Pats Pulpit
Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs were blown out on the game’s biggest stage.
The NFL has a new champion. The Philadelphia Eagles capped their season with a dominant win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX, earning their second Lombardi Trophy in the process and squashing the Chiefs’ hopes for the first ever Super Bowl three-peat.
At least temporarily, the 40-22 game also put any and all talk of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes threatening Tom Brady’s status as the greatest quarterback of all time on hold.
Mahomes, after all, played arguably the worst game of his illustrious career on Sunday night. The final stat-line — 21-of-32, 257 yards, 3 TDs, 2 INTs — is deceiving: the future Hall of Famer struggled mightily against an Eagles defense pressuring relentlessly throughout the day to the tune of six sacks and a 38.1 percent pressure rate.
The pressure getting to him early and often left Mahomes flustered, and did some real damage to the Chiefs’ hopes of winning back-to-back-to-back championships. Not only did it result in Mahomes throwing a pair of interceptions in the first half, he later also lost a fumble in the fourth quarter to effectively end any hopes of a comeback.
In total, Philadelphia turned those three takeaways into 17 points. More importantly, the takeaways put the Chiefs and their star quarterback in an early hole they were unable to climb out of.
What does all of this have to do with Brady, though?
Before every Super Bowl there is talk about legacy, and players solidifying themselves among the all-time greats. Mahomes was already well on his way to getting there, having won three Super Bowls in his first six seasons as a starter. When all is said and done, he might still surpass the records Brady set during his own legendary career.
However, the former New England Patriots passer also never played as poorly in the Super Bowl as Mahomes did on Sunday. Even his worst performances from a statistical standpoint — Super Bowls XLII (L) or LIII (W), for example — saw him keep the game close: he had his teams in the lead at some point in the fourth quarter in each of his 10 Super Bowls.
The largest margin of deficit in one of Brady’s three Super Bowl losses was eight points, against those very same Eagles in Super Bowl LII. Mahomes lost by 18 on Sunday in a game that was never as close as the final score made it look like.
In addition, the Chiefs’ QB also was on the wrong end of a 31-9 beatdown in the 2020 Super Bowl against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Buccaneers, of course, were led by Tom Brady in his final Super Bowl appearance.
That day, Brady put the finishing touches on a Super Bowl résumé that blows Mahomes’ out of the water in both quantity and quality as the following comparison illustrates:
Obviously, though, Mahomes’ career is still relatively young and what he has...
