We're perpetually looking for the next best thing. So when Patrick Mahomes punched his ticket to the fourth Super Bowl of his young career, the comparisons to Tom Brady were inevitable.
For his part, Mahomes is taking them all in stride. The Chiefs quarterback, who has two Super Bowl rings at age 28, knows there is still plenty of work left to be done before he's ready to be in the conversation with the Greatest Of All Time.
Brady won seven Super Bowl titles, including his last against Mahomes and the Chiefs in 2021, before his retirement after the 2022 season.
"I'm not even close to halfway [in Super Bowl rings]. I haven't put a lot of thought into it," Mahomes said. "Your goal is to be the best player that you can be. I know that I'm blessed to be around a lot of great players around me. And so right now it's doing whatever I can to beat a great 49ers team and try to get that third ring and then if you ask me that question in like 15 years and I'll see if I can get close to seven.
"But seven seems like a long ways away still."
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Travis Kelce, who has been Mahomes' teammate for all seven seasons of the quarterback's career, at least can see the trajectory. Mahomes is on track to become one of the NFL's greatest quarterbacks, Kelce said.
"I see it right now. I see him ascending, I see him, he has the right mindset every single day, every single year to get better and to make the ones around him that much better," Kelce said. "So with the amount of success he's had, he's going to always have the opportunity."
The start of Mahomes' career certainly rivals, or even surpasses, Brady's own. Mahomes is completing his seventh season in the NFL, and his sixth as a starter. In that time, he's had more seasons in which he's reached the Super Bowl (four) than come up short. He has won two MVP awards and has been a Pro Bowler every year he's been a starter.
In Brady's first seven seasons (six as a starter), he won three Super Bowl rings and earned two Pro Bowl nods, but had not won any MVP trophies. From a statistical point of view, his numbers also come up well shy compared with those of Mahomes.
| Tom Brady | Stat | Patrick Mahomes |
| 96 | Games | 96 |
| 21,564 | Passing Yards | 28,424 |
| 147 | Passing TDs | 219 |
| 78 | Interceptions | 63 |
| 61.9% | Completion Percentage | 66.5% |
| 70 | QB wins | 74 |
| 7.0 | Yards per Attempt | 7.9 |
| 224.6 | Yards per Game | 296.1 |
| 88.4 | Rating | 103.5 |
| 239 | Rush Attempts | 374 |
| 435 | Rush Yards | 1,936 |
| 3 | Rush TDs | 12 |
But Brady played for 23 total years in the NFL, won a record-seven Super Bowl rings and had three MVPs to his name. And if you're someone who is into head-to-head matchups, he also beat Mahomes in their only two playoff meetings, which came in the AFC championship and the Super Bowl.
"Passing Brady is saying a lot. Tom did this thing for so many years, he's so well respected because of how he did it," Kelce said.
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Beating the 49ers in Super Bowl 58 could go a long way toward Mahomes bolstering his résumé and making it an even closer conversation between he and Brady.
For now, he's still just relishing the chance he's been given to play for the Chiefs and hoping to leave another sterling effort out in the Super Bowl.
"I understand how lucky I am to be in the situation I'm in — to get drafted to Kansas City, to have Andy Reid as my coach, Travis Kelce as my tight end," Mahomes said. "Like, I got drafted here and I just ended up with all these guys.
"And I don't want to look back at my career and say I regret how I went out there and performed every single day, if that's working out, if that's watching film, whatever it is. And if I give everything I have, I can be satisfied with the results and that's what drives me every single day."
