NFL

Patrick Mahomes May Be Lucky But Tom Brady Is Still the LOAT (Luckiest of All Time): Part 3 – Division Rivals

Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar12/12/2024 - 09:24 am
(Photo by Peter G. Aiken/Getty Images)

The Kansas City Chiefs are 12-1 after extending their NFL record with their 15th consecutive win in a one-score game. By sweeping the Chargers, the Chiefs clinched the AFC West for the ninth season in a row, a streak only surpassed in NFL history by the New England Patriots when Tom Brady’s team won the AFC East in 11 consecutive seasons in 2009-19. This makes Patrick Mahomes 7-for-7 at winning his division as a full-time starter and 8-for-8 overall since he did start the finale in his 2017 rookie season.

Maybe the best stat this week is that Mahomes has more division titles (7) than he has division game losses as he is 35-5 (.875) against the Chargers (10-2), Broncos (13-1), and Raiders (12-2).

Naturally, the comparison this week is that, like Brady, Mahomes is lucky to play in such a weak division. While the AFC West hasn’t been one of the strongest divisions during Mahomes’ NFL career, no quarterback has ever had it easier for so long in their division than Tom Brady, the LOAT (Luckiest of All Time).

In Part 1 of this LOAT series, we looked at Brady’s unmatched luck in clutch kicking with field goals always seemingly going his team’s way. In Part 2, we focused on each quarterback’s defense when it came to holding onto leads late in the game. Sure enough, the Chiefs gave up another go-ahead drive in Sunday night’s game against the Chargers, but for the fourth time in his career, Mahomes was able to deny Justin Herbert a game-winning drive by leading one of his own with no time remaining.

Now in Part 3 of our ongoing series, we are going to look at the advantages Brady enjoyed for nearly two full decades of playing in the AFC East, and how in seven seasons, Mahomes has already faced more quality teams, quarterbacks, and head coaches than Brady ever saw in his division.

Division rivals fall under the luck umbrella since it’s out of the quarterback’s control who they share a division with. One of the less talked about factors in becoming a dynasty is to play in a soft division where you don’t have to worry about those other three teams making your path to the Super Bowl harder since you can count on a division title and guaranteed home playoff game with a top four seed practically every year. That’s why most NFL coaches and players say winning the division is the first goal each season.

We will again make many comparisons between the careers of Mahomes and Brady with an emphasis on Brady’s time in New England and the AFC East. But we will also touch on his time in the NFC South with Tampa Bay since it illustrates the importance of division rivals.

Patrick Mahomes vs. Tom Brady: The LOAT

Tom Brady and the AFC East’s Three Stooges

I could probably write a 200-page book about the failures of the Miami Dolphins, Buffalo Bills, and New York Jets – I like to call them the AFC East’s Three Stooges – for two decades that allowed the Patriots to form and sustain the longest dynasty in NFL history. But let’s try to be a little more brief today.

The Old AFC East and How the Jets Created the New England Dynasty (2000-01)

The AFC East has been the most predictable division in the NFL’s 21st century. The Patriots won it 17 times in 19 years in 2001-19, only losing out to the Jets in 2002 and the Dolphins in 2008 after Brady tore his ACL in Week 1.

Since Brady left the division in 2020, the Buffalo Bills have stepped up and won it five years in a row behind Josh Allen ever since his breakout season. When the Bills clinched the AFC East in Week 13 this year, it was the earliest division clinched since the Colts, who were undefeated at the time, in the 2009 AFC South.

But the AFC East wasn’t always boring and predictable. When Brady joined the Patriots in 2000, the NFL still had three divisions per conference, and the Colts were a member of the AFC East with a young Peyton Manning in his third season.

The Dolphins were an annual winner since the merger, but they were going into their first season after Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino retired. The Bills were in four straight Super Bowls in the 1990s, but those players lost to Father Time, and the team really had its last hurrah in the 1999 playoffs when it lost to the Titans on the Music City Miracle. The Jets were always the lovable losers who lived in the Giants’ shadow, but at least they were in the 1998 AFC Championship Game behind a career year from Vinny Testaverde and a strong defense coached by Bill Belichick.

