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Aaron Rodgers and Patrick Mahomes have one Super Bowl each. Of course, the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback's Super Bowl was much more recent, but on the cosmic scale, both Super Bowls are equally respectable. Which quarterback played a bigger role in their team's run to the Super Bowl?
Both quarterbacks had several similarities in their runs. Both the Packers quarterback and the Chiefs quarterback needed some miraculous comebacks to make it happen and beat the odds.
During the Chiefs' run to the big game, Mahomes led several massive comebacks in the playoffs that year. Without him, most assumed that the Houston Texans or the San Francisco 49ers would have defeated them.
On the other hand, the Packers quarterback sneaked into the wild card round of the playoffs and managed to beat every team Green Bay faced, including multiple games on the road. Both quarterbacks led their teams in a critical way, but which quarterback was more indispensable?
In 2019, Mahomes led his team on multiple incredible comebacks that most would call impossible if they hadn't happened. At one point in their first playoff game (against the Texans), the team fell back 24-0. By halftime, they were up 28-24. Mahomes deserves much of the credit for that.
In the next game, the quarterback won much more comfortably by 35-24. However, he needed to make another clutch comeback in the Super Bowl. In the game against the 49ers, the Chiefs fell behind 20-10 entering the fourth quarter. By the end of the final quarter, they had flipped the score to 31-20.
Of course, the playoffs are critical in any Super Bowl victory, but how did Mahomes play in the games leading up to January? He played in 14 contests and went 11-3 in those games. He threw for 26 touchdowns and five interceptions. Oddly enough, it was arguably his worst regular-season statistical performance.
Aaron Rodgers' Super Bowl win
Aaron Rodgers' run to hoisting the Lombardi Trophy was also quite unlikely at times. In the regular season, the quarterback threw for 28 touchdowns and 11 interceptions and went 10-5, falling just shy of the Chiefs quarterback's regular-season accomplishments. His 28 touchdowns and 11 interceptions are similar to what Mahomes accomplished in his regular season.
That said, the Packers quarterback came up short on the interception side, throwing roughly double the number of the Chiefs quarterback. However, entering the playoffs, the Packers were a wild card and needed their quarterback to perform at a higher level to overcome the crowd noise associated with not having a home-field advantage.
In their first matchup, they faced the Philadelphia Eagles. Rodgers won the game after putting up 21 points. The Eagles scored 16 points. He helped eviscerate the Atlanta Falcons in the next game, winning 48-21. In the conference championship, he helped survive a strong fourth-quarter comeback, winning 21-14.
Then, in the quarterback's lone Super Bowl win, he helped the team win a back-and-forth battle with the Pittsburgh Steelers. The final score was 31-25.
Still, getting the team out of a challenging position doesn't excuse putting the team in one, to begin with. Both quarterbacks are guilty of this at one point or another. Rodgers made things tougher on the team by going 10-5 in the regular season. Mahomes made things tougher on the Chiefs in the playoffs.
Mahomes played fewer games than Rodgers in the regular season and started slow enough to put the team in strong peril of ending their season early. As such, while both players did more than most quarterbacks in helping their team win a Super Bowl, Rodgers did more when there was more pressure in the playoffs by not putting the team in a position where they could lose hope.
The Chiefs could have given up when they were down in the Super Bowl or in the game against the Texans, but they did not. However, it was much more tempting to do so, and the Chiefs quarterback needed his team not to quit to help him make up for his mistakes. As such, Rodgers was more critical in his team's success than Mahomes.
