Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady will play each other in a true Super Bowl preview
By Josh Hill
Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes could battle two more times this season, in the same stadium for all the marbles.
There’s a very real chance that Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady will see each other two more times before this upcoming season is over, with both games taking place in Tampa. The first meeting is rumored to be set for Week 12 of the regular season, and the other could happen when the Super Bowl kicks off in the same stadium just 10 weeks later.
Should that happen, Brady will have played Mahomes five times in the last three seasons.
It’s actually rather incredible that Mahomes has already met Brady three times in his short career. For context, Brady will be facing Drew Brees and the Saints in Week 1, something that has also only happened three times despite Brees having a decade headstart on Mahomes.
Of course, the Chiefs and Patriots playing in the AFC presented more opportunities to meet, with one of the three meetings coming in the AFC Championship Game back in 2018. Had the Patriots not been upset in the Wild Card round by the Tennessee Titans last year, all signs pointed towards the fourth meeting of Brady and Mahomes happening in the playoffs.
Instead, that fourth meeting will happen in Week 12 of the 2020 season, with the Chiefs traveling to Tampa to take on the Buccaneers. Coincidentally, it could be a Super Bowl preview in every regard, with two teams and two quarterbacks expected to be in Super Bowl 55 in the very stadium where the game will be played.
One thing that was missing from the Chiefs miraculous Super Bowl run last year was the toppling of the Patriots. Chiefs fans will point to the regular season victory in Foxboro as the defacto dethroning, but we never got a true passing of the torch moment in the playoffs.
What better place for the Brady-Mahomes rivalry to culminate its short existence than in a winner-take-all Super Bowl showdown?
Brady may be with a new team, and Mahomes is galaxy brain better than where he was in 2018, but there’s still a postseason score that needs to be settled and we could get both a test run and the real deal in 2020.