VITO'S VIEWS

It would seem logical for the losing team in the Super Bowl to win it the following year.

Which explains why the Chiefs are favored to win it all this year after getting routed by the Bucs 31-9 in last year’s Super Bowl.

But it is more difficult for a losing team to win the Super Bowl the following year than you might think.

It has happened only once since 1972 when the perfect Dolphins won it all after losing to Dallas at the end of the 1971 season.

That team was the Pats when Tom Brady led them to a victory over the Rams after the 2019 season after they lost to the Eagles the previous season.

Now Brady, who won his seventh ring with the Bucs last year, is trying to repeat for the second time while the Chiefs are going for their third Super Bowl appearance in a row after they beat the 49ers two years ago and lost to the Bucs last year.

The problem for the Chiefs in last year’s Super Bowl is that their offensive line was ravaged and Andy Reid, not noted a premier playoff coach, didn’t adjust and Patrick Mahomes was running for his life much of the game.

Reid is only 17-15 in the playoffs and 1-2 in the Super Bowl and also didn’t coach well when his Eagles lost to the Patriots after the 2004 season. Trailing by 10 in the fourth quarter, Reid didn’t go to the huddle late in the fourth quarter and took two much time scoring a touchdown and lost by three.

This is a pivotal year for Reid as he enters his fourth year coaching Mahomes. The Chiefs put a lot of emphasis on improving their offensive line. We’ll see if that effort will pay dividends.

Does Reid join the elite ranks of two-time Super Bowl winning coaches or does he fall short again?

The Chiefs are virtually guaranteed a spot in the playoffs but then things will get dicey for Reid.

Reid has established himself as one of the great regular season coaches but has won only one title in 21 years as a head coach with the Eagles and Chiefs.

Now he has Mahomes in his prime for several years. We’ll see if he can win more rings with him.

We live in an era when several top coaches won it only once with a premier quarterback like Sean Payton with Drew Brees and Pete Carroll with Russell Wilson and Mike Tomlin with Ben Roethlisberger.

Reid doesn’t want that to be his legacy.

The odds appear to be against the Tampa Bay Bucs repeating.

Even though they have Tom Brady and virtually the entire team back that crushed the Chiefs in the Super Bowl, the oddsmakers still have the Chiefs favored to win it all. Tampa Bay is the second choice.

That is because repeating is more difficult than you would think in the 21^st century. It hasn’t been done since Brady and the Pats won back to back after the 2003 and 2004 seasons. Brady would win three more Super Bowls with the Pats but didn’t repeat each time. And didn’t repeat after he won the first one so he is one for six while trying to repeat.

He is now attempting to join Terry Bradshaw as the only quarterback to repeat twice.

Among the quarterbacks who have failed to repeat since Brady did it are the Mannings, Peyton and Eli, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger and Russell Wilson.

But if Brady does win his eighth and repeats twice, the Bucs have another challenge.

How do they top this year’s Super Bowl ring? They set a new ring standard.

Teams have been trying to outdo each other with gaudy rings in recent years, but the Bucs did something unique with a ring designed by Jason of Beverly Hills, a custom jeweler that has produced several rings for championship teams but had never done a Super Bowl ring.

The company CEO said the Bucs wanted to define what a Super Bowl ring looks like and since there comes a point where you can’t make them any bigger, he said you have to do better.

Their biggest innovation was the twist-off top, the first for a Super Bowl ring. On the bottom of the removal top, laser etched in gold, is the word HISTORIC along with a description of the fact the Bucs were the first team to win it on their home field.

When the top comes off, it reveals a handcrafted replica of Raymond James James Stadium. The left and right bands feature two panels, one customized for the player and other focused on the team.

On the top are two Lombardi Trophies in honor of the team’s two Super Bowl rings and it contains 15 carats of white diamonds and 14 karat yellow and white gold along with the team’s signature flag logo carved from red stone. The 319 diamonds represent the 31-9 final score.

Those are just some of the highlights of the rings – every person in the organization got one—and gives the players more incentive to repeat.

Imagine what that ring would look like if they do it.

Nick Saban’s legacy is that he is one of the best college coaches in NFL history.

He has won seven national championships, one more than Bear Bryant, who won six. And Saban may add more to his gaudy resume.

Yet there is one blemish on his coaching record that still seems to haunt him – his 15-17 record in Miami as an NFL coach in 2005 and 2006.

