He’s coming for Tom Brady’s legacy.

Michael Owens / Getty

Updated at 5:15 p.m. ET on February 17, 2024

This wasn’t supposed to be Patrick Mahomes’s year—that’s the scary part.

There were plenty of times this season when the Kansas City Chiefs and their star quarterback looked vulnerable, including a stretch when they lost four out of six games. Yet the end result was the same as it was last season: Mahomes won another Super Bowl, and notched another Super Bowl MVP, and now the rest of the football world is stuck with the gloomy reality that for the foreseeable future, any path to the Super Bowl means upending a generational player who is on a collision course to be the greatest quarterback in NFL history.

If you’re wondering how a 28-year-old is being mentioned in a greatest-ever conversation, consider how this most recent Super Bowl win fits in with the rest of Mahomes’s career. In just seven NFL seasons, he has won three Super Bowls, three Super Bowl MVPs, and two league MVPs, and he’s a six-time Pro Bowl honoree.

On the surface, this speculation might seem disrespectful to Tom Brady, an NFL-record seven-time Super Bowl winner who retired last February. Brady is considered to be the greatest quarterback ever, having made 10 Super Bowl appearances, also an NFL record. He spearheaded the New England Patriots dynasty by winning six Super Bowls during his 20 seasons with the franchise, then won his final championship with Tampa Bay at 43 years old.