Will Winning this Super Bowl Help Mahomes become the GOAT?

For proper football fans, I don’t think we need any stories to get us any more pumped up for this Sunday’s Super Bowl in Tampa Bay.

Two franchises that have been starved of success and are now very hopeful of having a few years at the top.

Patriots Twitter

The Kansas City Chiefs have finally found an absolute superstar quarterback that should be leading them for a long time to come while the Buccaneers have a 3-year window with the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) under center and are going all-in on it.

While the Chiefs are obviously looking for two in a row after last season’s Super Bowl success, Tampa on the other hand is looking for their first Lombardi Trophy since Jon Gruden led them to victory against the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl XXXVII all the way back in 2003.

But just to pump it up a little more, Tony Romo is talking about the historic importance of this game in regards to Mahomes’ race to overtake Tom Brady’s status as the GOAT.

Mahomes is still only 25 years old but a win Sunday will mean he already has two Super Bowl rings in his back pocket with another 10-15 years still ahead of him.

Romo thinks this a legacy game and compared it to Michael Jordan meeting LeBron James in the NBA finals and said  “This is the biggest game Mahomes will ever play in...If he loses this then he can never catch Tom Brady, in my opinion” 

And when you actually look at it, Romo does have a point.

While some quarterbacks have started off with great success, the super-competitive nature of the NFL means there are very short windows of opportunity for most players. Brady won his first Super Bowl in just his second season after spending his rookie season working his way up the depth chart from the fourth-string quarterback all the to the Patriots backup.

The following season, Brady entered the game for Drew Bledsoe to win his first Super Bowl at the age of 24 and then went on to win another two more Lombardi Trophies to have three Super Bowl rings by the time he was just 27.

Brady then had to endure two Super Bowl defeats at the hands of the New York Giants and numerous playoff losses before getting his fourth ring when he was 37, a 10-year gap between his last Super Bowl victory.

Russell Wilson, quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, won Super Bowl XLVIII at the young age of just 25 and as we all know, he probably should have won another the following season if the Seahawks had just handed the ball off to Marshawn Lynch.

Wilson hasn’t played in a Super Bowl since 2015 and he hasn’t even played in an NFC Championship game since. Seeing as Wilson is turning 33 this November, it is fair to say that his window for another one or two rings is closing.

10 years ago, Aaron Rodgers won his first Super Bowl at 27 years of age and we all would have thought there would be at least one, if not two more by now.

Unfortunately for Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers, they have since lost four NFC Championship games including one each of the last two seasons.

The biggest positive for Mahomes is that it looks like he has a brilliant relationship with head coach Andy Reid and we know what a great coach Reid is after being so consistent with the Eagles and the Chiefs over 22 seasons.

Mark J. Terrill/AP Photo

After waiting so long just to win one Super Bowl as a coach and getting the criticism along the way for not being good enough, it’s easy to see Reid hanging around for as long as possible and winning as much as possible with Mahomes. Reid is only 62 years old so he should have another 8-10 good years coaching if he wants it.

So a win Sunday will put Mahomes at two Super Bowl victories at only 25 years of age. Of course, a big factor will also be in how many seasons he plays as there is every reason to believe he could play into his 40’s if he wants to.

Brady is leading the way in showing how it can be done for so long, but Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers are also two examples of how you can still get it done when knocking on 40.

Philip Rivers only retired this season at 39 years old and with his level of play this season, he definitely would have got a starting job if he had wanted it. While Big Ben Roethlisberger has been hot and cold and hasn’t hit the numbers of the players mentioned above, he still threw for 501 yards and 4 touchdowns against the Cleveland Browns in the Wild Card game at age 38.

So Mahomes most definitely has time on his hands. But I agree with Romo that a defeat on Sunday means that the Chiefs would have to go on an extraordinary run for Mahomes to catch up on Brady.

However, a win this Sunday means that Mahomes has just four more to go to get on the same level with Brady and five to surpass him, which would be one Super Bowel every three seasons.

While that is still an incredible achievement, if Reid and Mahomes stay together, it is most definitely something that can be achieved and the GOAT debate will be reopened.