That record doesn’t diminish his reputation as a coach. Very few successful college coaches have won NFL titles. Paul Brown, Jimmy Johnson, Pete Carroll and Barry Switzer are the only four to do it and Switzer took over a team that won the two previous titles in Dallas under Johnson.

The signature moment of Saban’s short NFL career came when he bypassed signing an injured Drew Brees when he was a free agent and signed Daunte Culpepper. Brees, of course, went on to star for the Saints while Culpepper, who had knee injuries, was at the end of the line.

It was an obvious mistake by Saban, but he never takes responsibility for it. He blames the doctors for flunking Brees on the physical. Which wasn’t surprising because Brees arm was in a sling.

The interesting thing is that Saban doesn’t seem willing to let go of the narrative that it was the doctor’s fault that the Dolphins didn’t sign Brees.

He even brought it up again when Alabama linebacker Dylan Moses wasn’t drafted and signed as a free agent by the Jaguars. Moses missed the 2019 season with a torn ACL and then admitted he played last year in pain.

So it wasn’t surprising teams didn’t want to risk signing a player who admitted he played in pain last year and whose production dropped from 2018.

But Saban said the teams should have overlooked that fact he played hurt last year and drafted him. And then he brought up Brees and said it was another case where the doctors made a mistake.

“So I guess they (doctors) make mistakes, too,” he said.

Of course, we don’t know yet when they made a mistake on Moses until he proves he can play in the NFL on his damaged knee.

And Jason Cole, who covered the Dolphins when Saban was coaching them and said he enjoyed covering Saban, noted that Saban was in charge and could have signed Brees if he wanted to.

PFT made a similar point that Saban certainly could have found a doctor to give the green light to sign Brees if he wanted to. Sean Payton, the New Orleans coach signed him.

The larger issue is that Saban apparently can’t get over the Brees mistake.

But there’s one way Saban could still prove he can win in the NFL. He could leave Alabama and coach another NFL team. Certainly Saban would be in demand if he showed an interest in coming back to the NFL.

Of course, Saban isn’t going to do that. He has it too good at Alabama where he can recruit an unending stream of five-star players and usually has more talent than the opposing teams he faced.

So if Saban doesn’t want to coach in the NFL again, he should stop bringing up Brees as a reminder that his short tenure in the NFL wasn’t a success.

There is an old saying that owners own, coaches coach and players play.

For the San Francisco 49ers, things are a little more complicated and the roles are blurred.

That is why the 49ers’ decision to give up a third-round pick this year and their first-round picks the next two years to move up nine spots to draft Trey Lance with the third pick was a move with a lot of ramifications for the future of the team.

Yes, the same Lance who played just 19 college games at North Dakota State, just one last year.
And the team already has Jimmy Garoppolo, who obviously is no longer in their long-term plans.

Lance was one of the five quarterbacks drafted with the first 15 picks. The other four are Trevor Lawrence, Zach Wilson, Justin Fields and Mac Jones.

We all know that not all five are going to make it big. That’s not realistic.

What we don’t know is which ones are going to live up to expectations and which ones don’t.

It is fair to say, though, that the 49ers and Lance are in the most interesting situation.
To start with, they have to decide what is Garappolo’s future.

Coach Kyle Shanahan made a statement before the draft when asked about Jimmy G that he had to backtrack on after the draft.

“I totally bombed that,” Shanahan said. “I hated how that came off. I talked to Jimmy about it right away. I didn’t realize (how it sounded) when I did it. A person (reporter) I have a relationship with who sometimes he asks me what I think is a silly question, sometimes I mess with him back, and that’s kind of what I was doing. That was between me and that guy, had nothing to do with Jimmy when I said, ‘I didn’t know if we’d be alive Sunday.’ ”

As if things weren’t complicated enough, owner Jed York said publicly he asked Frank Gore for his opinion on the quarterbacks in the draft and he endorsed Lance.

It’s unusual for an owner to ask a player for his advice. Gore played with the 49ers for a decade and is currently a free agent.

Gore also said he would be OK if Garoppolo played for two more years before his contract runs out.

Let’s sort this out. There is no way Garoppolo is going to play two more seasons and then walk away as a free agent. He will be traded either before or after the upcoming season.

The larger question is how good Lance is going to be. If he turns out to be another Carson Wentz, Shanahan and general manager John Lynch are going to have some explaining to do. They have put their future in Lance’s hands and need Lance to be an elite quarterback.

