It was the game billed as GOAT vs Kid – equivalent to Michael Jordan vs Lebron James – as Tom Brady’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers took on Patrick Mahomes’ Kansas City Chiefs at the Super Bowl LV.
As reigning champions, the Chiefs headed into the game as favourites and with Mahomes the most valuable player, it seemed this was the night the torch would pass from 43-year-old Brady to 25-year-old Mahomes.
Only then, so often in sport, the scripts flipped and the sporting world witnessed a dominant performance which cemented a superstar’s legacy.
Domination on Defence
Since Patrick Mahomes’ debut in 2018, he’s been unstoppable, taking a very good Kansas City and turning them into a championship-winning team. At the same time winning MVP, a Super Bowl and Super Bowl MVP.
Under his command, the Kansas City offence averaged over 30 points a game and became an unstoppable force, which many expected to continue in the Super Bowl – how wrong they were.
Mahomes is phenomenal, one of the best quarterbacks in the game, yet he couldn’t solve the problem the Tampa Bay defence presented. Each time he got the ball and ran for his life, he invariably got hunted down by four 100kg-plus tacklers who wanted to take his head off.
Four to one is a losing combination in any sport. The pressure was so severe that Mahomes ran for almost 500 yards trying to evade the tacklers. For a quarterback 100 yards is extraordinary, whilst 500 is mind-boggling.
With all that pressure it is no surprise the Kansas City Chiefs didn’t score a single touchdown, with their nine points all coming from kicks and in one night, the NFL’s unstoppable force got destroyed by a superior team.
A key element to any match is the team-dependency with each team consisting of three components; quarterback, offensive line and receivers. If one of those units gets dominated, it makes the game very tough. If two are overwhelmed, it makes the game impossible.
An offensive line’s job is to protect and block for the quarterback and unfortunately, on the night, the Chief offensive line got crushed by the Tampa defence, overwhelming Mahomes as a quarterback.
It was a ruthless display from Tampa Bay with their physicality and skill of defence dominating.
For the Chiefs, when their receivers aren’t open for a catch, offensive line can’t block, and the quarterback is taking hit after hit; there is nothing any individual can do, regardless of how amazing they may be.
Tom Brady
Tom Brady is the greatest competitor in team-sports history.
The Michigan great was selected with the 199th pick in the 2000 NFL draft, which he viewed as an insult from the other NFL teams. Yet, ever since that moment, Brady vowed to silence the critics.
Seven championships later, Brady achieved just that, coming off the bench to lead the New England Patriots to their first Super Bowl title, with two more championships quickly following in 2003 and 2004.
In his first five years in the NFL, Brady won the ultimate prize three different times and was destined for the Hall of Fame.
The next seven years saw Brady come back from a career-threatening injury to grab multiple MVP awards and achieve the holy grail by being undefeated.
Brady soon hit a Super Bowl drought with two defeats in 2008 and 2012 stinging him – there was even chatter that he was no longer good enough.
Then came the latest trophy-laden run, winning four more titles – an accomplishment fuelled by a complete lifestyle change and pioneering TB12 method; consisting of eating avocado ice cream and drinking gallons of water while sleeping for an excessive amount of time.
Brady found a new relentlessness in the third act of his career. He wakes up at five in the morning to analyse game-film.
Before this Super Bowl, he asked if his wife and kids could leave so he could get 12 days of total preparation. After winning everything plus earning millions of dollars, Brady’s freakish need to prove people wrong is still fuelling him.
There is one more thing which sets Brady a part from everyone else, the ice in his veins.
When he came off the bench to lead New England to their first Super Bowl back in 2002, Brady moved the offence down the field with less than two minutes left. He did it again in the two subsequent Super Bowls in 2003 and 2004.
Tom Brady stands up with the pressure at its most intense; he elevates his game to a higher level. That is the real sign of greatness, that is what Michael Jordan, Cristiano Ronaldo and Serena Williams all possess.
At 43-years-old he is still performing at an incredibly high level, a feat almost unheard of in NFL history. Yet, the scary thing for everyone else occurred post-game when Brady spoke uttered the words; “We’re going to come back.” For most sports stars we’d brush this off as bravado but not with Brady as he is clearly not going anywhere.
The last time Tom Brady didn’t play in the NFL, this writer hadn’t started school yet. He is the most significant competitor in team sports and he’s already carved out his legacy, yet he still wants more.
