Why Tom Brady is Right to Feel Patrick Mahomes is Only QB Who Resembles Him

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Every quarterback wants to be like Tom Brady — a seven-time Super Bowl champion and three-time MVP winner who made his team a perennial contender. But in the eyes of Brady, there might be only one quarterback who reminds him of himself.

In a recent episode of “The Joel Klatt Show: Big Noon Conversations,” Brady suggested that Patrick Mahomes is the quarterback who most resembles him when he was asked if there’s any current player whose approach to the game he respects.

“It’s always that line about who wants to win vs. who’s willing to do whatever it takes to win,” Brady said. “Everyone wants to win, but what are the habits and the daily habits and the actionable things you need to do every day to put your team in a position to win? 

“So Patrick Mahomes, to me, is the one that does that the most often because who he is, obviously his physical talent, how he understands what he needs to do offensively, and he brings a consistent winning attitude to work every single day. In the biggest moments you can depend on him the most. That’s clear.”

Even though Mahomes is the league’s most decorated active quarterback, Brady’s implied statement that the Kansas City Chiefs star is on a tier of his own might surprise some. Statistically, he had the worst season of his seven seasons as a starter in 2024 (3,928 passing yards, 26 passing touchdowns, 11 interceptions, 93.5 passer rating). As a result, Mahomes’ status as the consensus top quarterback seems to be in question. In fact, he was the fourth-highest-ranked quarterback in “Madden NFL 26,” trailing Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow.

However, Mahomes has beaten all three quarterbacks in the AFC Championship Game in each of the last three seasons. That’s just part of the reason why “First Things First’s” Nick Wright agrees with Brady that the Chiefs quarterback is the one who most resembles the seven-time Super Bowl champ, believing that he’s also a great individual player when stacking Mahomes against each of those three quarterbacks.

“Patrick is first or second in NFL history in every postseason stat and not just in wins, which he’s second,” Wright said. “One of the contenders, Lamar, his bugaboo is that his production plummets in the playoffs compared to his regular season numbers. In that regard, the most important part, he’s out. Joe Burrow, if Patrick ever went back-to-back years with peak Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce and it’s like, ‘You know what, just couldn’t overcome the bad defense. We missed the playoffs.’ But Burrow has missed the playoffs in back-to-back years with Tee Higgins and Ja’Marr Chase. 

“The Josh thing I’ve listened to people say he’s the best quarterback in the league, it makes my mind numb because if there’s a quarterback in football that Patrick Mahomes was 0-4 in the playoffs against and never outplayed in the playoffs and I went, ‘You know what? I don’t care, Mahomes is better.’ You’d say, ‘You’re an insane homer.’ Patrick is judged against Patrick at his best. Patrick is judged against Patrick at his worst.”

Burrow, Jackson and Allen were statistically superior quarterbacks to Mahomes last year. Burrow led the league in passing yards and touchdowns, while Jackson and Allen battled it out for MVP.

But, as Wright mentioned, none of them have the team accomplishments that Mahomes has. And all three had the chance to knock down Mahomes, too. Burrow threw an interception with the game tied in the fourth quarter against Mahomes’ Chiefs in the 2022 AFC Championship Game. A year later, Jackson made a similar mistake, throwing an interception in the end zone with the Ravens trailing by 10 to the Chiefs in a game they eventually lost, 17-10. This past season, Allen and the Bills had the ball while trailing 32-29 in the final minutes before turning the ball over on downs.

Burrow has beaten Mahomes in the past, taking him down in the 2021 AFC Championship Game. However, he was unable to win the Super Bowl two weeks later. Without that, Brady indicated that it’d be hard to place Burrow, Jackson and Allen on the same tier as Mahomes. 

“There’s other guys that are still developing, and they need to prove it before, in my mind, I can say, ‘Oh yeah, he’s done it.’ Well, obviously, he hasn’t done it yet,” Brady said. “They’ve all shown flashes of amazing things. They’re all great players. All of them can make tremendous plays. 

“At some point, they need to take the next step and take, in my mind, more ownership of what they’re doing, in terms of the organizational level, to do more things to empower more people, to get more people on that train or that bus with you to head in the direction you want to go.”

Adding to his last point, Brady recalled how his approach to the game ultimately led to his unprecedented success on the field. Now that he’s retired, he’d like to see more quarterbacks do the same, and if they do, maybe they can be placed on the same level as Mahomes.

“The quarterback, in many ways, is the CEO of the team,” Brady said. “Certainly, on game day, there’s nobody that impacts the game more than the quarterback in NFL football. Now, you have to have the ability and the belief from the entire team, offensively and defensively, that your word means so much. And how you act every day matters to all three phases of the game. 

“As a quarterback, you don’t just punch the clock, ‘I did my job, I threw for 40 touchdowns, why are we not winning?’ What are you doing in the offseason to help your defense? What are you doing to push the personnel department, to get people doing the right thing? Are you involved in game planning? I used to do game plans. I used to walk in and say, ‘Here’s the things we’re doing.’ I used to do my own walk-throughs. I used to say, ‘Alright, guys, I don’t give a f— if the coaches want to come, we’re doing our walk-through.’”

“That’s what Peyton Manning did. That’s what Drew Brees did. That’s what Philip Rivers did. That, to me, is what the great quarterbacks do.”

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