AFC Championship GameBill BelichickNFL

Patrick Mahomes May Be Lucky But Tom Brady Is Still the LOAT (Luckiest of All Time): Part 2 – Defense Holding Leads

Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar05/12/2024 - 11:54 am
(Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

The Kansas City Chiefs are 11-1 after setting an NFL record with their 14th consecutive win in a one-score game. They hung on to beat the Raiders, 19-17, last Friday in what some call the latest lucky victory for the Chiefs. Fittingly, they broke the record of a 13-game winning streak in one-score games set by Tom Brady’s New England Patriots in 2003-04. Patrick Mahomes has now led nine game-winning drives in his last 17 starts, a span of 334 days that is the shortest in NFL history for leading that many game-winning drives.

Week 13 in the NFL’s 2024 season saw 12-of-16 games decided by one score, so it’s not like the Chiefs are alone in producing close wins. They just keep doing it so consistently that it has many questioning their ability to pull off the three-peat, and it has again sparked debate on how “lucky” Mahomes has been relative to Brady’s Patriots.

That viral tweet from over the weekend also stoked the flames with the delusional claim that the Patriots were far more likeable in their dynasty years. Most people grow to hate a dynasty whether it’s the three-peat Yankees, the Golden State Warriors, and now the Chiefs.

But when it comes to luck, Brady’s career is still the gold standard as he was the LOAT, the Luckiest of All Time. We already started exploring this in Part 1 of this series, which looked at the area of clutch field goal kicking for the careers of Brady and Mahomes.

No quarterback can measure up to Brady in that area, who built his clutch legacy on Adam Vinatieri making the greatest field goal in NFL history, followed by years of his opponents missing in big spots like the 2004 opener against the Colts, the 2006 divisional round in San Diego, and the 32-yard miss by Baltimore’s Billy Cundiff in the 2011 AFC Championship Game, the shortest do-or-die miss in a championship game in NFL history. Even Brady’s biggest win in college for the Michigan Wolverines (2000 Orange Bowl) saw his opponent (Alabama) miss an extra point in overtime in a 35-34 final.

For Part 2, we are going to look at the concept of a defense protecting or blowing a lead in the fourth quarter or overtime. This falls under the “luck” umbrella as quarterbacks don’t play defense, so the results of these drives are largely out of their control. Whether you’re up 21-17 or 38-34, it still falls on the defense to shut the door at the end of the game.

The Chiefs just beat the Raiders in a tight 19-17 finish that was precariously close to a loss after the offense didn’t close things out, and the Raiders had another crack to set up the game-winning field goal. However, a mistimed snap led to a disastrous fumble as quarterback Aidan O’Connell was not expecting the ball, and the Chiefs recovered it to end the game. The illegal shift penalty was called correctly, and that is not a dead-ball foul, so the turnover counts.

Unlike Kansas City making the effort to block Denver’s game-winning field goal this season, the Chiefs lucked out here when the Raiders botched the timing of their snap. However, in this same game, the Chiefs quickly blew a 16-3 lead after allowing O’Connell to throw two long touchdown passes.

This concludes a poor November where the Kansas City defense allowed the Panthers to score 11 points in the fourth quarter to tie the game late, watched Josh Allen run for a game-sealing touchdown on a 4th-and-2, allowed Denver rookie Bo Nix to drive for the winning field goal that was blocked by the special teams, and they let Tampa Bay’s Baker Mayfield (without his top wide receivers) tie the game with a touchdown in Week 9 before the Chiefs won in overtime.

That’s a terrible month for protecting late leads, and it’s not like the Chiefs were rock solid earlier this year. Many believe the Ravens would win in Week 1 if Isaiah Likely had a smaller foot. The Ravens still would have needed to convert a 2-point try, and given their history there, that’s not likely. Then some will say the Falcons were robbed of a pass interference penalty in the end zone in Week 3, but Mahomes would have had plenty of time to answer any score there in a 22-17 game.