Speaking of Belichick, the Jets are as responsible for the New England dynasty as anyone. Belichick was supposed to succeed Bill Parcells as the coach of the Jets in 2000, but he shockingly resigned one day after it was announced he had the job. He ended up joining the Patriots instead, and the team drafted Tom Brady in the sixth round in the 2000 draft.

Then in the 2001 season, the Patriots were supposed to face the Carolina Panthers, a team that lost its final 15 games that year, in Week 2. But due to the terrorist attacks on 9/11, that game was postponed until Week 17. The next game for the Patriots was against the Jets, and that was the fateful day when Drew Bledsoe, a statue of a quarterback, decided to scramble before getting hit by Jets linebacker Mo Lewis, leading to a serious injury that put Brady in the game. Brady started the following week for Bledsoe, the Patriots ended up winning the Super Bowl that year, and the rest is history.

Realignment and the Creation of the AFC East’s Three Stooges (2002-2019)

But in 2002, the NFL shook things up with division realignment, creating eight 4-team divisions and putting Manning’s Colts in the AFC South with the newest expansion team, the Houston Texans. That certainly had a huge impact on the next decade in the NFL given the Manning-Brady rivalry and their annual battle for No. 1 seeds. The new AFC East was the Patriots, Dolphins, Jets, and Bills.

While the division was very competitive in 2002 with every team finishing 8-8 or 9-7, the Jets winning it behind young quarterback Chad Pennington was fool’s gold. The Patriots rebounded in 2003 to win the Super Bowl, and their reign of terror in the AFC East lasted until 2020 when the quarterback power greatly shifted with the departure of Brady and Allen’s breakout year in Buffalo.

For two decades, the Patriots reveled in the misery of the AFC East’s Three Stooges:

  • Buffalo Bills: They missed the playoffs 17 years in a row (2000-16) and didn’t win 10 games in a season until 2019. The Bills did not win a single playoff game between 1996 and 2019 (24 seasons).
  • Miami Dolphins: To this day, the Dolphins have not won a playoff game since the 2000 season, and they haven’t won 12 games in a season since 1990. Their only division title since realignment came in 2008, the year of the Wildcat offense and taking advantage of Brady’s torn ACL.
  • New York Jets: While the Jets made the playoffs six times in 2001-10, their greatest achievement (upsetting the 2010 Patriots in the AFC divisional round) remains their last playoff win, and they haven’t made the playoffs ever since (14 straight seasons). The Jets haven’t won 12 games in a season since 1998, the only time in franchise history they’ve won that many games.

Today, the Patriots are battling the Jets to stay out of the cellar of the AFC East as the Bills (Allen) and Dolphins (Tua Tagovailoa) finally found some competency at quarterback. But we’ll get into that later.

Patrick Mahomes’ Reign in the AFC West

It’s no coincidence that Kansas City’s reign in the AFC West began immediately after first-ballot Hall of Famer Peyton Manning retired in Denver in 2016. The Broncos had won the division each year in 2011-15, but Kansas City took over in 2016 with a 12-4 season that ended in disappointment when the team lost 18-16 at home to the Steelers.

Losing to a team that kicked six field goals was the impetus for drafting Patrick Mahomes in the first round in 2017 despite the Chiefs having winning seasons under Alex Smith the last four years. The Chiefs needed to get better quarterback play and score more points if they were ever going to keep up with the AFC elite.

They sat Mahomes in his rookie year, and fittingly, his debut was in the regular-season finale in Denver, a 27-24 win where he led a game-winning drive while playing with backups on offense. When Mahomes replaced Smith as the full-time starter in 2018, he started his MVP campaign with four touchdown passes against the Chargers in a 38-28 win that would be a sign of things to come with Mahomes dominating this division.