It is like they are walking on a high wire without a net as they prepare for upcoming season.

Bum Phillips was fired by the late Houston Oilers owner Bud Adams at the end of the 1980 season after he lost to the eventual Super Bowl champion in the playoffs three years in a row.

Two years later, the Oilers were 1-8 in the strike season of 1982 and then went 2-14, 3-13 and 5-11 in the next three seasons.

That may be the best example of why it is usually not a good idea to fire a playoff coach because he keeps losing in the playoffs.

And it brings to mind the often overlooked reality that the goal isn’t winning the Super Bowl. It is to stay in contention to keep the fans coming and avoid those two or three win seasons.

Which brings us to the case of Steeler coach Mike Tomlin and the team’s recent decision to extend his contract through the 2024 season.

Giving him that long of an extension wasn’t that popular in Pittsburgh because of his record in the last decade – just three playoff wins — but it is the Steeler way of doing things. They’ve only had three coaches since 1969 when Chuck Noll was hired.

And it was really a two-year extension because they already had an option for the 2020 season.

The extension came off a frustrating season when the team started off 11-0 and then collapsed, losing five of the last six including an ugly 48-37 playoff loss to a Cleveland team that was missing its head coach because of Covid.

Despite having a Super Bowl victory on his resume, he has an 8-8 playoff record and hasn’t won a playoff game in four years.

He missed the playoffs two of those four years.
In his last two playoff losses, the Steelers gave up 93 points although turnovers played a big role in both losses. They lost to a Jacksonville team quarterbacked by Blake Bortles, 45-42, in 2017.

Tomlin didn’t appear to have his team ready to play either game and in the 2017 loss to the Jaguars, the perception was that they were looking past the Jaguars to an AFC title game duel against the Patriots.

Tomlin even said during the season that the elephant in the room was that they would be playing against the Patriots. It was a game they never got to play and it is never a good idea for a coach to publicly look ahead.

The bottom line is that even Tomlin likes to say the standard is the standard and not winning in the playoffs for four years in a row is not the standard for a team that has won six Super Bowls.

Still, Tomlin has never had a losing season in his 14 years as the Steeler coach and his winning percentage of .640 is better than any active coach except Bill Belichick.

And my colleague Clark Judge has written Tomlin should be in the conversation for a Hall of Fame berth.

Meanwhile, things aren’t going to get any easier for Tomlin the next four years.

Roethlisberger is near the end, and the team doesn’t have anyone waiting in the wings to replace him. The team appears to be something of a rebuilding mode.

Steelers owner Art Rooney II appears likely to stick with him as long as he continues to avoid having losing seasons. He knows that changing coaches can make things worse instead of better.

For the Steelers’ spoiled fan base, though, winning in the regular season is not the standard. They are looking for playoff victories and Super Bowl appearances.

Tomlin needs to show he can once again meet that standard.

Andy Reid is a member in good standing of the NFL’s 21st century coaching one and done club.

Since 2000, Bill Belichick has won six Super Bowls and Tom Coughlin won two.
No other coach has won more than one.

Reid has coached in three of them and lost two and was badly outcoached in both of the losses.

In last year’s Super Bowl loss to the Bucs, he didn’t adjust when he went into the game with a makeshift offensive line and Patrick Mahomes wound up running for his life.

That left Reid with a 17-15 playoff record in his 22-year coaching career. He still may get in the Hall of Fame. Bill Cowher made it with just one Super Bowl win. But like Cowher, he is not likely to be remembered as a Mt. Rushmore type coach unless he wins a couple more Super Bowls with Mahomes.

So is Reid going to get at least get a second Super Bowl victory or possibly even a third before he retires?

That is his challenge. And he has one thing going for him. He has Patrick Mahomes in his prime even though that doesn’t guarantee success.

Don Shula didn’t win a Super Bowl with John Unitas or Dan Marino although he won two and had a perfect season with Brian Griese. Sean Payton won one with Drew Brees. Tony Dungy won one with Peyton Manning.

But Reid and general manager Brett Veach made a major move recently to give Mahomes more protection when they traded for Orlando Brown of the Ravens. He will step into the left tackle spot vacated by Eric Fisher.

The Chiefs were fortunate Brown was on the market because the Ravens were already set at left tackle with Ronnie Stanley.

The only surprising thing is that the Ravens traded him to a team they will be trying to beat out for a Super Bowl spot.

It was probably their best offer, but it was a reasonable one for the Chiefs.