But how does this all compare to the LOAT, Tom Brady? We will again make many comparisons between the careers of Mahomes and Brady with an emphasis on Brady’s time in New England (his dynasty team), especially in the period of 2000-2007 to coincide with Mahomes’ current career length of eight seasons.

In fact, Mahomes just started his 126th career game in the NFL. Brady’s 127th career start was Super Bowl XLII when he took an 18-0 record up against the Giants and lost 17-14, the most famous blown lead of his career.

Patrick Mahomes vs. Tom Brady: The LOAT Part 2: Defense Holding Leads

This is a topic where Mahomes and Brady will always be linked as the first loss and the first blown lead of Mahomes’ NFL career came against Brady’s Patriots in New England in a Sunday Night Football game in 2018. It was a 43-40 final that saw Mahomes throw a couple of touchdowns to Tyreek Hill in the fourth quarter. The second one tied the game at 40 before Brady drove his offense down the field for a walk-off field goal.

Mahomes’ first playoff loss and only blown lead in the fourth quarter/overtime of a playoff game was also against the 2018 Patriots in Arrowhead that season. It was another game where both quarterbacks led multiple go-ahead touchdown drives in the fourth quarter, and it’s most famous for Dee Ford lining up offsides to negate a season-ending interception from Brady. With 32 seconds left, Mahomes was able to lead a game-tying field goal drive, but he never touched the ball again as the Patriots drove for the winning touchdown in overtime, a 37-31 final.

The postseason overtime rules have obviously changed since because of games like that one, and Mahomes would have had a chance with the ball in overtime under the new system. But that’s all in the past.

Mahomes vs. Brady: The Data on Holding Leads

In the NFL, you can expect to see a team trailing by one score (1-to-8 points) with possession of the ball in the fourth quarter or overtime in roughly 57% of all games. This is what is called a fourth-quarter comeback (4QC) opportunity. A game-winning drive (GWD) opportunity is the same thing, but it also includes games where the score was tied. We should also point out that a team technically can’t erase a 14-point deficit in the fourth quarter without at some point erasing a one-score deficit, so those games are included in our study too.

About 30% of 4QC opportunities will be successful, and about 35% of GWD opportunities will be successful. It just so happens that Mahomes (28-19, .596) and Brady (73-55, .570) have the best 4QC/GWD opportunity records in NFL history (min. 30 games).

This also means that teams leading by one score in the fourth quarter and overtime who face these 4QC/GWD attempts should win roughly 70% of the time on average. As you should have assumed, Mahomes’ Chiefs and Brady’s Patriots win these games at a higher rate than the league average. That’s how you get to be a dynasty instead of a team, like the Legion of Boom-era Seahawks, who blew too many important leads.

The following table has data on the 4QC/GWD attempts against Mahomes and Brady in their careers. It includes only games (playoffs included) that the quarterbacks started and finished. It has Mahomes, Brady (full career including Tampa Bay), and a split for just Brady’s seasons in 2001-07.

For reference, Brady’s career (376 games) is almost triple the length of Mahomes’ career (124 games) here, so you could multiply the Mahomes numbers by three if you wanted to forecast what things might look like down the road at his current pace.

Player Patrick Mahomes Tom Brady Tom Brady (2001-07)
Games 124 376 125
Blown Leads (4QC) 14 (11.3%) 23 (6.1%) 3 (2.4%)
Avg. Lead (PTs) 5.4 6.3 7.3
4QC/GWD 17 (13.7%) 30 (8.0%) 3 (2.4%)
4QC Record 14-42 (.250) 23-126 (.154) 3-45 (.063)
4QC/GWD Record 17-45 (.274) 30-131 (.186) 3-47 (.060)
Lost Comeback/GWD 12 (9.7%) 21 (5.6%) 7 (5.6%)
Allowed Clutch Score 35/62 GM (56.5%) 59/161 GM (36.7%) 16/50 GM (32.0%)

Let’s go over the contents of the table.

