brady.
Seriously?
Put Brady in the same position as Mahomes with identical numbers, and the same individuals praising the Chiefs quarterback would have been giving most of the credit to the head coach, while calling Brady a game manager and system quarterback.
That isn’t an effort to belittle Mahomes’ greatness, either. He is going to his fourth Super Bowl in five years (Brady did that). A win over the San Francisco 49ers would make him a back-to-back Super Bowl champion (Brady did that, too).
Everything Mahomes has accomplished up to this point has been extraordinary. Even if he falls flat on his face against the 49ers at Super Bowl LVIII, an argument could be made that he’s one of the top-five greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game. It’s an exceptional feat for a 28-year-old signal-caller in the prime of his career. He’s on a full-on sprint to do things that have never been done in the NFL.
But surpassing Brady is going to take much more than that.
There are some prisoners of the moment that were already convinced Mahomes was the GOAT after his first Super Bowl victory. They love the talent and the player so much that they’re bursting at the seams to anoint him king. Brady wasn’t running around in the pocket and creating off script throws, while simultaneously doing a contortionist act to avoid defenders.
He won seven Super Bowls with timing, precision, processing speed and an unrivaled ability to get rid of the ball quickly.
Take note of the seven Super Bowls because championships have meaning when splitting hairs in these kinds of debates. To put Brady’s ridiculous success into perspective, he has nearly twice as many Super Bowl wins as Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana, who has the second-most Super Bowl wins of all NFL quarterbacks with four championships.
Mahomes has a long way to go to catch Brady in that regard. But to surpass Brady unequivocally as the NFL’s new GOAT, he needs to win eight Super Bowls.
The Mahomes and Brady comparisons aren’t the same as the ongoing LeBron James versus Michael Jordan debate in the NBA. Unlike James and Jordan, Brady and Mahomes have actually faced each other twice in the biggest moments—once in the 2018 AFC Championship Game and once at Super Bowl LV—and Brady won both times.
There’s no getting that monkey off Mahomes’ back unless he does the impossible, which is surpassing Brady with eight Super Bowl wins.
If anything, Mahomes’ success makes Brady look even better. After spending over two decades beating multiple generations of legendary quarterbacks, Brady also beat the greatest of this era as well, twice—on two separate teams. This isn’t a fantasy matchup between two all-time greats from different eras.
It’s reality, and Brady won both times.
You want to talk about all-time great playoff performances? What about a 24-year-old Brady putting together a game-winning drive against “The Greatest Show on Turf” for the Patriots’ first Super Bowl victory? How about Brady overcoming a 10-point deficit in a game where he threw for 328 yards, four touchdowns and two interceptions to topple one of the greatest defenses in NFL history, the Seattle Seahawks’ “Legion of Boom”, at Super Bowl XLIX?
What about Brady pulling off the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history after being down 28-3 to the Atlanta Falcons at Super Bowl LI? More importantly, how about the dagger of all daggers—a game-winning touchdown drive at Arrowhead Stadium to beat Mahomes and the Chiefs in the 2018 AFC title game?
Tom Brady and the @Patriots ended a classic AFC Championship Game against the Chiefs with an overtime drive that sent them to Super Bowl LIII. pic.twitter.com/GPzYpSf1O5
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) December 6, 2019
Brady’s resume speaks for itself, along with the fact that he was able to leave New England, go to another team and win a Super Bowl in his first year away from Bill Belichick.
Could Mahomes do the same without Andy Reid, who is arguably the greatest offensive play-caller in NFL history?
It’s too soon to be comparing his career to someone that played the game until the age of 45. Out of sight meaning out of mind is one thing, but are people really so quick to forget that Brady literally led the league in passing yards and touchdowns two seasons ago in 2021?
Mahomes is an intriguing potential rival to Brady’s accomplishments, but he isn’t even halfway finished with writing his own legacy, much less surpassing Brady’s. This was always going to be the case the moment Brady hoisted his seventh Lombardi Trophy with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Knocking him off the throne is going to take a marathon, not a sprint.
