How Patrick Mahomes' resume stacks up against the all-time great athletes through 7 seasons
Patrick Mahomes has accomplished a lot in his first seven seasons in the NFL.
The Kansas City Chiefs traded up to No. 10 in the 2017 draft to select Mahomes and after one season of backing up Alex Smith, he was thrust into the starting role in 2018. He won the MVP and the Offensive Player of the Year award with 50 touchdown passes and 5,097 passing yards.
By Year 3, he was a Super Bowl champion and at the end of Year 7, he’s a three-time Super Bowl champion with two MVP awards on his mantel.
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Mahomes is on pace to become one of the greatest professional athletes in the big four North American sports of the last 45 years. He still has a ways to go to really hit his full potential and really build out a legendary resume that would transcend professional football.
Where does Mahomes stack up against some of the other great athletes through their first seven seasons.
The Mahomes-Tom Brady comparison is an interesting. Sure, their careers are a bit different since Mahomes didn’t give the ol’ Wally Pipp to Smith to start his career like Brady did to Drew Bledsoe eventually. Brady also won his first title in the first year he took over from Bledsoe.
However, Brady won his third Super Bowl ring in his fifth season but had three total rings through his first seven years. Both players won their third on back-to-back Super Bowl titles and the Chiefs were the first team to win in consecutive years since Brady’s 2003 and 2004 New England Patriots teams.
Peyton Manning was given the keys to the Indianapolis Colts franchise immediately in 1998 and he led the league in interceptions with 28 in his rookie year. But with more pieces around him as his career got going, the better he got.
In 2003 and 2004, he won the NFL MVP awards. However, he wouldn’t win a Super Bowl until Year 9 and by the time he retired he would only have two to his name,
Michael Jordan was arguably the greatest basketball player of all time but his NBA career didn’t start off with a championship. The Chicago Bulls didn’t make an NBA Finals appearance until the 1990-91 season against the Los Angeles Lakers. Jordan was already in his seventh year at that point.
The first title in 1991 was the first of Jordan’s three-peat with the Bulls. He would help them to three more titles at the end of his tenure in Chicago.
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The late Kobe Bryant is often talked about as one whose career rivaled Jordan. He got his first three rings with Shaquille O’Neal by his side and his last with Pau Gasol. The winning was done at two different times in Bryant’s career, much like Jordan’s.
Bryant had his three titles by Year 7, much like Mahomes. However, he had no MVPs on his resume which may be the most blasphemous thing about Bryant’s on-court career in retrospect.
LeBron James came into the NBA in the middle of Bryant’s NBA career and at the end of Jordan’s. He started with the Cleveland Cavaliers and was touted as the next big thing in basketball. James played up to that as he dragged several Cavaliers teams as far as he could but didn’t win his first ring until he was with the Miami Heat.
At season 21 with the Lakers, James has four titles to his credit. The window for him appears to be closing ever so slowly unless Los Angeles could pull off a miracle this season.
Statistically, Derek Jeter probably wouldn’t be lauded but in the late 1990s and through the 2000s there probably wasn’t a player New York Yankees fans trusted more to either get a hit or make a big play to alter the course of the game. Now, who does that sound like?
Jeter won four World Series titles through his first seven years in the Bronx and picked up his fifth title in 2009.
He’s called "The Great One" for a reason and nobody’s resume probably would stack up against the top hockey player of all time. Gretzky spent his first few seasons with the Edmonton Oilers before he was eventually with the Los Angeles Kings, St. Louis Blues and New York Rangers.
He started winning Hart Trophies at will to begin his career and then the Stanley Cup titles came too. He won four titles in two separate back-to-back stints – all for the Oilers. The final two game in 1987 and 1988.