NFL: Kansas City Chiefs at New England Patriots
USATSI

Patrick Mahomes has enjoyed just about as perfect of a start to an NFL career as you can ask for. The Chiefs quarterback is set to play in his third Super Bowl and just claimed the second MVP award of his career on Thursday night at the NFL Honors. Considering just how impressive Mahomes' burst onto the scene has been, there is the natural question of where all this could ultimately take him, and possibly one day have him leaping over Tom Brady as the greatest of all time. 

"I'm trying to catch Tom," Mahomes told reporters Thursday. "But Tom's a long ways away, you can ask me when I'm like 38 years old."

The 27-year-old was asked a similar question during Super Bowl Opening Night on Monday and acknowledged that it will be a challenge to match Brady with all of his career accomplishments, saying: "It's gonna be tough. I mean, seven Super Bowl victories, 10 Super Bowls. There's a reason why he's so far ahead of everybody else. It's hard to do, but I'll do my best to chase it. But I've got to start off with trying to win this one this week. So I've just got to focus on today and then tomorrow until we get to Sunday. And then let's go out there and play our best ball game."

Brady finished his career holding just about every meaningful record that you'd ever aspire for, including the most Super Bowl wins, most career passing yards, touchdowns, wins, and postseason victories. Now that he's officially retired, Brady no longer will be able to continue running up the score on all of his records, which gives Mahomes concrete numbers to eye. 

Since Mahomes became Kansas City's full-time starter to begin the 2018 season, he has led the Chiefs to AFC Championship berths (at home) in each of his five seasons. He also now has two MVPs on his resume, three All-Pro selections (one second team), led the league in passing touchdowns twice, and owns the NFL record with 5,614 total yards in a single season. As we said, it's about as good of a start as you could hope for. 

However, Sunday's game against Philadelphia will be critical for Mahomes in his pursuit of Brady as a victory would give him two Super Bowl wins. That in itself is a remarkable feat in NFL history but, if he ever wants to one day match Brady's total of seven championships, he needs to make every trip to the big game count.