But one reason you’re not hearing a ton of criticism this week of how easy the AFC West is for Mahomes is because the Chargers and Broncos are both currently 8-5 and would be the No. 6 and No. 7 seeds in the playoffs this year. They also boast the No. 1 and No. 2 scoring defenses and have head coaches who have been to the Super Bowl, which should help them reach the playoffs over the Dolphins (6-7), Colts (6-7), and Bengals (5-8) with four games to go.

  • Denver Broncos: It’s certainly true that the Broncos have not made the playoffs or won 10 games in a season since winning Super Bowl 50 in 2015. But they can end both of those droughts this season.
  • Las Vegas Raiders: The Raiders have only made the playoffs once during Mahomes’ career, and that was a 10-7 wild card berth in 2021, a year where Derek Carr led a lot of close wins in overtime. But that team was still swept by Kansas City.
  • Los Angeles Chargers: The strongest team in Mahomes’ division has been the Chargers. Behind an MVP campaign by quarterback Philip Rivers in 2018, the Chargers finished 12-4 and even won a playoff game in Baltimore. Since then, the Chargers had a 10-7 wild card season in 2022 when they blew that 27-0 lead in Jacksonville in the wildcard round, and they are looking to make the playoffs again this year under coach Jim Harbaugh despite a sweep at the hands of the Chiefs.

That means in Mahomes’ first season as a starter (2018), he already faced more 12-win teams in his division than Brady did in 19 years in the AFC East. 

If the Chargers and Broncos both make the playoffs this year, that would give Mahomes five wild card teams in his division in his first seven seasons, and his record (with one game left against Denver in Week 18) is 8-1 against those teams. He did lose one game to the 2018 Chargers after the defense blew a 28-14 lead in the fourth quarter, but that’s still a division rival that won 11 games without the help of beating Mahomes’ team.

Brady only had to deal with 11 playoff teams among the Three Stooges in 19 years (2001-19). That number is nine if you go only by realignment years, and it’s seven if you account for the two times the Patriots let a division rival win the division (2002 Jets, 2008 Dolphins). There’s also the fact that in his last nine years in the AFC East (2011-19) when Brady’s Patriots really had an edge over the division, they sent just three wild card teams to the playoffs in the 2016 Dolphins, 2017 Bills, and 2019 Bills. They weren’t sending their best.

Brady never faced a 12-win team in the AFC East. He also never faced an 11-win team he didn’t help create. The 2010 Jets (11-5) had a win in hand against the Patriots to get to 11 wins that year.

How to Judge Division Strength in the Context of a Quarterback

One of the biggest myths you’ll find on the internet is that the AFC East was actually good, if not the best division in the NFL during the New England dynasty years. That couldn’t be any further from the truth, and it comes down to a flawed logic in how to judge the strength of a division.

Yes, if you wanted to rank the best and worst divisions, you could just sum up the records for the four teams and sort them by best winning percentage to worst. You could do it by point differential as well or another efficiency metric like EPA. You could even remove results from division games to only focus on how the teams fared when they weren’t playing each other.

But none of those methods would do it justice in the context of how difficult it was for a quarterback to win his division. First, the AFC East’s numbers looking good in the aggregate is boosted by how great the Patriots were for so long. Throw that method in the trash.

As for summing up the results for the three non-division winning teams, that misses the point too. The true challenge of a division isn’t about the quality of the teams at the bottom, but it’s how strong the best rival is that you have to beat for the division title.

For example, which hypothetical division would be harder to win for a team that is favored to win their division?

  • Division A: Teams who are 12-5, 5-12, and 3-14 (total record: 20-31)
  • Division B: Teams who are 8-9, 7-10, and 6-11 (total record: 21-30)

Division B has a better overall record by one game and its teams could even have better stats. But you can still win Division B just by finishing 9-8. You have to go at least 12-5 to win Division A, and you might even need to beat or sweep a 12-win team to do so. That’s why winning Division A is clearly the tougher task.

The AFC East supporters miss this point time and time again, choosing to focus on the way teams like the Bills and Dolphins looked like a pyramid scheme for years by making money by having irrelevant 6-10 or 8-8 seasons year after year. Those teams rarely fell off to a disastrous 2-14 finish even though the Dolphins were 1-15 in 2007 a year before winning the division. But they rarely bombed as badly as the bottom teams in other divisions.

