Patrick Mahomes has won a Super Bowl, a Super Bowl MVP, and a regular season MVP over his first two years as a starting quarterback.
That’s an enviable resume, but he has some work to do to make his list of accomplishments look as good as the one Tom Brady has compiled over the last two decades. Mahomes has had a chance to reflect on that this week with a game against Brady and the Buccaneers on deck, and he said he still sees Brady on a higher plane as a result of his career accomplishments.
“I don’t know if I’m on his level yet,” Mahomes said, via Nate Taylor of TheAthletic.com. “He’s someone that’s a global star. For me, I just try to be myself and put in the work and try to win games. All that other stuff kind of comes with it. I just try to be a normal guy and live it up with my teammates and have fun doing it.”
Mahomes and Brady squared off three times when Brady was with the Patriots. The Chiefs won last season’s regular season matchup, but the Patriots won a 43-40 thriller in 2018 and then came back for an overtime win in that season’s AFC title game. Brady sought Mahomes out after that game in order to pay the younger quarterback a compliment he took to heart.
“He just grabbed me after the game and I was kind of leaving the stadium,” Mahomes said. “He just talked about how he respected how I did everything the right way. It’s just cool to have a guy of that stature who has won championships that has respect for your game as much as you have respect for his. It was definitely a cool experience.”
With the two players in different conferences, a Super Bowl maybe the only chance left to see them play against each other. If Sunday’s game is another classic, there probably won’t be much objection to that.