The tension between the individual and the collective is everywhere in the N.F.L., a league that likes to have it both ways.

It slipped through the receiver’s hands and hit him in the face. As he fell, fully laid out, his body parallel to the ground, he slung a sidearm pass into the end zone. On the very next play, on fourth down, Mahomes appeared to be tripped for a loss. The intended receiver nearly pulled it in. He spun a second time, and, as he spun, he heaved the ball into the corner of the end zone, an unthinkable throw. But, too many times, the intended receiver was perfectly covered or dropped it.Įarly in the fourth quarter, Mahomes hiked the ball and dropped back, and then back some more, searching for an open receiver as he ran toward the left sideline, then spinning as Barrett grabbed hold of him. If there was a target downfield, he found it even as he fell, his whiplike wrists could send the ball thirty yards. (Brady, meanwhile, was pressured only four times.) Mahomes tried to extend plays with his speed and improvisational gifts, and he usually managed to get off the ball before being dragged to the turf. Mahomes was pressured on more than half of his drop-backs-the most of any quarterback in Super Bowl history. Again and again, Barrett, Ndamukong Suh, and other Bucs defenders bore down on him. Brady may have added to his already unprecedented résumé, but the quarterback who impressed me most was the one who lost.Īgain and again, the pocket was breached and Mahomes was hunted. What’s more, the game’s truly breathtaking plays belonged to Mahomes.

Mahomes was playing in front of a patchwork, ineffective offensive line, and facing a defense that looked nothing like the one he’d torched in week twelve of the regular season. Mahomes might be the most talented player of his generation, maybe ever, but he finished the game grass-stained, glassy-eyed, limping, and defeated.īut the predetermined narrative was the wrong one: the game was not actually decided by the quarterback matchup. He was sacked three times and threw two interceptions, and he completed only about half of his passes. He did not reach a hundred passing yards until there was less than a minute left in the third quarter. He started the game by completing just one of his six first passes, and that one only for three yards. the Kid-and that was always the way it was going to be seen.īy his own exalted standards and his stat line, Mahomes had a miserable game. For two weeks, the matchup between Tampa Bay and Kansas City had been hyped as the greatest of all time against the greatest in the game today- the GOAT vs. But no one was surprised when Brady, and not the linebacker Shaquil Barrett, walked away with the M.V.P. The defensive coördinator Todd Bowles used a creative game plan to harass the Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and the Bucs held the league’s most explosive offense without a touchdown.

His arm, improbably, seemed to grow stronger as the weeks passed.īrady had more than a little help from the Bucs’ defense. It took Brady about half a season to master the Tampa Bay playbook and mold the offense to himself. Two of the scores were caught by his old teammate in New England, Rob Gronkowski, whom he’d coaxed out of retirement, and the third went to Antonio Brown, a player he’d intensively recruited. He completed twenty-one of twenty-nine passes, for two hundred and one yards and three touchdowns. Well protected by a stellar offensive line-and aided by a tenacious running back, Leonard Fournette, who kept Kansas City’s pass rush honest-Brady was rarely harried, always balanced, always in control. On Sunday, in dismantling the Kansas City Chiefs, 31–9, Brady was nearly perfect. (All six of the Patriots’ titles were won with Brady as quarterback.) Brady is reportedly forty-three, and this Super Bowl was his third since he turned forty. By himself, Brady now has more Super Bowl titles than either the New England Patriots or the Pittsburgh Steelers, the two teams with the most Super Bowl titles in N.F.L. On Sunday night, Brady, the quarterback of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, appeared in his tenth Super Bowl, and won his seventh ring. The story of Super Bowl LV is, inescapably, Thomas Edward Patrick Brady, Jr.

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