But at the end of the day, there’s a marginal difference between playing a 5-win and a 7-win team, especially for someone like Brady or Mahomes. In Mahomes’ career, he’s lost just two games to teams with fewer than eight wins in their final record, and they both happened to be the Colts (2019 and 2022).

With that said, we don’t want to act like Mahomes hasn’t had an easier go of it in division play than most of his HOF-caliber peers. After that battle with the Chargers in 2018, Mahomes has never needed more than 11 wins to win his division without resorting to any tiebreakers. It’s possible that it will happen again this year if the Chargers or Broncos finish strong, but that’d only be twice in seven seasons.

These numbers are starting to compare 16-game seasons to 17, so it’s not 100% apples-to-apples anymore. But it’s pretty telling that in the full seasons he started, only twice did Brady need more than 11 wins to win his division without a tiebreaker, and one of those was his first run in the NFC South with the 2020 Buccaneers.

That year, Brady was swept by a division rival for the first time ever as he actually had to face a team with a HOF-caliber coach (Sean Payton) and quarterback (Drew Brees). He was also swept by the Saints in 2021 without Brees, including a 9-0 loss at home in prime time that cost him a fourth MVP award.

To Brady’s credit, he gets the last laugh as he won in New Orleans in the 2020 NFC divisional round after Brees had the worst playoff game of his career in his final NFL game. Then before you knew it, the NFC South deteriorated into a poor division with Brady able to win it with an 8-9 record in his final season in 2022.

But Brady’s brief time in the NFC South does show how things might have been different if he wasn’t able to take advantage of the Three Stooges’ ineptitude for so many years in the AFC East.

Someone like Russell Wilson has faced a much tougher time in his division battles over the years. When he was in the NFC West with Seattle, he saw all three of his division rivals have elite teams (13-plus win seasons) with strong coaching and quarterback play like the 2015 Cardinals (Bruce Arians and Carson Palmer), the 2018 Rams (Sean McVay and Jared Goff), and the 2019 49ers (Kyle Shanahan and Jimmy Garoppolo).

Right now, Wilson is trying to hold off Lamar Jackson and the Ravens (8-5) to reclaim the AFC North for Pittsburgh. But Wilson is also a good example to bring up for divisions since he was a rival of Mahomes in the previous two years in Denver, another attempt to try to end the run by the Chiefs that didn’t work.

Why the AFC East Was Such a Joke for So Long

Plain and simple, the AFC East minus New England was so bad for so long because those teams kept failing at finding a competent head coach and quarterback. What does it say when the best you can do in two decades is someone like Rex Ryan at coach and Chad Pennington at quarterback? They weren’t even on the same team.

Mahomes vs. Brady: The Quarterback Droughts in Their Divisions

Time and time again, we see how a franchise quarterback changes everything in the NFL. Unfortunately, the Bills, Jets, and Dolphins have been on long pursuits of replacing legends like Jim Kelly, Joe Namath, and Dan Marino. The Bills have their guy in Josh Allen, Tua Tagovailoa is at least respectable in Miami, and the Jets are apparently still searching as even New England may have the better long-term fix with Drake Maye.

But when you look at the quarterbacks the Thee Stooges employed all those years during New England’s dynasty, it’s no wonder we didn’t see a real challenge to Brady and the Patriots from the AFC East:

  • Buffalo Bills’ primary quarterbacks, 2002-2019: Drew Bledsoe (2002 Pro Bowl), J.P. Losman, Trent Edwards, Ryan Fitzpatrick, EJ Manuel, Kyle Orton, Tyrod Taylor (2015 Pro Bowl), Josh Allen.
  • Miami Dolphins’ primary quarterbacks, 2002-2019: Jay Fielder, Brian Griese, A.J. Feeley, Gus Frerotte, Daunte Culpepper, Joey Harrington, Trent Green, John Beck, Cleo Lemon, Chad Pennington, Chad Henne, Matt Moore, Ryan Tannehill, Ryan Fitzpatrick.
  • New York Jets’ primary quarterbacks, 2002-2019: Vinny Testaverde, Chad Pennington, Kellen Clemens, Brett Favre (2008 Pro Bowl), Mark Sanchez, Geno Smith, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Josh McCown, Sam Darnold.

