The Super Bowl and the NFL seasons to come run through Patrick Mahomes
LAS VEGAS
Roger Goodell handed the MVP trophy to Patrick Mahomes, as he so often does on Monday mornings after Super Bowls these last few years, and thanked the quarterback — who’s still only 28 — for providing yet another remarkable performance on the sport’s biggest stage.
“He makes the future bright for everyone in the NFL,” the commissioner said.
Not quite sure the 31 other teams share that rosy sentiment.
Mahomes may be the ideal frontman for the corporate side of the league right now — a perfect mix of safe and edgy with a suave coolness in pressure-packed moments and a distinctive look that pops on television — and in a Super Bowl that was surrounded by superstars from other walks of life, he was able to bring the focus back to the sport and the game at the end.
But for all of the other franchises and fans outside of Kansas City, what he did in Super Bowl LVIII and what he has been saying in the limited time since should be terrifying.
Mahomes walked off the field having driven his team for the tying field goal with three seconds left in regulation and then for the winning touchdown in overtime against San Francisco, and he already was talking about a three-peat.
“Hopefully we’ll be back in New Orleans and on this podium again next year,” he said Monday, already keenly aware of where Super Bowl LIX will be played.
Is it really that hard to imagine him doing something similar a year from now with a four-peat suddenly on his mind? How many -peats does he have in him, for -peats sake?
That’s what everyone else in the league is wondering, because for the foreseeable future — and maybe even the extended one — all of their paths to any championship will have to go through him. They are not marveling at him. They are trying to beat him. And that’s been nearly impossible.
“It helps that this guy over here is on our team,” Kansas City coach Andy Reid said Monday, pointing to Mahomes, when asked about the confidence his players exude. “He makes it look easy . . . He’s out there playing like he’s playing in the backyard like it’s nothing. From a head-coaching standpoint, a coach who works with offensive guys, he is all you can ask for.”
Mahomes has lost only two postseason games as a starting quarterback, never failed to advance to a conference championship game, and has come back from almost as many double-digit deficits in Super Bowls (three) as there have been in the other 54 editions of the big game (four). Mahomes is 3-1 when trailing by 10 or more points in Super Bowls.
Goodell and the NFL’s image-molders undoubtedly will welcome Mahomes back next year, but 31 teams woke up on Monday morning determined not to let that happen.
For the rest of his career — or at least until he reaches and maybe surpasses him — Mahomes will be compared with Tom Brady and his seven Super Bowl titles. But Brady, despite two decades of dominance, shared the spotlight with a few other contemporaries.
Peyton Manning eventually became his great rival. Eli Manning beat him twice in the Super Bowl and even Nick Foles did it once. During Brady’s run, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger, Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson all were able to sneak through and shine.
Mahomes? He’s blotting everyone else out of the picture.
A better comparison for Mahomes might be Michael Jordan, who exhibited a type of dominance over his contemporaries that diminished some of the greatest Hall of Fame careers ever.
Mahomes isn’t quite there yet. He isn’t the G.O.A.T. Right now he’s just the G.O.T.T., greatest of this time. But it’s the margin by which he holds that title that should be distressing the rest of the teams, both the ones who think they have championship-caliber quarterbacks and the ones who are consciously on the hunt for them.
There is only one active quarterback in the NFL who has even appeared in more than one Super Bowl, and that’s Wilson, who might not be an active player very much longer. Mahomes has been to four of them. There is only one active quarterback in the NFL who has beaten Mahomes in a postseason game, and that’s Joe Burrow of the Bengals. That Cincinnati team lost in the Super Bowl two weeks later.
And now Mahomes is driven by something no one has ever done, the desire to win three straight Super Bowls. (The Packers won three straight NFL titles from 1965-67, with the first of those predating the Super Bowl, and also three straight NFL titles from 1929-31.)
“To have our stamp on this great NFL history is something I’ll never take for granted,” Mahomes said of the potentially unique accomplishment. “It’s legendary.”
That’s certainly one word for it. The rest of the league might choose others. But the only way to change the vocabulary is to beat Mahomes. Until they figure out that part, he gets to call it whatever he wants.
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.
