Tom Brady playoff stats: How does the seven-time Super Bowl winner's stats compare to Patrick Mahomes' early years?
If anyone has positioned themselves to challenge Tom Brady as the best quarterback in the NFL, it is Patrick Mahomes. The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback is having an MVP caliber season, notwithstanding their loss to the Cincinnati Bengals.
Brady, meanwhile, kept doing GOAT things by leading the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to 14 points in three minutes to vanquish the New Orleans Saints. Ultimately, even with a weaker record in the regular season, the Buccaneers are well placed to make it to the playoffs as division winners. This is solely due to weaknesses in the NFC South.
If and when they get there, Brady will be in familiar territory as there has been none better in NFL history at winning playoff games than him. Patrick Mahomes, as brilliant as he has been, is yet to defeat Tom Brady in the playoffs.
It is almost an established fact that Brady is phenomenal in the playoffs. But beyond that narrative are the actual stats. The truth is that Brady has often had help from his teams to take him over the hump, even when he has not been at his best.
A case in point is his performance in NFL Championship games. His passer rating is in the low 80's in AFC Championships and was just 73.8 in his sole NFC Championship game. Keep in mind that he has won way more of them than he has lost. It points to the team's performances taking precedence over his individual performances in the playoffs.
So, looking only at personal stats, how do Patrick Mahomes' stats compare to that of the seven-time Super Bowl champion? We did some digging to find out.
Tom Brady versus Patrick Mahomes in the postseason
Tom Brady has played more postseason games than any player in NFL history. His passer rating across all games is 90.4. He has thrown for 86 touchdowns and 39 interceptions in that time. His completion rate is 61.3. He has thrown for a whopping 13,049 yards in the playoffs alone at 277.6 yards per game.
Let's compare these baseline figures with those of Patrick Mahomes. Mahomes has only played four seasons as a starter and has made it to the postseason every time. He has played 11 games in the playoffs and thrown for 3,381 yards. That is an average of 307.4 yards per game and nearly 30 yards more than Brady's average.
Mahomes has completed 280 passes out of a 423 attempts for a 70 percent completion rate. This is nearly 10 percent higher than Tom Brady. Mahomes has 28 touchdowns and just seven interceptions. Brady's touchdown to interception ratio comes out at 2.2 over his playoffs career. Patrick Mahomes obliterates it with a ratio of four touchdowns per interception.
Let's also look at the first couple of seasons for Brady when he led the New England Patriots to Super Bowl victories. He threw for six touchdowns and three interceptions over two seasons in the playoffs in 2001 and 2003. His completion percentage was around 60 percent. His passer rating in 2001 was 77.3 and 84.5 in 2003. This even excludes fumbles like those that happened in the famous tuck rule game.
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This shows that Patrick Mahomes has been far more accomplished in the playoffs than Tom Brady. Does that mean that Mahomes is going to catch up to Brady's record of Super Bowl wins? There is no guarantee because football is a team sport and it is the sum of all the parts that win games. Great quarterbacks like Dan Marino, Frank Tarkenton and Jim Kelly never won Super Bowls, but Carson Wentz and Nick Foles shared a ring.
Matthew Stafford is a Super Bowl champion, while Dan Marino, Matt Ryan, Phillip Rivers, Jim Kelly, Warren Moon and Frank Tarkenton never did or never will. There is no justice. Must be nice to have a defence
Patrick Mahomes is doing better than Tom Brady individually in the playoffs. Whether the team will come together at the right moment to complement him at the right time is a question for the future.