They gave up the 31st pick on the first round in return for the 58th pick on the second round so they moved down 27 spots and gave up a third and fourth round picks this year and a fifth round pick this year. The Chiefs also get a sixth round pick next year.

The Chiefs also shored up their line by signing guard Joe Thuney to a five-year, $80 million deal and luring former Pro Bowl guard Kyle Long out of retirement.

They also signed center Austin Blythe to a one-year deal and expect tackle Lucas Niang, who opted out last year, to return. They also think guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, a doctor who opted out last year to work with Covid patients, will return. They will have a much better line than the one that couldn’t block the Bucs in the Super Bowl.

So will this revamped line help Reid and Mahomes get their second Super Bowl victory and third appearance in a row this fall?

Stay tuned. This is one of the biggest questions about the upcoming season.

It wasn’t exactly news when Patriots owner Bob Kraft said during the offseason that the team hasn’t drafted well in recent years.

There is no doubt that the team’s poor drafting – along with the departure of Tom Brady – played a major role in the Patriots missing the playoffs last year with a 7-9 record.

The New York Post a year ago rated the Patriots drafting the previous five years as 25th in the league and noted they were one of two teams to not draft a Pro Bowler in that span. It didn’t help that the Patriots twice didn’t have a first round pick and twice picked 32nd.

Still the fact that Kraft said it raised eyebrows. Kraft has always defended Bill Belichick the last two decades, mainly because he won six Super Bowls. He was in Belichick’s corner when the coach faced controversies including Deflategate and filming the opposing team’s signals. And when Belichick went nine years without winning a Super Bowl when Brady was in his prime.

Kraft also said, “I really hope, and I believe, I’ve seen a different approach this year.”

Kraft didn’t elaborate on what this different approach is and it is not in Belichick’s DNA to give any answers.

In his lone press conference of the offseason, Belichick only made the generic comment that the Patriots are always trying to do better.
He did list several staffers who are playing major roles in the draft, seemingly suggesting he is not a one-man band.

One theory is that the Patriots need a general manager because Belichick is spread too thin running the whole show.

In the past, Brady was the Great Eraser, rubbing out the Belichick mistakes by carrying the team. One theory is that he left because he didn’t feel he had a good enough supporting cast. He found one in Tampa and won his seventh Super Bowl.

Whatever the problem is, Belichick will be under the microscope this year. Nobody expects him to win another Super Bowl but missing the playoffs a second year in a row would raise more questions about whether Belichick can turn this team around and what Kraft will do if he doesn’t.

Belichick did make a major plunge in free agency, spending $56.25 million in guaranteed money to bring in the top two tight ends on the market in Jonnu Smith and Henry Hunter. That is $5.25 million more in guaranteed money than he spent the last three years. That will give the quarterback two new targets.

What Belichick will do at quarterback in the draft is another big question. He’s got the 15th pick. Does he trade up to draft one on the first round? Does he draft one at 15 or not draft one on the first round, which he has never done in 26 years running the drafts with Cleveland and the Patriots.

For now, the quarterback is Cam Newton, who went 7-8 last year with eight touchdown passes and 10 picks. But he didn’t join the team until July and had to deal with a bout of Covid. Will he play better this year with a year in the system under his belt? We’ll see.

The only certain thing is that this will be a pivotal year for Belichick. Complicating the situation is the fact the AFC East is no longer a punching bag. The Patriots went 1-3 against the Bills and Dolphins last year. For years, winning the division was virtually guaranteed.

All this helps explain why Belichick needs to have a good draft if the Patriots are to be playoff worthy. He no longer has the Great Eraser to wipe out his mistakes. And he has an owner willing to publicly note his drafting record in recent years.

Times have changed for Belichick and we’ll see if he can adjust.

Derek Jeter was a Hall of Fame shortstop for the Yankees noted for being a good fielder who made spectacular plays and won five Golden Gloves.

But in the book “The Stats Game,” twin brothers Aidan and Maxwell Resnick say he wasn’t as good a fielder as his reputation.

They assert he didn’t have good range and was late getting to the ball and compensated by making what would be easy plays look difficult or spectacular.

This is in their book, the latest look at analytics in sports. It is a growing field as more and more analysts take a deeper dive into how we view the game.

For example, the authors say the eye test, especially watching on TV, doesn’t give a full look at Jeter fielding a grounder because we focus on the pitcher throwing the pitch and batter hitting it and by the time, we see Jeter he has already made a move to the ball.

The one drawback is that they don’t explain how they decided how Jeter ranks as a fielder and say that “multiple studies” reject the idea he was an elite defender, but don’t identify them except for a back of the book reference to an article about his “horrid” defense.

They also point out that Seattle throwing on second down from the one in the Super Bowl in the final minute when Russell Wilson was intercepted wasn’t as bad a call as it was reported at the time.

If they ran and were stopped on second down, they would have had to call their last timeout and then would have had to throw on third down.

But Bart Starr convinced Vince Lombardi to let him run a quarterback sneak on third down in the Ice Bowl and he scored, so you never know.

They don’t examine whether the problem was the kind of throw in the middle of the field in traffic when the receiver could be bumped instead of having Wilson throw to back of the end zone or sprinting out on a pass-run option. Or how many times the Seahawks had used that play from the one.

They give the stats on the chances of scoring from the one from 2010 to 2014 but don’t discuss what type of run or pass is best in that situation.

The Patriots mentioned after the game that Malcolm Butler, who made the interception, was beaten on that play in practice the week of the Super Bowl so Seattle may have used it one too many times.

Overall, though, sports fans will enjoy the book because of their insights on all the major sports.

Wilt Chamberlain is celebrated for averaging 50 points a game but he also tried more shots than most players.

Rafael Nadal dominated Roger Federer because of his advantage against him on clay.

They also discussed the dangers of making decisions on small sample size as the Red Sox did after they obtained pitcher Nathan Eovaldo from Tampa Bay and utility player Steve Pearce from Toronto in June of 2018 and they helped them win the World Series. They then overpaid them and wound up regretting it.

They also study the strategy of starting a game with a relief pitcher for an inning or two before bringing in the regular starter because pitchers often struggle the third time through the lineup.

Tampa Bay has used that strategy at times although some starters have objected to it and it is difficult to imagine not expecting great pitchers like Sandy Koufax or Bob Gibson to pitch all nine innings.

There is much more in the book and the authors discuss how computer science and machine learning is evolving and who knows what sports analytics will look like 50 years from now.

For now, they point out that when sports fans watch sports, they should question everything they encounter more so than ever before.

The days of doing things one way before they have always been done that way may be fading.

— The torch wasn’t passed to a new generation in this Super Bowl. Tom Brady held it firmly in his hands to win his seventh Super Bowl as Tampa Bay routed the favored Chiefs. It was his first with a new team and means he has more Super Bowl rings than any team. The Steelers and Patriots have six each. 

— For the Chiefs, it was a night of running into a perfect storm. With both tackles injured, the Bucs were able to rush four, drop seven in coverage with two deep safeties. And the Chiefs made no adjustments and Patrick Mahomes was running for his life much of the game as he was pressured 29 times.  On top of that, the officials called some ticky tacky fouls Chiefs and, as usual, Andy Reid made some coaching blunders. He is 17-15 in the playoffs, 1-2 in Super Bowls, 0-4 in playoffs vs. Brady. His lack of adjustments when Chiefs saw they couldn’t block the Bucs front four and calling two-time outs at the end of the first half to help the Bucs score were inexcusable. And his team didn’t look well+ prepared. Reid also admitted after the game he should have helped Mahomes with more running plays. Then he also had to deal with his son’s traffic accident that left a young girl fighting for her life and raised questions about whether coaches should hire their sons or let them make it on their own.

— If the Chiefs had won, they would have been going for a threepeat and there would have been talk about a dynasty. Now there are questions about their future. As a Super Bowl loser, the odds are against them winning in 2021. Since Miami did it in 1972, the only team to lose the Super Bowl and win it the next year were the Patriots and Brady two years ago.

— If the Mahomes had won, he would have been trailing Brady in Super Bowls 6-2 with a lot of years to match him. Now the gap is 7-1. And while he figures to win again, the odds are against him catching Brady. And there are no guarantees he will win again. Brett Favre and Russell Wilson won one, lose one the next year and haven’t been back. Dan Marino lost one in his second year and never returned. Aaron Rodgers and Drew Brees each won one and haven‘t returned. Mahomes is still a wunderkind quarterback, but Reid has to coach better and fix the offensive line problems in particular if they are to return.