Blown Leads (4QC): These are the games where the quarterback’s team lost after leading in the fourth quarter or overtime. It’s already happened to Mahomes 14 times, so his rate is almost twice as likely as Brady’s. But the shocking comparison is that it happened just three times to Brady in his first 125 starts with New England. That’s just 2.4% of his games. No teams in NFL history hung onto a lead quite like the 2001-07 Patriots.

Avg. Lead (PTs): This shows the average size of the lead blown in the losses in the previous row. Brady’s were a little higher since his team blew six multi-score leads compared to three times for Mahomes.

4QC/GWD: This is how many games each quarterback’s team lost to an opponent who pulled off a 4QC or GWD (or both). The numbers are slightly larger than the Blown Leads (4QC) row since this includes games where the score was tied and a game-winning drive was allowed. But you can see it has still happened to Mahomes at a higher rate so far.

4QC Record: This is the opponent’s 4QC record against these quarterback’s teams. You can see teams have been successful 25% of the time against the Chiefs compared to 15.4% for Brady’s career, and then his 2001-07 period is a stunning 6.3% with a 3-45 record.

4QC/GWD Record: Same thing as the previous row, but it includes GWD opportunities where the score was only tied and no comeback was necessary. That 3-47 record for old-school Brady is unbelievable, but that also means the record for his career in 2008-2022 was 27-84 (.243), which is much closer to Mahomes’ current record of 17-45 (.274).

Lost Comeback/GWD: Here’s a fun one. These are the number of games that Mahomes and Brady still won despite their opponent coming back to take a lead or leading a go-ahead drive in the fourth quarter or overtime.

A lost comeback is a game where a quarterback brings their team from a fourth-quarter deficit to a lead but still loses the game, like what happened to Brock Purdy for the 49ers in Super Bowl 58 against Mahomes. These are rare. But even rarer is a lost game-winning drive, which would be a game that’s tied in the fourth quarter, the opponent takes the lead on a scoring drive, but they still lose the game. Brady did this to Joe Flacco and the Ravens in the 2014 AFC divisional round, a 35-31 final.

We see that Brady was able to thwart 21 additional losses in his career from an opponent’s 4QC/GWD by leading his own winning drive. That’s good but Mahomes has already done it 12 times in his career, including three times since February’s Super Bowl against the 49ers. In fact, Mahomes became the first quarterback to ever win a playoff game after his team allowed three go-ahead drives in the fourth quarter or overtime, which is what happened against Purdy and the 49ers.

Allowed Clutch Score: Finally, this shows how many of these close games saw the quarterback’s defense allow some type of clutch score, whether it was a game-tying drive, a go-ahead drive, or a game-winning drive. The Chiefs have allowed a clutch score in 56.5% of these games for Mahomes, which is well above the 36.7% for Brady’s career and 32.0% in his heyday.

No matter how you slice it, Brady’s defenses have been better than Mahomes’ Chiefs at protecting leads in their careers. Frankly, it would be hard to find a quarterback who can compete with Brady on this level as the lack of blown leads, especially early in his career, is stunning for a quarterback who had more leads that could have been blown than anyone to ever play the game in a 23-year career.

Brady’s Patriots Were Nearly Impossible to Come from Behind and Beat

Yes, the Chiefs got away with one against the Raiders last week with the botched snap. But anyone claiming this puts Mahomes on the luckiest tier ever has clearly missed out on two decades of Brady with the Patriots.

  • It took Brady 66 starts before he lost a game with a fourth-quarter lead – it took Mahomes seven.
  • Before a loss to the 2015 Eagles, the 2001-14 Patriots were 94-0 at home when leading by at least 8 points at any time in the game. Every other NFL team had at least 6 such losses in that time, and Mahomes’ Chiefs have 5 losses at home with him after leading by double digits, including the 2021 AFC Championship Game (21-3 lead).
  • Opponents were 4-59 (.063) at 4QC attempts in New England in 2001-19 in Brady’s starts he finished, including a 1-46 record through 2015.

