For years, Tom Brady’s championship total has felt like the ultimate mic-drop in the greatest quarterback debate. Seven titles. Ten Super Bowl appearances. A résumé so overwhelming that it practically ended arguments before they started. The assumption was simple: no one in the modern NFL would realistically threaten that mark.
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But Emmanuel Acho isn’t ready to close the case. According to Acho, Patrick Mahomes doesn’t just have a chance to chase Brady’s legacy, he can actually catch him in rings. But there’s a catch.
“Patrick Mahomes can catch Tom Brady in rings,” Acho suggested. “But nobody can catch Tom Brady in greatness, because he was first… Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes met twice, not once, twice. Tom Brady met Patrick Mahomes when Tom Brady was old, and beat him.”
That’s been the general consensus ever since the former New England Patriot managed to defeat Mahomes in their head-to-head battle at Super Bowl LV. So while the four consecutive trips to the AFC Championship that the Chiefs responded with certainly helped to establish them as the most recent dynasty in NFL history, it doesn’t seem to have shaken Brady’s crown even an inch.
As Acho put it, regardless of how many championships Mahomes may or may not have by the end of his career, it won’t matter. The head-to-head history will always serve as his critics’ most damning piece of evidence. “He beat Patrick Mahomes and won a Super Bowl. Then Tom Brady met Patrick Mahomes in the Super Bowl and beat him again,” Acho reiterated.
Likening those two games to the football equivalent of a showdown between a “prime Jordan” and “prime LeBron,” Acho suggests that fans have already received their dream match-up, and that it’s now time for them to live with the reality of the results. For as inflammatory as that may seem, it’s the truth.
The history of the NFL is filled with historic quarterback duels, but when you begin to look at the resumes behind them, there are none more decorated than those of Mahomes and Brady.
Even if we only got to experience it twice, and most were unaware of the history that was unfolding in front of them, the point is that football fans don’t have to wonder or argue about who is their best of all time, as they’ve already been given the answer.
