Patrick Mahomes is still a ways away from reaching Tom Brady’s seven Super Bowl rings. He might not ever get there. That doesn’t necessarily preclude him from supplanting Brady as the greatest player of all time.
Mahomes has had perhaps the greatest start to a career of any player as he prepares to play in his sixth straight conference title game since becoming the Kansas City Chiefs starter in 2018. His accolades alone already outpace most of his peers’ combined, and at 28-years-old, he has a lot of football left.
Longtime NFL analyst Trey Wingo laid out Thursday in an appearance on The Drive why Mahomes is on his way to passing Brady in the “GOAT” conversation.
“He’s on that path,” Wingo said. “We can have the discussion about what constitutes the GOAT -- is it rings? I personally am not a big ring counter, because to me, teams win championships, teams win games. Are quarterbacks part of that? Absolutely. Are they a big part of it? Absolutely. But if (Marquez Valdes-Scantling) doesn’t make a contested catch (against the Bills), which hadn't happened since the last AFC Championship Game, we might not be in this position. He made a couple of them. If the Chiefs defense doesn’t step up and figure it out – they did an amazing job in the second half stopping the run when they were gashed in the first half for almost 130 yards on the ground. So, all of these things factor into it.
“Mahomes is, in my opinion, without question on path to becoming the greatest of all time. Even if he doesn’t get to seven, which is what Brady has -- and I don’t think anybody is going to get seven -- there are other ways and other metrics to better determine whether someone is the best of all time. …
“You have to look at the metric of how somebody played in situations as opposed to just counting the rings in my opinion, to make the determination of (if) singularly, away from the team success, they are the best at what they do.”