We will never see something like that again. It’s a combination of ridiculously clutch play from all three units, great coaching, absurd luck, and the secret sauce was playing poorly in losses (especially in 2001-10) so that they weren’t close enough for this to happen. Can’t blow a lead if you can’t get the late lead.

The funny thing is that initial blown lead was a game in Miami in 2004. The Patriots led 28-17, but after Miami scored a touchdown, Brady threw an interception that set the Dolphins up 21 yards from the lead, which they cashed in on to take a 29-28 lead. Brady was almost perfect at leading game-winning field goal drives in that era, but he was quickly intercepted for the fourth time in that game, sealing a shocking upset. So, even his first blown lead was more about his 4-pick performance than the defense. He wouldn’t see another blown lead until Manning’s Colts upstaged him in the 2006 AFC Championship Game, his 108th start.

This NFL season is only going into Week 14, and there are eight teams remaining who have yet to blow a fourth-quarter/overtime lead. By season’s end you’ll be able to count on one hand how many teams can say that. Thirteen teams have already blown multiple leads for losses this year, including three blown leads for Jerod Mayo’s Patriots. Meanwhile, 66 games is equivalent to four full seasons and 108 games is more than six seasons.

It only took eight starts this year for New England rookie Drake Maye to experience a blown lead, which happened Sunday when the Colts scored a touchdown and 2-point conversion with 12 seconds left. Someone like Aaron Rodgers has only started and finished 12 games for the Jets, and he’s already had four blown leads in that time. It took 133 starts before Brady has his fourth blown lead.

You can do this comparison with any quarterback and Brady’s career would look absurd. Sure, he lost some important games in heart-breaking fashion later in his career:

  • The 2015 Broncos erased a 21-7 deficit in the fourth quarter to win 30-24 behind backup Brock Osweiler, costing the Patriots a No. 1 seed that year.
  • The reason Mahomes’ 2018 Chiefs had the top seed over the Patriots was because of a Miami Miracle when the Dolphins scored a 69-yard touchdown on a lateral in a 34-33 final in Week 14.
  • The reason Mahomes got a first-round bye and No. 2 seed for his first Super Bowl run in 2019 was because the Patriots choked at home in Week 17 as a 17.5-point favorite to the Dolphins. Brady threw a go-ahead touchdown with 3:53 left, but the defense allowed Ryan Fitzpatrick, one of the worst clutch quarterbacks in NFL history, to lead a game-winning touchdown drive with 24 seconds left.

But don’t let those games distract you from the overall picture that Brady’s defenses were incredible in clutch moments, a testament to Bill Belichick’s coaching prowess and sometimes just outright dumb luck:

