Scorching Hot Take: It Is Still Possible For Patrick Mahomes To Have a Better Career Than Tom Brady

I know Barstool Sports, and the sports media industry as whole isn't built on the back of logic and reason. If the industry was full of rational thinkers willing to look at situations objectively and hear both sides of an argument, the industry probably wouldn't exist at all. Nobody logs on to hear Dave say, "You know what Brandon Walker, that's actually a pretty good point you make about LeBron James' career longevity. Considering his peak, I still think Michael Jordan is the greatest player of all-time, but I can understand how you and others might see things differently."

Gross. Nobody wants that. They want to hear cold, hard, unflinching takes. They want Cam Newton to go on First Take dressed as Mr. Mistoffelees and tell Stephen A. Smith that if Josh Allen were black they would force him to play tight end. Then we can all go to X.com and call Cam Newton the Hitler of ESPN. That's how you talk sports. But the victory lap Patriots fans took last night after Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs were skull fucked in front of an audience of hundreds of millions is built on a premise that I fundamentally will never understand. That being blown out in a Super Bowl is worse than not making the Super Bowl at all. 

I refuse to give into that premise. I can't accept it. The amount of people saying last night was the nail in the coffin for the Brady vs Mahomes debate is so void of common sense it's making me lose faith in humanity. I know fans and the media have to talk about something. I know you gotta go to bat for your team. But at this point we are just spitting in the face of reality, and ignoring history entirely.

Tom Brady went 9 years in the prime of his career without winning a ring. In those 9 years, he made the Super Bowl twice. He lost to the Giants both times. Obviously in those losses to the Giants, Brady performed significantly better than Mahomes did last night. But how could Mahomes winning the AFC Championship then getting blown out in the Super Bowl be worse than when the Patriots lost in the divisional round to Jake Plummer's Broncos? Or the Jets with Mark Sanchez? How could it be worse than in 2010 when the Patriots lost to the Ravens 33-14 in the wild card round? Tom Brady lost a fumble and threw two picks in the first quarter of that game. One of them was as inexcusable of an interception as you'll ever see. The Patriots went down 24-0 right out the gate, and Brady finished with a stat line of 23-42, 156 yards, 2 TD's and 3 INT's.

I don't know get how anybody could tell you Patrick Mahomes performance last night is unredeemable, and with a straight face say things like, "I NEVER want to hear ANYBODY compare Patrick Mahomes to Tom Brady EVER again", when Tom Brady had that stinker of a playoff game in 2010. Jerry Thornton wrote a blog today titled, "Super Bowl LIX Proves Definitively That, Contrary to What You've Heard, Patrick Mahomes is Not Tom Brady". 

Jerry… I just don't see how you can truly believe that when Mahomes is 29 years old, and you watched Tom Brady win 4 Super Bowls after age 37. I think more likely than not you'll be right in the end. But nobody knows that yet. If Brady can have so many seasons where his team didn't even make as far as the Chiefs did this year, and still go down in history as the greatest NFL player of all-time, then of course Patrick Mahomes can recover from two Super Bowl blowouts. That's not a hot take. It's probably the most vanilla, most level-headed take I've ever had. But somehow there are so many people who will vehemently disagree with it. And they'll say mean things to you if you make that point on the internet. 

I don't know how the hell I've found myself in a place where I'm the asshole defending the Kansas City Chiefs. I'm not even trying to knock Tom Brady. If you're comparing dynasties, the Chiefs are nowhere close to the Patriots. But it's so frustrating to me how we don't even pretend to take the time to look at the full-scope of a player's career anymore. We've just accepted the fact that people only have the mental capacity to remember what happens in Super Bowls. So we compare Super Bowl stats & records and completely ignore the times a player was eliminated early on in the playoffs. Quarterbacks in particular are legitimately better off not making it to the Super Bowl at all. I genuinely think if Patrick Mahomes made it to 15 Super Bowls and finished with a record of 8-7, people would argue Tom Brady had the better career, because he had the higher Super Bowl win percentage. It's so backwards. This is the second day in a row I've wrote a blog bitching about this. I really need to quit trying to make sense of it, because there is no world where I ever win this battle. But nobody can stop me from going to the grave knowing I am objectively right.