With Patrick Mahomes dominating the NFL and taking over from Tom Brady, talkSPORT takes a holiday look at Mahomes’ 12 most important life moments… It’s fair to say that the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback has had more highs than lows in the league.
Mahomes is a three-time Super Bowl champion, having guided his team to victory in 2020, 2023 and 2024. In all of those games, Kansas City’s star QB was named MVP and they will be three nights he will never forget. But if it wasn’t for Tom Brady, Mahomes would already be a four-time Super Bowl champion.
Brady, aged 43 on the night, had led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers further than many had thought possible. After finishing second in the NFC South with an 11-5 record, the Bucs navigated their way from the wild card round to the championship game.
Tampa Bay beat Washington, the New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers – all away from home – to set up a Super Bowl meeting with Mahomes and the Chiefs on their own patch. It was billed as a quarterback matchup for the ages: the first ever title game between the winning signal-callers of the previous two.
And in front of nearly 25,000 people at Raymond James Stadium, and millions more watching at home, it was the elder statesman who stole the show. The Buccaneers won 31-9 in a blowout that saw Brady throw for 201 yards and three touchdowns, leading the franchise to their second-ever Super Bowl.
Brady won the game’s MVP award for a record fifth time that night, and the ageless marvel captured his seventh ring. The title bolstered his claim as the greatest quarterback ever, and fittingly came against a man who could one day usurp him. Mahomes had a night to forget, where Kansas City were held to no touchdowns and just three field goals.
That loss was his first as a starter with the Chiefs by more than eight points, and marked the first time since high school that Mahomes’ team failed to score a touchdown in a game he started. Tampa Bay hounded the QB relentlessly. He was pressured 29 times, a Super Bowl record, on a night that the Buccaneers’ front dominated a Chiefs offensive line that was missing four starters. Mahomes, playing through a toe injury, completed 26-of-49 passes for 270 yards and two interceptions. His QB rating of 49.9 was the second worst of his NFL career at the time.
Having been taught a lesson by the Bucs, Mahomes described the game as the ‘worst he had been beaten in a long time’. But humiliation at the hands of Brady did not send Kansas City off a cliff. Instead, Mahomes vowed to learn from the defeat. “When you’re a competitor and you get so close to your ultimate goal and you fall short, it’s something that will motivate you for the rest of your career,” he said at the time.
“We can’t let this define us. We have to continue to get better and prepare ourselves to hopefully be in this game again. “We knew it wasn’t always going to be successful and we weren’t going to be able to win 1,000 championships in a row. “We knew we were going to go through times like this and adversity. I think the best thing about it is the guys we have, the leadership ability to be even better.”
And better is exactly what the Chiefs got. While they were beaten in the AFC Championship Game by the Cincinnati Bengals the following season, they have been near-perfect ever since. Kansas City have secured back-to-back Super Bowl victories against the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers – two games in which Mahomes starred. Now, they are chasing a historic three-peat, something that not even Brady achieved. And if Mahomes and the Chiefs lift the Vince Lombardi trophy come February, that defeat to the Buccaneers in 2021 will be nothing more than a distant memory.