  • In the 2003 AFC divisional round against the Titans, Drew Bennett had a couple of big catches on a late drive in a 17-14 game. But on a crucial 4th-and-12 at the New England 42, Bennett was unable to hold onto the pass from Steve McNair and the Titans lost.
  • The 2003 Colts nearly pulled off a 21-point comeback in the game that officially started the Peyton Manning-Tom Brady rivalry, but it was a goal-line stand at the 1-yard line in a 38-34 game that helped the Patriots to a No. 1 seed that year. The Patriots faked an injury to linebacker Willie McGinest to slow Indy down, who were missing their goal-line players due to injuries, before McGinest later made the game-saving tackle on 4th-and-1 before sprinting down the field to celebrate. Fast healer.
  • In the 2003 AFC Championship Game, the Patriots only led 21-14 late despite intercepting Manning four times in the snow. But the defense held up on a four-and-out drive, and I mean literally held up as the NFL later admitted they missed the calls on third and fourth down where tight end Marcus Pollard was held and interfered with. Those plays combined with the way the Panthers roughed up Andy Reid’s Philadelphia’s offense in the NFC Championship Game later that day led to the NFL to remind referees to call illegal contact after 5 yards in the 2004 season.
  • In the 2004 opener and a rematch with the Colts, Edgerrin James fumbled at the 1-yard line in a 27-24 game with 3:43 left, then the Colts left an unblocked McGinest come off the edge for a 12-yard sack before Mike Vanderjagt missed a 48-yard field goal. But it was two runs by Edgerrin James at the 1-yard line in those games that largely led to the Patriots having home-field advantage in snowy playoff games over the Colts those seasons.
  • In Part 1, we talked about Billy Cundiff missing a 32-yard field goal for overtime in the 2011 AFC Championship Game, but don’t forget that right before that, Baltimore receiver Lee Evans dropped a game-winning touchdown after Sterling Moore knocked the ball away from him. Hang onto the ball and Joe Flacco is in the Super Bowl a year earlier than he would end up doing. The missed touchdown and field goal is one of the worst double whammy endings in NFL playoff history.
  • In Super Bowl 49, the 2014 Seahawks could have ran the ball with Marshawn Lynch from the 1-yard line multiple times in a 28-24 game, but they chose a pass play in close quarters to Ricardo Lockette, and Malcolm Butler intercepted the pass, producing the biggest interception in NFL history. There were 108 passes thrown from the 1-yard line in 2014, and that one was the only intercepted pass.
  • In a 2017 game that determined home-field advantage in the AFC, it looked like Pittsburgh’s Jesse James had a go-ahead touchdown catch with 28 seconds left, but it was ruled incomplete, a controversial call. Two plays later, a deflected pass was intercepted, sealing a win, the No. 1 seed, and Brady’s third MVP award. This play led to a rewording of the catch rule. Would it be called a touchdown today? Probably? Maye? Who knows?
  • In Super Bowl 53, the 2018 Rams averaged 32.9 points per game that season, but they were held to a field goal in a historically low-scoring Super Bowl. Trailing 10-3, Jared Goff was intercepted by Stephon Gilmore with 4:17 left, sealing Brady’s sixth Super Bowl win and giving him a second Super Bowl victory against the Rams in which he only led his offense to 13 points, the fewest of all 58 Super Bowl winners.

Of course, with some of Brady’s most high-profile blown leads coming in the playoffs, including three Super Bowl losses, that has some suggesting he’s had bad luck. But does it actually outweigh the good luck?

The Postseason Difference for Brady and Mahomes

Brady is the most decorated postseason quarterback in NFL history with a 35-13 record in 48 playoff games, an absurd number on its own. Mahomes is hoping to get up there one day with an impressive 15-3 record in the postseason to this point.

Both quarterbacks actually have a playoff win they didn’t finish due to injury, and the defense had to defend a one-score lead in those games. Brady’s defense intercepted Kordell Stewart twice in Pittsburgh in the final minutes of the 2001 AFC Championship Game while the Chiefs stopped the Browns in the 2020 AFC divisional before backup Chad Henne iced the game with a fourth-down conversion. I’m still going to include those games for each in the next stat about the playoffs since their seasons would have ended if their defenses (and backup quarterbacks) didn’t come through.

  • In Brady’s 48 playoff games, his team was 19-5 (.792) at defending a 4QC/GWD attempt with four blown leads and a fifth game (2021 Rams) where the opponent scored a game-winning field goal after Brady tied the game.
  • In Mahomes’ 18 playoff games, his team was 7-2 (.778) at defending a 4QC/GWD attempt with one blown lead (2018 Patriots) in a game where Mahomes tied the game on his final snap, and the defense lost in overtime by allowing a touchdown to Brady’s Patriots.
  • Both quarterbacks faced a 4QC/GWD attempt from the opponent in exactly 50% of their playoff games.
  • Mahomes’ Chiefs also allowed a game-winning drive in a tied game in overtime to Joe Burrow’s 2021 Bengals in the AFC Championship Game after Mahomes was intercepted at midfield.

It’s crazy how close we came to a rematch of Brady vs. Mahomes in Super Bowl 56 (2021 season), but the Rams and Bengals got in the way of that. Mahomes had the worst half of his career in the second half of that Cincinnati game. Brady had a poor game against the Rams in the divisional round, but it should be noted the Rams lost four fumbles and missed a field goal to try to help him make one last improbable comeback before he retired (for the first time). Matthew Stafford and Cooper Kupp finally put that mess to bed with a deep completion to set up a field goal in 30-27 win.

