Patrick Mahomes vs. Lamar Jackson? That's quite a treat for football fans
Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, center, and Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes, right, embrace after an NFL game on Sept. 28, 2020, in Baltimore. Credit: AP/Gail Burton
Believe it or not, there is at least one person who isn’t looking forward to this Main Event of an AFC Championship Game on Sunday afternoon, this matchup featuring not only the top two teams in the conference but the two most dynamic and decorated and exciting quarterbacks the league has to offer.
That outlier of a person would be one of the participants, Lamar Jackson.
The Ravens quarterback was asked this past week what it is like to face Patrick Mahomes, his Kansas City counterpart, against whom he has played four times in the regular season and will be dueling in the playoffs for the first time. He gave what might be one of the most honest answers in sports history.
“I don't like competing against him at all," Jackson said Wednesday with a wide grin.
Too bad for you, Lamar, because for just about everyone else in the sports-watching world (at least those outside Buffalo), this is what we’ve been waiting all season to witness. In fact, it’s been about a decade since we’ve been treated to this kind of budding rivalry, with two contemporaries at the peaks of their powers set on what feels like an annual collision course against each other.
Tom Brady and Peyton Manning used to bring this kind of juice when they faced each other in January. Now Jackson and Mahomes are doing so, with the winning team getting a berth in Super Bowl LVIII.
They were, after all, two of only three active players in the league this season — and the only two who got through their first series of the year healthy, thanks to Aaron Rodgers’ Achilles — who have won an MVP award in their careers. Mahomes has done it twice and Jackson, barring a shocking tabulation of the votes already cast, will win his second in a few weeks.
All of which brings us to these three or so hours of football on a winter’s Sunday, just the seventh conference championship game in NFL history in which both starting quarterbacks have won at least one MVP entering the game (the first since Brady and Rodgers faced each other in the 2020 season) and the first and only such meeting between such highly honored players who are both under the age of 30.
"He's a great quarterback,” Jackson said of Mahomes, who has three wins against him in those four previous meetings, not to mention two Super Bowl titles that have eluded Jackson. “Definitely a Hall of Famer. It's a no-brainer. I believe [this game is] just two greats — up-and-coming greats — just going toe-to-toe, like a heavyweight fight."
Round One is set to begin. Ding, ding.
"I know we're going to play in a lot of games like this as our careers go on," Mahomes said, "and I'm sure this will be the first of many.''
There are other enticing storylines and questions pulsing through this game. Will John Harbaugh join his brother Jim, who just left Michigan this past week to coach the Chargers, as a champion in the same year? Can Kansas City’s offense, which has struggled uncharacteristically for most of this season, be able to function against the smothering Baltimore defense? Might New York castoffs Odell Beckham Jr. and Dalvin Cook make it to a Super Bowl together? And perhaps the biggest of all on most minds: How many times is too many times to show Taylor Swift on the broadcast?
But this game — just like this sport — centers around the quarterbacks. They are the focus. They will decide the outcome.
Mahomes has the more polished career thus far, and much more commercial appeal, but Jackson has had the better season. After an offseason in which he was slapped with the dreaded franchise tag, publicly requested a trade and finally agreed to a new five-year, $260 million contract, Jackson threw for a career-high 3,678 yards and rushed for 821 yards. He threw for 24 touchdowns and ran for another five.
"He's going to be the MVP for a reason," Mahomes said. "He goes out there, he leads his team. He scores, he runs, he throws, he does whatever it takes to win. That's what the great-greats do.”
They also get to and win Super Bowls, though. And that’s what Jackson has yet to do.
In order to accomplish that, he has to get past Mahomes, a player whose resume already is Hall of Fame-worthy, whose accomplishments already put him in the conversation among some of the best to ever play his position, and who still has plenty of time to add to all of that. He is the reigning King of Football.
So no, Jackson isn’t thrilled about this matchup. It’s a difficult one. But he does acknowledge that it is necessary.
"To be a champion, you've got to go through a champion," he said. "So that's pretty much the mindset."
And who knows? When he looks back on Sunday’s game and its result, he might even find — as the rest of us fully expect — that there was plenty to actually enjoy about it, too.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
