Are Expectations Too High for Patrick Mahomes?

Last Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won their second Super Bowl title in franchise history. Led by a dominating performance by their defense, they defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9. While the big story has been about Brady winning his seventh title, and rightfully so, there was also something mentioned in the game itself that foreshadows a bigger problem.

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Towards the end of the game, with the result basically decided, Tony Romo mentioned that Patrick Mahomes would need eight Super Bowl titles to surpass Brady as the greatest of all time. While it has not been talked about much, that statement is outrageous and puts ridiculous expectations on Mahomes.

Mahomes has gotten off to an amazing start in his NFL career, The first year as the starting quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs, he won the MVP while throwing for over 5,000 yards and 50 touchdowns, which had only been done one other time (Peyton Manning in 2013). His second year he won his first Super Bowl title and was awarded the Super Bowl MVP, and his third year he went back to the Super Bowl again.

Other incredible feats by Mahomes includes having a first-round bye every year of his career, going 38-8 and having a home AFC championship game in all three years.

However, people need to pump the breaks with statements like that. To even utter those words puts a huge amount of pressure on Mahomes to eclipse what Brady has done. To have more Super Bowl titles than every other franchise is a feat that we will not see happen again anytime soon. It has been rare to see players sustain excellence for 15 years, much less to do it for 20 years like Brady has been doing. Then the circumstances must be right for this to happen, in New England, the Patriots sustained consistency that has never been seen before over the period that Brady was there. In his 19 years with the team, they have had one season where they did not crack double-digit wins, they won seventeen division titles and won six Super bowls. No team in history has had a 19-year span like the New England Patriots. 

To win more than one Super Bowl is difficult enough as it is. Aaron Rodgers won a Super Bowl 10 years ago. After he won that Super Bowl, people predicted at bare minimum another title win in his future. As of right now, he has not been able to get back to the big game. Drew Brees won his lone Super Bowl the year before Rodgers did in 2009, and it is looking like that will be the only title win of his career, as it seems like he will be retiring soon. Peyton Manning won his first in 2006 and it took him nine years to win his second title in his final season in the NFL. Brady, Manning, Ben Roethlisberger and Eli Manning are the only quarterbacks so far in the 21st century to win multiple rings. Only twelve quarterbacks in history have won multiple Super Bowls. Only four of those quarterbacks have won three or more Super Bowls in history: Troy Aikman, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana and of course Brady. 

Mahomes is in the early stages of his career as well. That is usually when teams have the most flexibility to fill up their team with talent before the cap hit for their franchise quarterback forces them to let players go. While their key offensive weapons have been locked up, including a record-breaking deal for Mahomes as well, it is clearly going to take more than that for them to bring in multiple Super Bowls.

The Chiefs defense is an issue that Mahomes is generally able to mask most of the games the Chiefs play. However, they need to be able to get stops in games Mahomes might get off to a slow start or if he ever struggles throughout the game. While he has been able to come back for the most part in his postseason career, the Chiefs have had a bad habit of putting themselves in holes early in playoff games.

Last year, they trailed by double figures in all three of their games but thanks to that explosive offense, they were able to come back and win both.

However, in games like the AFC Championship game two years ago, the defense was not able to stop Brady on third down in overtime.

In the Super Bowl this year, the defense was not able to hold the Buccaneers’ offense down to keep the game in striking distance for Mahomes.

In the Divisional round, they may be able to win games like this, but in games like the Conference Championship and the Super Bowl, they will not be able to consistently win by putting up 35 on teams.

Putting those types of expectations on Mahomes so early in his career, whether it is saying he will go down as the greatest of all time, or that he will win four or more Super Bowls, is setting him up for unnecessary criticism throughout his career. More than likely, he will not come anywhere near eight Super Bowls to surpass Brady as the greatest of all time, but because of expectations put on him by Romo, or other media members, his career will be remembered more for what he could not accomplish, rather than what he did do.