But while these overall playoff results look similar for these quarterbacks, Mahomes has clearly had to overcome worse defense in close playoff games:

  • 2021 AFC divisional vs. Buffalo (The 13 Seconds Game). Josh Allen threw a go-ahead touchdown with 13 seconds left that should have won the game, but Mahomes was able to force overtime, then bail his defense out with a game-winning touchdown drive so that they didn’t have to take the field again in a 42-36 classic.
  • 2022 AFC Championship Game vs. Cincinnati: Joe Burrow has only led one touchdown drive in the fourth quarter of seven playoff games, but it happened in this one to tie the game at 20. To the defense’s credit, it forced a pick and had a huge third-down sack of Burrow with the game tied before Mahomes won it with a late field goal drive.
  • 2022 Super Bowl 57 vs. Philadelphia: Up 35-27, Kansas City’s defense allowed Jalen Hurts and the Eagles to drive for a touchdown and game-tying 2-point conversion with 5:15 left. Mahomes was able to drive for a field goal with just 8 seconds left, making it easy on the defense to not blow that final lead.
  • 2023 AFC divisional at Buffalo: Mahomes’ defense was again having its worst game of the season before tightening up in the fourth quarter, but it still took a missed 44-yard field goal by Tyler Bass in the final 2:00 to earn the 27-24 win, so that’s not exactly a defensive hold as much as a special teams’ break.
  • 2023 Super Bowl 58 vs. San Francisco: We already mentioned earlier that San Francisco became the first team in NFL playoff history to lose a game after three go-ahead drives in the fourth quarter and overtime as Mahomes walked it off with a touchdown pass in overtime to win 25-22. This makes the 2023 Chiefs the only team in NFL history to win a championship after its defense allowed a go-ahead drive the last time it was on the field.

So, that 7-2 record for the Chiefs at defending 4QC/GWD attempts is largely credited to the offense for closing games rather than the defense, which has only come up with a few interceptions from Burrow in those clutch moments.

Even Jimmy Garoppolo in Super Bowl 54 didn’t get picked until it was 31-20 in the final minutes. But he did miss that 3rd-and-long deep ball to Emmanuel Sanders when it was a 24-20 game – the most (if not only) legitimate stop in a clutch situation that Mahomes’ defense has made in a playoff game to this day.

As for Brady, it’s certainly true that in his first two Super Bowl wins, Belichick’s defense gave up the late lead and forced Brady to lead a game-winning field goal drive for Adam Vinatieri to shine twice in tied games. The 2001 Rams came back from a 17-3 deficit to tie the game late, and Brady was in a fourth-quarter shootout with Jake Delhomme of the 2003 Panthers.

But when it comes to the two upset losses in Super Bowls against Eli Manning’s Giants, it’s hard to find much sympathy for Brady when he led two of the best offenses ever to 14 and 17 points. Mahomes led the Chiefs to at least 17 points in all 14 of his games with a blown lead in the fourth quarter, including 12 games with 20 points and seven games with at least 28 points.

It’s not like anyone expected New England to score 14 points, especially after a 38-35 finish in Week 17 against the Giants, the game that clinched the 16-0 regular season. But

even before Super Bowl XLII when the Patriots were going for 19-0, Brady scoffed at New York wideout Plaxico Burress’ prediction that the Giants would win by a low score. “We’re only going to score 17 points?” is the classic line uttered by Brady, who threw 50 touchdowns that year for a team that broke the scoring record.

But the Giants, with a great game plan by defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, who is now with Mahomes in Kansas City, shocked the world by putting pressure on Brady and holding that offense to 14 points. Even when Brady took the lead in the final 3:00, it was on a touchdown to Randy Moss in which corner Corey Webster fell down. Imagine seeing that highlight for the rest of your life to clinch a 19-0 season with a 14-10 win.

