Dan Marino
NFL on NBC

Patrick Mahomes is slowly but surely making a case for GOAT status.

The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback still has a lot of work to do to catch up with seven-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady. However, now with the addition of his third Lombardi Trophy earlier this month, Mahomes is inching his way there at the age of 28-years-old.

If you didn’t know, that means he’s technically on pace with Brady, who also had three rings to his name when he was 28-years-old. Maybe that helps to explain why another all-time-great ranked Mahomes so highly in a recent interview.

Dan Marino was talking to Sports Illustrated and was asked the sports question of all sports questions: Best NFL QB Mount Rushmore? The “pick four” model is one of the oldest sports question models in the book, and Marino first answered by saying this:

“I gotta go back to the guys I played against, I always loved Joe Namath. I always loved (Terry) Bradshaw, but to me, (Joe) Montana and (John) Elway, Jim Kelly. That’s three.”

Alright, so Marino narrowed three down right there. The reporter then asked if Marino would put himself on the final QB Mount Rushmore spot, but he declined and said it was need to go to one of two players:

“No, I’m not going to do that. That’s for someone else to say that… Patrick Mahomes, he’s gotta be considered one of the best ever, too, and you got Tom Brady, a lot of guys. So there’s a lot to pick from there.”

He said “a lot of other guys,” but only mentioned Mahomes and Brady by name. That means that in Dan Marino’s opinion, Patrick Mahomes has already surpassed the likes of Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Johnny Unitas and… I guess Marino himself?

Maybe he was just trying to stay humble and not include his own nine-time Pro Bowl career in the mix. After all, Marino is widely considered to be one of the best quarterbacks to have never won a Super Bowl, so maybe he was factoring that into his list.

For Pat on the other hand, Marino nearly made the last spot on his Mount Rushmore, but he ultimately gave it to John Elway: