To win a Super Bowl, Quarterbacks have to break through the Patrick Mahomes ceiling

From 2004 to 2019, AFC was largely dominated – at least in the playoffs – by three quarterbacks.

In the 16-year-old stretch, the conference was represented in the Super Bowl by Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlisberger, combined 15 times. (The Lone Party Crasher was Joe Flacco in 2013.)

Since 2020, however, this dominance has changed to a person: Patrick Mahomes, who stands a win on Sunday from his fifth Super Bowl performance of six years. And in his constant parade to the Super Bowl after Super Bowl, Mahomes has left in his waking up a murderer’s series of quarterbacks that may have already won – or at least appeared in – championships in another era.

Several contemporary luminaires have been drafting quarterback since Mahomes was Kansas City Chiefs’ full-time starts in 2018. In that year, both Lamar Jackson (probably on the way to a third MVP award) and Josh Allen were prepared by Baltimore Ravens and Buffalo Bills respectively, . None of them have defeated Mahomes in the playoffs.

The 2020 draft, like Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen hurt Mahomes’ list of enemies.

Herbert’s Los Angeles chargers are 2-8 against Chiefs since he was drafted. Burrow, Tagovailoa and Hurts meanwhile are a combined 1-3 against him in the playoffs. Burrow, in his honor, is the only quarterback that defeats Mahomes in a road autumn game this decade. (Mahomes’ only other loss of leading dish came against Tom Brady 2019.)

Other signal call assignments that have had the pleasure of losing to Mahomes in the final game are formerly No. 1 Election Trevor Lawrence and Baker Mayfield and the latest addition to the list of this year, Houston Texans Quarterback CJ Stroud.

Like, for example, LeBron James during his race of the NBA final appearances from 2011 to 2018, Mahomes is the ultimate bogeman for a AFC team trying to win a Super Bowl. He is the last boss. If a quarterback wants to win a title, there is almost no avoidance that he will have to beat Mahomes in Kansas City.

No player is more acutely aware of it than Allen, whose bills have lost to Chiefs in the playoffs three times since 2020. The first year, the last time Kansas City and Buffalo played in the conference championship, Bills lost 38-24.

The next season, Buffalo lost 42-36 in one of the most famous matches in the NFL Playoff story as Chiefs ran 44 yards in the last 13 seconds of regulation for a game-binding field goal before eventually won over time. Last year, Buffalo lost 27-24 at home as Kicker Tyler Bass missed a potential game-binding kick with less than two minutes to walk.

When Allen leads the bills into Kansas City on Sunday, he not only represents a franchise that knows too well follows the feeling of falling as short as possible. He will also represent the current quarterback generation’s best chance of turning off Mahomes.

Until now, the only other two quarterbacks that won the Super Bowls since Mahomes became a starter, Brady (who calls this year’s big match for Fox) and Matthew Stafford. Brady and Stafford were drafted before 2010.

If Allen wins Sunday, he will make sure a quarterback after Mahomes wins a Super Bowl for the first time, with either Eagles’ Hurts or Washington Commanders Rookie Jayden Daniels coming out of the NFC.

However, if Mahomes wins, he will ensure that the ceiling he has placed over most of his competition remains intact, at least for two weeks to.