Instead, Eli Manning led the greatest drive in NFL history with the Super Bowl’s all-time highlight of David Tyree’s Helmet Catch. Burress caught the game-winning touchdown on another memorable play to win 17-14 and the rest is history.

But when it comes to the rematch in the 2011 season for Super Bowl XLVI, there seems to be a Mandela Effect of people who believe Brady again led a go-ahead drive only for Eli and the Giants to erase it. This must be some combination of the Super Bowl XLII ending and the 2011 regular-season game that year where Eli became the first quarterback in 11 seasons to lead a 4QC win in Gillette Stadium against the Patriots in a 24-20 win.

Because in Super Bowl XLVI, the Patriots didn’t score in the final 26 minutes. They tried to hold onto a 17-9 lead that was 17-15 going into the fourth quarter, and ultimately the Giants won 21-17 after another great drive from Manning with that exquisite pass to Mario Manningham along the way.

Given the help that Baltimore’s Lee Evans and Billy Cundiff gave to Brady to even get in the Super Bowl that year, it’s hard to say this was bad luck. The Giants just owned the Patriots in this era and were not afraid of the dynasty.

At the end of the day, in Brady’s 14 game-winning drives in the postseason (another record), only two teams ever made him have to score multiple times to regain the lead for good. One was Jake Delhomme in Super Bowl 38 and the other was Mahomes in the 2018 AFC Championship Game. Meanwhile, Mahomes has already had to take the lead back multiple times in 3-of-6 of his game-winning drives in the playoffs, including his last two Super Bowls against the Eagles and 49ers.

When Brady was asked to score once again in a 38-34 game against the Colts in the 2006 AFC Championship Game, he threw a game-ending interception. When he had to score at least a field goal to force overtime in Super Bowl 42 against the Giants, he didn’t utilize his timeouts and any short or intermediate throws, took a huge sack, and the drive failed in that 17-14 loss. While he took a 33-32 lead in Super Bowl 52 against the Eagles, when Nick Foles made him go down the field one more time in that shootout, Brady was strip-sacked in a 41-33 loss.

But when Mahomes had to score two go-ahead touchdowns and a game-tying field goal against Brady’s Patriots in the 2018 AFC Championship Game, he did it. He just didn’t win the coin toss in overtime.

Had he won the coin toss, we might not even be talking about this today if 2018 would have been the first ring for the Kansas City dynasty rather than the last for the Patriots under Belichick and Bady.

A coin flip, which no longer will decide playoff games as both teams are promised a possession. Mahomes already has the first walk-off win in that scenario too.

Mahomes and Brady: Protecting the Lead

Finally, let’s end with a quick look at the thing people are going to want to see from all of this. We’ve focused on what the defense (and to a small degree, special teams) did at protecting the lead in a close game in the fourth quarter. We did that because that’s the unit that is largely out of the quarterback’s control, and it is usually the unit that decides the most who wins and loses these games (unless it’s Kansas City’s defense in the postseason).

But the offense certainly plays a factor too in closing out games. In fact, there is no better way to end a game than with the ball on offense, running out the clock with a few first downs, and never even giving the opponent a chance to score. They tend to call that the four-minute offense, and it’s a hard thing to master in the NFL since you have to balance how aggressive you want to be while still preaching ball security, making sure you’re running the clock, and you may have to convert a third-and-long to get the job done.

We saw Mahomes do this to the 2023 Ravens in the AFC Championship Game. After two bad runs, he hit a 3rd-and-9 deep shot to Marquez Valdes-Scantling to ice a 17-10 final, denying MVP Lamar Jackson a chance to even lead a comeback drive. That was a great play, but it wasn’t so great last week when Mahomes’ deep shot on 3rd-and-2 in a 19-17 game against the Raiders was incomplete to Xavier Worthy, leading to the Chiefs to punt and pray for the defense to save the day, which they did with that fumbled snap.