You know it’s bad when Ryan Fitzpatrick played for all three teams and is one of the best quarterbacks here. He was also one of the most prone quarterbacks in NFL history to throwing game-ending interceptions, and none of the 17 teams he played for ever made the playoffs. You also know it’s bad when Mark “Butt Fumble” Sanchez was the playoff success story in this group, and the 2010 Patriots were his best playoff game a month after he lost 45-3 to that defense.

In 18 seasons, these teams produced three Pro Bowl quarterback seasons, and none of them made the playoffs that year. Brett Favre making it in 2008 is purely reputation as he finished that season injured and was playing poorly.

It’s also lucky that the one time the AFC East had some quarterback solutions in 2008 to deal with Brady, he tore his ACL in Week 1 and missed the rest of the season. Favre did start well for the Jets (8-3 record) before things fell apart. Chad Pennington was a two-time Comeback Player of the Year award winner because he kept getting injured every other year. But when healthy, Pennington was probably the peak quarterback rival to Brady in two decades of the AFC East.

Meanwhile, Mahomes has already seen three quarterbacks make the Pro Bowl in his division, including Philip Rivers (2018 Chargers), Justin Herbert (2021 Chargers), and Derek Carr (2022 Raiders). That’s as many Pro Bowl quarterbacks in Mahomes’ division in five years as Brady saw in 19. Rivers was an MVP candidate that year, and Herbert was also the Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2020.

Carr was never great, but he is someone who could pull off some game-winning drives, and he could throw for over 300 yards and play a career game by dropping 40 points in Arrowhead like he did in 2020. Carr would have been one of the best quarterbacks in Brady’s AFC East.

The Broncos traded for Russell Wilson in 2022 to try to deal with Mahomes. Clearly, it didn’t work out, but Wilson gave the Chiefs some tough games, including a 24-9 upset win in 2023 on the day when Mahomes had the flu, which snapped a 16-game losing streak against Kansas City. Wilson also threw 26 touchdown passes in 2023 for Denver, something only Sanchez (2011), Tannehill (2014), and Fitzpatrick (2015) ever did for the Three Stooges in 2002-19.

Rookie Bo Nix is second in odds to win Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2024, and Denver might have something to work with there. He’s already having a better career than the likes of first-round busts like EJ Manuel and J.P. Losman.

Almost as important as the quarterback is the head coach. The 2024 AFC West actually made history when it became the first division to feature three coaches who have won over 60% of their games in Andy Reid, Jim Harbaugh, and Sean Payton. We see Payton and Harbaugh living up to their hype with helping their teams to 8-5 records and likely playoff seasons this year while still playing in the shadow of the Chiefs.

The Raiders aren’t in a good place at all with Antonio Pierce, who may be let go after one full year, and this comes on the heels of some ugly endings with Jon Gruden and Josh McDaniels. But while the Broncos wasted some years on the likes of Vance Joseph, Vic Fangio, and a disastrous hiring of Nathaniel Hackett, they are back on the right track with Payton. Likewise, the Chargers got through Anthony Lynn and Brandon Staley before bringing Harbaugh back to the NFL this year.

So, at least Mahomes is facing some competent coaches now in his division, and he’s still 4-1 against Harbaugh and Payton in division play. Compare this to the coaching carousel that was Brady’s Three Stooges all those years:

  • Buffalo Bills’ head coaches, 2002-2019: Gregg Williams, Mike Mularkey, Dick Jauron, Chan Gailey, Doug Marrone, Rex Ryan, Sean McDermott
  • Miami Dolphins’ head coaches, 2002-2019: Dave Wannstedt, Nick Saban, Cam Cameron, Tony Sparano, Joe Philbin, Adam Gase, Brian Flores
  • New York Jets’ head coaches, 2002-2019: Herm Edwards, Eric Mangini, Rex Ryan, Todd Bowles, Adam Gase.

