Patrick Mahomes hasn’t surpassed Tom Brady as the GOAT yet
Paul Rutherford-USA TODAY Sports
A third Super Bowl win put the Chiefs QB in some elite company, but he has ways to go before reaching Brady.
The Kansas City Chiefs have solidified their dynasty by coming away victoriously in only the second ever overtime game in Super Bowl history. Their 25-22 win over the San Francisco 49ers means that they have now won three championships in five years, and played in four total, losing only to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers along the way.
Because we live in a 24-hour news cycle, and plenty of fans and analysts alike are prisoners of the moment, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has since been hailed as the greatest to ever do it by countless people.
What he has accomplished so far has been nothing short of impressive, there is no question. However, I’m not here to throw out the rest of NFL history. Instead, let’s give a sensible opinion about where the GOAT discussion stands right now.
Let’s start by saying that Mahomes is starting his career better than anyone in NFL history, even including Tom Brady. He’s been a starter for six seasons, has made the AFC Championship Game in all six of them, made the Super Bowl in four, and has finished as Super Bowl MVP three times. He is the best player in the NFL right now by a wide margin, and his team is the newest NFL dynasty.
As great as Mahomes has been, he is still far behind Brady when it comes to career accomplishments. This isn’t to take anything away from Mahomes, but to point out that Brady wasn’t great for six years — Brady was great for more than 20.
Some of the signature wins and drives by Brady are the stuff of legends, and he left his mark on this game in a way that no one before him had ever dreamed of. Winning seven Super Bowls is, frankly, ridiculous; he’s almost double the next highest QB, and, even with Mahomes in the league, there are serious questions whether that number will ever be matched in a salary cap and free agency era.
Along the way, Brady’s New England Patriots rebuilt on the fly. Morphing from a running team with receivers like Troy Brown, David Patten, Deion Branch, and David Givens, into a high-flying offense featuring the likes of Randy Moss, Wes Welker, and Donté Stallworth. Then finally, into the final stage, where the Patriots relied so heavily on Brady, and surrounded him with players such as Rob Gronkowski, Julian Edelman, Danny Amendola, and Chris Hogan.
Then, Brady went on to Tampa Bay and immediately had a transformative effect on the organization. After 17 years without a playoff win, the Buccaneers were led to a Super Bowl win (over Mahomes and the then-reigning champion Chiefs) in Brady’s first season. He ended his Bucs career with five playoff victories in three seasons, one shy of the franchise’s total in its first 44 years of existence.
Through no fault of his own — he is still only 28 and coming off his seventh NFL season — Mahomes has not gone through anything like this.
Yes, Tyreek Hill has moved on, as have other players surrounding him. But Travis Kelce has always been his top target, and head coach Andy Reid has been calling the shots throughout Mahomes’ career. Once they decide to step away, how will he respond?
Then, there are the wins.
Mahomes has come from behind to win all of his Super Bowls, and that is something that always set Brady apart as well. It didn’t matter what the score was after the first quarter, the first half, or even half way through the third quarter. As long as Brady or Mahomes are your QBs, you feel like you have a chance to win.
With wins against the Philadelphia Eagles and now the 49ers twice, Mahomes has put himself in elite company. As impressive as those victories have been, though, Brady has had a few that might never be topped.
Two fourth-quarter touchdown drives to erase a 10-point deficit against the best defense in NFL history — because that’s exactly what the Seattle Seahawks would have been if Brady hadn’t come back — looked like a signature moment. Seattle was on the verge of beating Peyton Manning and Brady in back-to-back Super Bowls, and he came back and won the game by playing possibly the cleanest quarter of football you will ever see.
Of course there’s the Malcolm Butler interception, and neither the coaching nor the execution across the board on that single play should be ignored. But his two drives that put the Patriots ahead 28-24 in the first place are all-timers. Brady, at that point in the game, very much seemed inevitable like Mahomes on Sunday against the 49ers.
Then there’s 28-3, which is arguably the most impressive performance in Super Bowl history.
The game was over. There was almost no chance for the Patriots to win, and yet they scored 31 straight points, including a pair of must-have two-point conversions to beat the Atlanta Falcons in overtime. Punctuated by a 91-yard game tying touchdown drive, with a laser to Chris Hogan on 3rd-and-10 from his own end zone, and, of course, the unbelievable catch by Julian Edelman on a deflection.
Then, in overtime, he methodically drove the Patriots to secure the win. There was no doubt this would happen after the team won the coin toss before what was then still a do-or-die overtime setting.
Brady would set the record for passing yards in a Super Bowl that game, one that he would break the following year in a losing effort.
This doesn’t even include the two-game winning drives that ended in field goals to start his Super Bowl career in 2001 and 2003. To put it bluntly, no one has ever come close to what Tom Brady has done, and it’s going to take a literal lifetime in the NFL to do it.
With that being said, Mahomes seems to be the only player with a chance of doing just that. At the moment, though, the facts very much still clearly work in Brady’s favor:
pic.twitter.com/3WMxFcmseA
— Tom Brady Facts (@TB_Facts) February 12, 2024
My favorite Brady stat is that he has 10 lead-changing drives in the fourth quarter or overtime of the Super Bowl. In other words, the drive ends with his team either tying the game or taking the lead. Before Sunday night, the next closest was a tie between Eli Manning and Kurt Warner with three of those.
Mahomes put together three such drives alone in Super Bowl 58, which is an incredible feat, and now he has five of his own. This shows what kind of player he is, and that he is in many ways built like Brady was: he plays his best when the game is on the line, and he elevates the players around him in those moments as well.
It’s this stat that should show people where Mahomes is headed, because it’s not just that he has the best team and they always win. It’s not easy, and yet, his team is able to pull off victory after victory, with him at the helm surging them forward.
That’s the mark of a true leader and winner. That might be the thing that makes Mahomes and Brady so similar, and sets them apart from virtually every other NFL quarterback not named Joe Montana.
Is Mahomes the greatest quarterback of all time, though? No. Anyone that tells you different is either lying to you or too biased to see the truth.
However, given his outstanding career start he is very well on his way to becoming the greatest ever. In my opinion, he is already undeniably top 3 all time.
I don’t know if he’s yet passed Montana, who never threw an interception or lost a Super Bowl, but he’s knocking loudly on that door if he isn’t there already. He may never catch Tom Brady, but he has the best chance of any player currently playing to make a legitimate run at him.
In all honesty, I wish we didn’t have to even have this conversation yet. I wish we could just appreciate Mahomes for what he is doing and enjoy the inevitability of him and the Chiefs. It brings back so many happy memories of when the Patriots used to do this to the league, and how everyone was so scared to play them.
Those days might be over in New England, but they have arrived in Kansas City. The only question is how long it will last, because the Patriots sure set the bar high in the longevity category.
Mahomes and company do have a shot matching what Brady and Co. were able to do during their two-decade dynasty. Only time will tell whether or not they are truly on their way to match them, however.
They may be on course, but for now Tom Brady still stands apart as the greatest quarterback of all time and the gold standard in the sport.
