Patrick Mahomes is not even halfway to Tom Brady’s GOAT Super Bowl record.
But the moment that the Kansas City Chiefs went back-to-back in Las Vegas to end the 2023 NFL season, the head-to-head comparisons began.
“It’s always going to be tough because Brady beat me in the Super Bowl,” Mahomes said. “That’s something he’ll always have on my head.”
Mahomes is ahead of Brady’s career pace, though, and another Hall of Fame quarterback believes that the comparisons between the two elite QBs are more than fair.
Kurt Warner is already imagining a world in which Showtime Mahomes eclipses Brady as the NFL’s GOAT.
“When you look at Patrick Mahomes, you look at the way that he’s played since he became a starter,” Warner, an NFL Network analyst and Super Bowl winner with the St. Louis Rams, exclusively told talkSPORT.
“Because when you look at Tom Brady’s career, Tom Brady wasn’t Tom Brady as we know him until four or five years into his career, where he just kind of started to take off and become the GOAT.
“Patrick Mahomes has already had tremendous success playing the position at such a young age.”
Mahomes spent his rookie season watching and learning while veteran Alex Smith led Andy Reid’s Chiefs to the playoffs.
Then a new NFL era began, just as Brady was nearing the end of his dynasty period with the New England Patriots.
The 28-year-old Mahomes has been in the AFC Championship six consecutive seasons, and he’s 3-1 in the Super Bowl.
Brady won the big game during three of his initial five years in the league, starting 3-0 in the Super Bowl when he was 27.
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Then the No. 199 overall pick of the 2000 NFL Draft hit an extended drought, going a decade before his fourth ring.
Mahomes’ 2018-23 stats overpower Brady from 2001-06, since the latter began his Patriots career as a system quarterback in an offense that prized efficiency over Chiefs-like explosiveness.
“(Mahomes) is ahead of the curve from that perspective, winning MVPs and … just having the physical ability that has been very rare in the history of our league,” Warner said.
“You put all that together, and then you couple it with the fact that he’s won three Super Bowls, and I think that’s the part where you kind of go, ‘OK, I think we can start making comparisons.’ “
As Mahomes pointed out, longevity is the key.
Brady played for 23 years and was a 45-year-old QB for Tampa Bay.
A 2020 Super Bowl victory with the Buccaneers cemented Brady’s GOAT status, giving him seven rings and proving that he was beyond Belichick’s reach.
“Seven is like … when I was growing up, nobody had ever won more than four,” Warner said.
“So I remember my dream being, I got to win five. I’ve got to be the first quarterback to win five or play in five Super Bowls, because nobody had ever done it.
“And now all of a sudden we’re up to seven and you realize how hard it is to win a championship.
“But when you put all of that together — the age, the success, the championships, all of that — I think we sit back and go, ‘It would never be matched, what the Patriots did. What Tom Brady did is never going to be matched. It’s impossible to think somebody can do it.’ “
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Then Mahomes started throwing no-look and behind-the-back passes, and winning three Super Bowls with a rotating crew of wide receivers and running backs.
A historic three-peat for the Chiefs will give Mahomes his fourth ring, and then the conversation would really begin.
Warner, who won two MVP awards and played in three Super Bowls, is already wondering if Mahomes will take the GOAT title away from Brady.
The Patriots legend knocked Mahomes out of the playoffs twice.
Since then, No. 15 for the Chiefs has been chasing all-time greatness.
“Patrick has kind of grabbed our imagination and said, well, records are made to be broken,” Warner said.
“If he gets in that realm of seven championships, with the physical ability and the wild plays that we’ve seen him make, maybe now he can overtake Tom Brady.
“It’s good for our game. It’s fun when we’ve got great young talent and great young quarterbacks.
“You have a guy that’s the greatest of all time that just retired. And then you got another guy kind of taking over the league.”
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