Again, that’s really bad when Rex Ryan was the example of putting your best foot forward. The Patriots going 2-3 against his teams in 2009-10 with those great defenses led by Darrelle Revis also are largely responsible for why we view those two teams that went to back-to-back AFC title games with some dignity. It’s been all downhill ever since for the Jets, and it’s also laughable to think two teams in this division fell for the ruse that was Adam Gase, someone Peyton Manning vouched for who was in over his head.

To this day, none of the coaches listed here have reached a Super Bowl as a head coach. Sean McDermott may do it one day for the Bills, but he wasn’t elevated in 2017-19 like he is now because he didn’t have Josh Allen playing at the level he has since 2020.

Conclusion: Mahomes Is More Dominant Against a Better Division Than Brady Ever Was

Finally, there’s another rubbish talking point from Brady fans that his dominance made those other teams look bad and was the reason why they couldn’t find a good quarterback or make a good hire of a coach. He intimidated them.

That’s obviously absurd as it’s not like Josh Allen waited until Brady left the division to suddenly become an elite quarterback. It was simply a third-year progression from a young quarterback. It’s also not like Sean McVay, who keeps expanding his coaching tree, would have been a terrible coach if he happened to join the AFC East instead of a bum like Adam Gase.

The fact of the matter is New England’s dominance of the Three Stooges was not as dominant as one would expect given the lack of great teams/coaches/quarterbacks those three franchises had.

We said at the top that Mahomes is 35-5 (.875) against the AFC West. From 2002-19, Brady was 81-21 (.794) against the AFC East, posting records of 30-3 against Buffalo, 29-7 against the Jets, and 22-11 against the Dolphins. Even if we excluded two losses in season finales where Brady left early for playoff rest, he was 81-19 (.810), which is still a lower win rate than Mahomes against his division.

Brady once lost five games in six seasons in Miami in 2013-18, one of the places (along with Denver) where he notoriously struggled in his career. It’s not crazy to think that record would have been worse if he played the Miami teams of the 2020s that can actually score points with Tua Tagovailoa, who is 7-0 against the Patriots. That’s not to say Brady would ever go 0-7 against Tua, but we’ve seen him lose in Miami to the likes of Jay Fielder, A.J. Feeley, Joey Harrington (21-0 in 2006), Ryan Tannehill, and Jay Cutler. Losing more often to Tagovailoa isn’t a stretch.

But it is fitting, or some might say lucky, that as soon as Brady left the AFC East in 2020, the Bills finally had an elite quarterback in Allen, and the Dolphins drafted Tagovailoa in the first round. Then with the Patriots struggling at their rebuild and new quarterback plans, you see the total flip in the AFC East with the Patriots at the bottom with the quarterback-starved Jets.

But even when the Jets tried to land 4-time MVP Aaron Rodgers to save them in 2023, he immediately entered a division that saw the Bills and Dolphins win 11 games and make the playoffs, something Brady never dealt with from the Three Stooges. Rodgers also tore his Achilles four snaps into the season but look for the Bills to win more games this year than any non-New England AFC East team did in 2001-19.

Even Rodgers, in a mere two seasons, is facing better competition in the AFC East than Brady ever did in two decades. But you can name any relevant quarterback in NFL history, Mahomes or otherwise, and they would pale in comparison to the advantages Brady had in his division.

That’s why Brady is still the LOAT, and Mahomes will never catch him on this.

Next time, we’ll see where the 2024 Chiefs’ season takes us to make Part 4 topical like we’ve been doing for each part. It could be looking at health with the Chiefs about to embark on a gruelling schedule of three games played 10 days apart, or it could be miscues by the quarterback’s teammates.

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Photo of Scott Kacsmar Scott Kacsmar12/12/2024 - 09:24 am