Well, that was close.
At the risk of losing readership, I’m gonna let you all in on a secret: Born and raised in Rhode Island for the first 18 years of my life, I’m an all-out unabashed Patriots fan.
Why does this matter, especially since the Pats have taken the past three seasons to jump Dukes of Hazzard-style off a cliff into the pit of irrelevance? Because on Sunday night, even though I had no true horse in the race, I and every other sports-loving fan in New England had something far more precious at stake in Super Bowl LIX: the legacy of every Masshole’s god-among-men, Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr.
In the weeks leading up to the game, the GOAT (Greatest of All Time, yeah, I’ll say it) was assaulted on all fronts by media pundits who mouthed off that he was destined to be dethroned by a certain Patrick Mahomes III. A part of me gets it; a three-peat Super Bowl run had never been done before, and if the Chiefs had come out on top against the Eagles, even I would have entertained (read: listened to without rolling my eyes more than twice) that conversation.
But that didn’t happen. So now I get to write this column.
My daily doom scrolls on my phone before the game were filled with memes comparing the stats of the two quarterbacks, trying to prove that Mahomes had already surpassed Brady’s accomplishments.
Two things about this. One, in an era where advanced tracking metrics can practically tell you how many times each player farts during a game, I could find some obscure statistic that, if taken out of context, would make a benchwarming scrub seem “better” than a Hall of Fame-caliber player. Is that what’s happening here? Absolutely not, and I am NOT disrespecting Mahomes’ otherworldly accomplishments so far in his career. But stats don’t tell the whole story.
Two, what’s almost universally respected about Brady’s career is the longevity and consistency of it. The dude won his last four Super Bowls at the ages of 37, 39, 41 and 43. In 23 seasons, he made it to the big game 10 times. That means, over the entirety of his career, Brady was more likely to make it to the Super Bowl (43.5% of the time) than NBA superstar Steph Curry is to make a single 3-point shot (42.4%). (Remember what I said about random stats?)
In those 10 Super Bowls, he amassed a record of 7-3. That means he had a better career win percentage IN THE SUPER BOWL than … wait for it … every single NFL team’s all-time win percentage. And it’s not even close.
(*Note to self: Go back and erase what you wrote before about out-of-context stats. These things are great.)
To be clear, once again: Mahomes is an absolutely unbelievable quarterback, and as much as I hate to say it, he 100% has a shot of going on to dethrone the co-author of the New England Dynasty.
My friends were kind enough to remind me that, as I watched the game hoping Philadelphia would pull out the win because I was tired of seeing Kansas City-colored confetti, I should probably shut my mouth – seeing as this is EXACTLY how people felt watching the Pats for 20 years.
All I’m saying is, can we put a lid on the GOAT talk until this kid safely exits his 20s?
I’m a runner, not a football player, so I can’t even speak to the physical aspect of the sport, but I do know this: you can eat all the avocado ice cream and get as many weird oiled-up muscle treatments from your “guru” as you want, but getting pile-driven into the core of the earth by 300-pound monsters well into your fifth decade of life doesn’t sound like a good time. So to do that, get up, shrug it off, and go shove a Lombardi Trophy in their faces as you continue to blow teams’ doors off in your 40s takes something special.
In Brady’s case, his accomplishments are the reverse of the norm: People tend to credit his defenses for carrying him in his younger, more spry years, while his performances in his late 30s and 40s are regarded as the driving force behind New England’s championship wins. (And Tampa Bay’s, but we don’t talk about that.)
Am I saying Mahomes has to play that long to even up the conversation? No, absolutely not. The look I saw on his face after the game terrifies me, because I’ve seen it before on a pissed-off Brady bent on revenge, and I know the NFL is about to get everything he can throw at them next year. If Mahomes and coach Andy Reid can keep their consistency up, even as a rapidly-evolving game throws changes at them every year, their dynasty could be every bit as monumental as New England’s.
I guess it’s a product of clip-worthy debates perfect for social media, but I don’t know where this recent obsession with crowning all-time greats in the early run of their careers came from.
For all I know, we could be staring down another three-peat before Mahomes hits 35. But that day isn’t today, and for now (*wipes sweat off brow*) the GOAT is still the GOAT.