— Now the question is whether the Bucs can become the first team to repeat since Brady did it in 2003-2004. Only one quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, repeated twice. If Brady wins the next two, he can become the first quarterback to win three Super Bowls in a row and the second to win four in six years. Bradshaw is the only quarterback to do that. It seems crazy to talk about Brady winning two more, but he showed once again you can’t bet against him.

— Besides Reid, another loser was his offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, who was bypassed for a head job the last two years. It is not going to be any easier now considering the way the NFL snubs minority coaches.

–A nother loser was Bill Belichick, who went from being called the best coach ever to having questions raised about whether all his success was about Brady. He has a losing record without Brady, and Max Kellerman said on ESPN that Belichick needs to show he can win a Super Bowl without him. Stephen Smith (do I have to use the A?) said he doesn’t question Belichick as a coach but as a GM. He also said he didn’t make Brady feel wanted and that is one of the reasons he left. Don’t know whether that is true, but it is not Belichick’s style to give his players much love. And now Belichick has to counter with young promising AFC coaches, including Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Josh Allen, Baker Mayfield, Joe Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa and probably Trevor Lawrence. And Deshaun Watson could stay in the conference.

— The three big winners were coach Bruce Arians, who seemingly retired a couple of times, but showed he is underrated as a coach, and his two minority coordinators, Todd Bowles and Bryon Leftwich. Bowles has been fired once and Leftwich didn’t get an interview this year. They will get noticed now, but no guarantee of a head job. The NFL still has a sorry record on hiring minority coaches.  

This year’s Super Bowl is being hyped as the best quarterback matchup of all time – Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes.

But sometimes the hype doesn’t live up to the reality. This may be the most interesting matchup because it could be a passing of the torch from the best of this generation to probably the best of the next generation.

Still, it doesn’t match Bart Starr vs. Len Dawson in the first Super Bowl or Terry Bradshaw vs. Roger Staubach twice in four years in the 1970s to decide the team of the decade.

In those duels, both quarterbacks were at the top of their games. The Drew Brees-Peyton Manning matchup also featured two HOF QBs in their prime. This Super Bowl is like the old Western movie in which the young gunslinger challenges the old gunfighter.

It is amazing that Brady got here at age 43, but he is no longer in his prime. He threw picks on three consecutive second half drives against Green Bay but the Packers handed the Bucs an easy touchdown with a bad defensive strategy at the end of the first half.

And Packers coach Matt LeFleur took the ball out of Aaron Rodgers’ hands on fourth down with just over two minutes left to take a field goal and cut the deficit from eight to five points. He never got the ball back. And he also went for two too early.

You can’t make mistakes like that against Brady.

Mahomes, by contrast, is just reaching his prime at age 25 in his fourth season. A victory will give him two rings in his first four years just like Brady did, and he will then be shooting to match Brady’s record of winning three in his first five years next year.

He also would be attempting to become the first quarterback to threepeat in the Super Bowl era. Green Bay won three in a row twice in 1929-30-31 and 1965-66-67, but only the last two games were in the Super Bowl era.

Also, a win this year would give Mahomes a realistic shot of matching Brady’s record of six Super Bowl wins over the next decade and a half. After all, Brady won three on his first five years and then didn’t win another one for the next nine years and lost twice to the Giants in that span before adding three more.

Mahomes is obviously the better of the two quarterbacks at this point. Which is why two-thirds of the betting action is on Kansas City covering the three-point spread.

Still, the Chiefs have a beat-up line after losing tackle Eric Fisher last week and the Bucs have a good rushing line and can put a lot of pressure on Mahomes.

And being the better quarterback in the Super Bowl doesn’t guarantee success. Walterfootball.com notes that in the Brady era, the better quarterback is only 5-12 against the spread in the Super Bowl.

And Brady lost to Eli Manning twice and once to Nick Foles even though he was the better quarterback. And he beat Kurt Warner in his first Super Bowl when Warner was better at that point.

Brady also didn’t cover the spread against Jake Delhomme or Donovan McNabb although he won both games. And if Mahomes loses this one, he is not likely to challenge the GOAT. He would be trailing Brady 7-1 in Super Bowls rather than 6-2. Winning six more would be more daunting than four more.

So, this is a Super Bowl about what the legacy of both quarterbacks will be.

If Mahomes is going to someday be remembered as good as or even better than Brady, he has to win this game. Brady will still be the GOAT of his time even if he loses but a 6-4 Super Bowl record wouldn’t be as impressive as a 7-3 mark.

It may not be the best quarterback matchup, but this game is still all about Mahomes and Brady.