That was one great finish by Mahomes and one bad finish. But what do the career numbers look like? We found 34 quarterbacks since 1994 with at least 150 passes in the fourth quarter while leading by 1-to-8 points. Here is some of that data:

  • Patrick Mahomes: 162-of-243 (66.7%) for 1,895 yards, 7.8 YPA, 16 touchdowns, 1 interception, 110.4 passer rating, 4.71% sack rate, 36.5% first down rate on pass plays.
  • Tom Brady: 409-of-659 (62.1%) for 5,058 yards, 7.7 YPA, 32 touchdowns, 16 interceptions, 91.9 passer rating, 4.78% sack rate, 34.7% first down rate on pass plays.
  • Mahomes’ 110.4 passer rating ranks No. 3 out of 34 quarterbacks while Brady’s 91.9 is No. 15.
  • Mahomes is No. 2 in passing first down rate while Brady is No. 6.

Mahomes was never better in these situations than in the 2020 season. He had 12 drives in the fourth quarter that year with a one-score lead. Six times he gave the Chiefs a 2-score lead, twice he ran out the clock on his opponent, and one other time he extended a 3-point lead to a 6-point lead with a field goal.

Brady’s career stats in these situations are solid, but he was never an elite standout among his peers in these four-minute offense situations. In fact, a big allure of the Manning-Brady rivalry is that many of those games saw the Patriots leading late, Brady failing to run out the clock, and Manning either delivered against Belichick’s defense or he didn’t.

This really came to a head in the 2009 season on Sunday Night Football. The Patriots once led by 17 points in the fourth quarter in Indy, but Manning had the Colts back in it in a 34-28 game. The Patriots faced a 4th-and-2 at their own 28 after an incomplete pass by Brady. Instead of punting and relying on the defense to stop Manning, Belichick rolled the dice with a shocking attempt at winning the game on a conversion.

Brady threw to running back Kevin Faulk, who came up a yard short and the Colts took over at the New England 29. Manning threw a game-winning touchdown pass to Reggie Wayne with 9 seconds left in a 35-34 comeback. That ending still stands out as an outlier in NFL history.

How about we up the importance of these plays to situations more like 4th-and-2 and the ones Mahomes faced in Baltimore in the playoffs and last week? That would be final 5:00, up by one score, third or fourth down (risky, rare, but they happen at times). Here’s how the 13 quarterbacks with at least 30 such passes since 2001 have fared, including sacks:

  • Ben Roethlisberger: 28 first downs on 63 pass plays (44.4%)
  • Patrick Mahomes: 17 first downs on 39 pass plays (43.6%)
  • Peyton Manning: 21 first downs on 49 pass plays (42.9%)
  • Matthew Stafford: 17 first downs on 40 pass plays (42.5%)
  • Matt Ryan: 23 first downs on 56 pass plays (41.1%)
  • Russell Wilson: 14 first downs on 35 pass plays (40.0%)
  • Philip Rivers: 14 first downs on 37 pass plays (37.8%)
  • Aaron Rodgers: 18 first downs on 48 pass plays (37.5%)
  • Drew Brees: 20 first downs on 58 pass plays (34.5%)
  • Eli Manning: 13 first downs on 40 pass plays (32.5%)
  • Kirk Cousins: 11 first downs on 34 pass plays (32.4%)
  • Tom Brady: 22 first downs on 75 pass plays (29.3%)
  • Joe Flacco: 6 first downs on 34 pass plays (17.7%)

Maybe by the end of his career Mahomes will regress to rank closer to Brady here. But for his sake, he better not regress too much, because unlike Brady, he can’t rely on his defense to protect the lead nearly as often as the LOAT did.

If Russell Wilson has the Steelers at the 1-yard line against the Chiefs on Christmas or in the playoffs this season, do you really trust the Kansas City defense to intercept a pass, or for T.J. Wat to fake an injury and then stuff Najee Harris on fourth-and-goal? That’s what Brady Brady’s defense would have done.

That’s why he’s the LOAT, and he knows it.

Next time, we’ll look at each quarterback’s division and conference rivals as the Chiefs can clinch another AFC West division title on Sunday night against the Chargers.

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Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar05/12/2024 - 11:54 am