The Kansas City Chiefs' 38-35 win over the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII has prompted plenty of hot takes -- many involving the game's MVP.
Is Patrick Mahomes clearly the best active quarterback in the NFL? Would he already be a Hall of Famer if he retired today? Is it time to start comparing Mahomes to ... Tom Brady?
You could reasonably answer yes to the first two questions, but our Patriots Insider Tom E. Curran won't have any of the third question. On a new episode of the Patriots Talk Podcast, Curran offered a strong rebuttal to those prematurely putting Mahomes in the same conversation as the GOAT.
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"What's interesting about the rush to promote Mahomes as 'the new GOAT' is that he just has so far to go, and it's so disrespectful to the body of work that Tom Brady put together," Curran told co-host Phil Perry. "It's not LeBron versus Michael Jordan at all. It's Alex English versus Bill Russell."
Mahomes already has two Super Bowl championships, two NFL MVPs and two Super Bowl MVPs to his name through just six seasons, and just accomplished something Brady never did by winning NFL MVP and Super Bowl MVP in the same season. Curran even admitted that Mahomes is already making a case as a top-five quarterback of all time.
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But the chasm between Brady and Mahomes is still vast, Curran argues, and there are stats to prove it.
"He's in the top five, but Mahomes is at base camp and Brady is 20,000 feet above him," Curran said. "And the reason he's there is because he did it twice. He twice made a case that he's the greatest ever.
"From 2000 to 2010, he won three Super Bowls. They gave him a few toys (in 2007) and he set the record for passing touchdowns in a year. He also had the first 16-0 regular season. ... In 2010, he was the first unanimous MVP in league history. That was enough to get him to the point where you'd say, 'He might be better than Joe Montana.'
"... Mahomes has to do that first to even have that conversation -- and then do it again for the next decade, and then maybe one time, for the hell of it, he should go to Houston at the end of his career and win another one as a stray, like Brady did. And then he can talk."
To Curran's point, you could argue Brady compiled three separate Hall of Fame careers (or at the very least two) over his 23 NFL seasons. He won three Super Bowls (and a pair of Super Bowl MVPs) in his 20s, two Super Bowls and three NFL MVP awards in his 30s and two more Super Bowls in his 40s to boot.
That's not taking away anything from Mahomes' body of work to date, but it's a reminder that the 27-year-old needs to keep up his historic pace for at least a decade to even enter the conversation with Brady.
To hear more from Curran and Perry on the Mahomes vs. Brady "debate," why the Chiefs need to win another Super Bowl to be considered a true dynasty and more, subscribe to the Patriots Talk Podcast or watch on YouTube below.