In the Kansas City Chiefs-Arizona Cardinals game that 2018 afternoon, the coach’s quarterback was handpicked for greatness — the 10th selection in the National Football League Draft — with a right hand blessed with a special touch for touchdowns.
Unfortunately, the coach’s quarterback was Josh Rosen.
Steve Wilks was the Arizona head coach that day, and he watched from the sideline as the 10th pick from the previous year carved up his Cardinals.
“He’s just so athletic, you know?” Wilks, the new Mizzou defensive coordinator, said by phone about Patrick Mahomes. “And when you start thinking about his arm strength and his ability to be able to make every throw, and you add that athleticism to it? It’s a difficult task of trying to game-plan against.”
The Cardinals lost that Sunday — they lost a lot of Sundays that fall — and at season’s end, Wilks lost his job. Same with Rosen, who was shipped to Miami and never reached his earmarked potential.
But Wilks was a witness. A witness to wizardry. He saw Mahomes do things with his arms and legs that didn’t even have names, like a dance move before social media makes it trendy and trending. The game against Arizona was Mahomes’ fourth-best of his first full season as the starter, in regards to passer rating (125.4). He was proficient and efficient. And he was just getting started as a starter.
“He’s just so talented that they’re never out of the game,” said Wilks, who has seen his share of talented quarterbacks in a quarter-century of coaching. “I think not only when you start talking about Patrick, but just this matchup in the Super Bowl itself, with Tom Brady being able to do what he did in Tampa this year — new system, new coach — it’s just phenomenal. I can’t wait to see the matchup.”
Neither can we. The Super Bowl annually provides us with classic quarterback matchups, but Sunday’s stands out. Even if the game had just one of these two guys, the guy would make the game historic. Mahomes has started in three NFL seasons — he won the MVP in the first, the Super Bowl MVP in the second and now is back as a defending Super Bowl champ at age 25. If he wins his second title at 25, one wonders if he could win four or five more in the next, say, 15 seasons?
Then again, Tom Brady might still be playing in 15 seasons.
Brady, of course, has record six Super Bowl rings and at age 43 will go for No. 7. He is the greatest quarterback of all-time. Sure, go ahead and make arguments about players who were more talented or had bigger numbers. It doesn’t matter. Brady has won six championships and this will be his 10th Super Bowl. To get there, he had to win the conference title game, the 14th of his career. Fourteen times he played in a game to go to the Super Bowl. How many quarterbacks even played 14 seasons?
And this stat made its way around the Internet following Tampa Bay’s win at Green Bay: Brady has now won as many NFC title games as Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees and Steve Young have.
Brady has played one season in the NFC.
Sure enough, Wilks has recently felt the wrath of Brady, too. In 2019, Wilks resurfaced as the defensive coordinator of the Cleveland Browns. He faced Brady in New England that autumn in what was Brady’s final season with the Patriots. Cleveland lost.
“Well, the one thing about it,” Wilks said when asked about coaching against Brady, “is he has seen so many different looks. He does a great job of really putting the offense in the best situation to execute the play. So, when you look at trying to disguise, sometimes it’s difficult because he’s going to undress you with his hard counts and those kind of things. In the past, he was so quick at getting the ball out. I know now within the system, he’s taking more deep shots down the field. But when you talk about an experienced guy that’s pretty much seasoned, it is definitely difficult to game-plan against him because he’s seen so much.”
Brady has proven that he’s not just a system quarterback. And Mahomes has proven nine front offices wrong. To think if Chicago had traded up for Mahomes instead of Mitch Trubisky in the 2017 NFL Draft? Or if Cincinnati chose Mahomes at No. 9 instead of receiver John Ross, which allowed Kansas City to choose the quarterback from Texas Tech (then again, the Chiefs might have then nabbed Deshaun Watson at No. 10)? Maybe it would be Watson starting for the Chiefs on Sunday. Instead, it’s football’s version of Magic Johnson.
Two predictions for the Super Bowl.
Kansas City will win.
And Mahomes will make at least one play that will raise both your heartrate and arm hair.