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Updated at 5:15 p.m. ET on February 17, 2024
This wasn’t supposed to be Patrick Mahomes’s year—that’s the scary part.
There were plenty of times this season when the Kansas City Chiefs and their star quarterback looked vulnerable, including a stretch when they lost four out of six games. Yet the end result was the same as it was last season: Mahomes won another Super Bowl, and notched another Super Bowl MVP, and now the rest of the football world is stuck with the gloomy reality that for the foreseeable future, any path to the Super Bowl means upending a generational player who is on course to be the greatest quarterback in NFL history.
If you’re wondering how a 28-year-old is being mentioned in a greatest-ever conversation, consider how this most recent Super Bowl win fits in with the rest of Mahomes’s career. In just seven NFL seasons, he has won three Super Bowls, three Super Bowl MVPs, and two league MVPs, and he’s a six-time Pro Bowl honoree.
On the surface, this speculation might seem disrespectful to Tom Brady, an NFL-record seven-time Super Bowl winner who retired last February. Brady is considered to be the greatest quarterback ever, having made 10 Super Bowl appearances, also an NFL record. He spearheaded the New England Patriots dynasty by winning six Super Bowls during his 20 seasons with the franchise, then won his final championship with Tampa Bay at 43 years old.
But Mahomes is a more elite talent than Brady was at this stage in his career. Brady and Mahomes each won their first Super Bowl when they were 24, and Brady won his third championship when he was 27. But Mahomes stands alone as the youngest player ever to win league MVP and Super Bowl MVP in the same season. Mahomes also already has more passing yards and touchdowns than Brady did in his 20s. Mahomes has two more MVPs and six more Pro Bowl honors than Brady had at the same period in his position.
“Yeah, I hear it,” Mahomes said of the Brady comparisons following the Chiefs’ win over the 49ers. “To me, it’s always going to be tough, because Brady beat me in the Super Bowl.”
Brady being 2–0 against Mahomes in the playoffs is often used as the counterargument to placing Mahomes in the same conversation as Brady, or the reason some believe Mahomes can never eclipse Brady.
But even Brady understood early on that Mahomes was going to be the one competing against his legacy. In the 2019 AFC championship game, the Chiefs lost in overtime to Brady, who was then the quarterback for the New England Patriots. Mahomes was spectacular, passing for 295 yards and three touchdowns while helping his team erase a 14-point halftime deficit. Although Mahomes finished that game with a higher passer rating than Brady, the Patriots won because they were better when it mattered most. But that win didn’t prevent Brady from passing the torch to Mahomes.
“I was there when Tom Brady said I’m turning the keys over to you,” the Kansas City Chiefs head coach, Andy Reid, shared with reporters after last Sunday’s Super Bowl. “He did it right in our locker room. And so I think Tom is as proud as anybody.”
Brady beat Mahomes 31–9 in Super Bowl 55 as a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, but that doesn’t disqualify Mahomes from the greatest-ever conversation. Nor does it mean that Mahomes has to appear in or win more Super Bowls than Brady to top the quarterback list. Michael Jordan didn’t need to match or surpass Bill Russell’s 11 NBA championships to be the greatest pro basketball player ever. It seems unlikely that four-time NBA champion LeBron James will equal Jordan’s six NBA championships before his career ends, and yet plenty of people right now believe that James is better than Jordan. Serena Williams stands as the greatest female tennis player in history, even though she finished her career one shy of Margaret Court’s record 24 major singles titles.
Of course, accomplishments, championships, and titles matter in considering greatness. The championships just aren’t the only factor. Mahomes has the same rare ability as Brady and other sport greats when it comes to performing brilliantly under intense pressure during close games. And just like with Brady, Jordan, and Williams, the sense is that Mahomes is going to prevent a lot of other great players in his generation from winning championships.
When processing Mahomes’s legacy, it’s also important to note what his accomplishments mean for Black quarterbacks. For so long, Black players had to fight against widely held beliefs that they were incapable of mastering the quarterback position or being the face of a franchise. Warren Moon is the only Black quarterback in the NFL Pro Football Hall of Fame, but in order to play quarterback, he had to first spend six seasons playing in the Canadian Football League. Despite winning a Rose Bowl and putting up stellar numbers at the University of Washington, Moon was told by NFL scouts that he should switch positions. Because he refused, he wasn’t even invited to the NFL combine, an annual event where coaches and scouts thoroughly evaluate college players. Moon dominated the CFL, and eventually made it to the NFL at 28 years old. Those struggles helped pave the way for Mahomes, a certain Hall of Famer. Although Black quarterbacks are no longer an anomaly—a record 14 Black quarterbacks started for teams at the beginning of the 2023 season—Mahomes’s success has raised the ceiling for Black quarterbacks even higher.
Mahomes’s biggest hurdle to passing Brady is time. Brady played 23 seasons and left the game holding every significant quarterback record—passing yards, touchdowns, completions, attempts, and wins. If Mahomes is going to be considered better than Brady, he’s going to need to take some of those records from him, compete in and win a few more Super Bowls, and hope that he remains healthy until retirement.
All of that is doable. Becoming the greatest ever would be a foolish expectation for most players. But not this one.
This article originally said that Tom Brady won his third championship when he was 30; he was 27. This article also originally said that Brady beat Patrick Mahomes 31–9 in Super Bowl 50 as a member of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; it was Super Bowl 55.