Interesting argument you've got here man, but the one question I can't get over: How can Mahomes be above Rodgers in the GOAT debate when Rodgers was such a superior individual player?
I'll explain: When you match the two up year by year, Patrick's 2022 and Aaron's 2020 are about the same. Patrick's 2020 and Aaron's 2014 are about the same. Patrick's 2023 and Aaron's 2008 are about equal, and Patrick's 2019 about matches up with Aaron's 2012.
This leaves Patrick's best season (2018) to go against Aaron's best (2011), which is no contest in favour of Aaron, especially considering neither were able to win the SB in their best year.
In my mind, there's a Tier of modern era QB season including only 2004 Manning, 2007 Brady, and 2011 Rodgers. Until you can have a season that lands you in this Tier I can't include you in my GOAT debate, because I can't answer the question of why they never had a season this good.
Sorry this comment got a little long (I can write a whole post about this), and I understand the team accomplishments argument. I just think individual talent has to come into the GOAT argument in some capacity. Until Patrick has a season that gets into that top Tier he's just not there for me.
Ya I would argue Mahomes has Rodgers beat on talent and Brady has Rodgers beat on accomplishments. Now that Mahomes has Rodgers beat on accomplishments too (2 mvps, 3 rings > 4 mvps, 1 ring) it's kinda over for Rodgers. He is top 5 all time, surely, but just doesnt have the GOAT accolades.
Why would you argue that? I've never seen Pat do anything Aaron couldn't do. Sure, Aaron never tried any no look passes, but Patrick isn't the king of the hail Mary, so on the useless skills front we're even at best.
Also, you never answered me. If Patrick is in your GOAT conversation, how come he's never had a GOAT level season? Peyton and Aaron both had theirs at 28. Tom did it at 30, so he's running out of years to do it.
If you list each of their best seasons by QBR, you get first: Mahomes 2018 (80.3) Rodgers 2011 (83.8); second: Mahomes 2022 (79) Rodgers 2020 (79.8); third: Mahomes 2020 (78.1) Rodgers 2014 (77.8); and fourth: Mahomes 2019 (77.1) Rodgers 2021 (74.1). So I'm not sure where you're getting the argument that Rodgers was "such a superior individual player". Or that Rodgers 2011 vs Mahomes 2018 was "no contest in favor of Rodgers" (Rodgers was better, but it's not like it was by a wide margin). Not to mention, two of Rodgers' best seasons here were a decade plus into his career after a prolonged slump and a coaching change, whereas Mahomes is already matching him just seven years in. And that's without even getting into the postseason.
To me, before Patrick can pass Aaron in any kind of discussion like this, he must match Aaron's 2011. It's as simple as that. I'm a big 'peak performance' guy, and Patrick's peak season just can't match Aaron's, right down to both ending it by losing against teams they should've quite easily beaten.
In addition, Aaron was the best QB in the league three times (2011, 2014, 2020). Patrick has done this only twice (2018, 2022). I'm not saying Patrick can't catch and pass Aaron in this regard, but this article was claiming he'd passed Aaron in this argument already, so this also goes against Patrick for the moment.
It's also quite bold of you to assume Patrick is so much better of a playoff player than Aaron. He is, but Patrick's 0.291 EPA/Play in playoff games is not that far above Aaron's 0.251. These are without doubt the best two playoff QBs of the 2008-2023 era, both head and shoulders over third place Drew Brees and his 0.192. Being generous with Patrick, I'll say the 2019 playoff run can tie with Aaron's 2010, or his best playoff run wouldn't be able to match Aaron's either, and then where would we be?
In sum, on average Patrick can probably win this argument, and being prohibitive favourites all the time in the weak AFC he's always played in (except for 2020. Well earned respect for winning that conference, but notice KC was entirely out of gas by SB time) this is probably what you want, but in the murderers' row that was the 2010s NFC, having to try to win as underdogs all the time, I want Aaron Rodgers. Aaron's ceiling was higher. Patrick's ceiling cannot compare with Aaron's, in the regular season or playoffs, and I like my GOAT candidates to have higher ceilings.
Yea, I'm not really sure what justifies saying that, "Patrick's ceiling cannot compete with Aaron's, in the regular season or the playoffs". It is true that Rodgers' 2011 regular season is better than any Mahomes regular season. Statistically, it's probably the best regular season of all time. But I'm not sure why this in and of itself should tilt the needle in favor of Rodgers career wise. Mahomes threw 50 Touchdowns in 2018, it's not like he has a bad peak lol. As for the postseason, Rodgers QBRs have been 87.8, 85.2 (ring), 65.4, 76.6, 66.9, 67.8, 74.6, 83.2, 63.1, 75.2, and 22.6. Mahomes has been 67.3, 89.1 (ring), 75.3, 82.6, 84 (ring), and 86.6 (ring). Mahomes already has 2/3 as many regular season 4th quarter comebacks as Rodgers had his entire career, and he has 5 4th quarter comebacks in the postseason to 1 for Rodgers. I don't buy that Rodgers was better than Mahomes in 2020 either. The Chiefs only lost one regular season game that Mahomes started that year (Rodgers bombed in Tampa early that year), and despite having a far superior running game and padding his stats with 1 yard TDs, Rodgers QBR wasn't even 2 points higher than Mahomes'.
At the end of the day I feel like we're just splitting hairs over the regular season (both are good) when at the end of the day Mahomes is 3/4 in Super Bowls and Rodgers is 1/1, and Mahomes has played less than half as many years as Aaron. If Mahomes was a bus driver for some D/ST juggernaut like Brady was in 01-05 then there might be an argument here, but he's not. He's been instrumental in every one.
You can quit responding whenever you'd like, but I'm entertained, so I'm going to keep arguing this:
To be clear, on my tier list of all-time QBs, Patrick is third (behind only Peyton Manning and Dan Marino), but with a bunch of room to move, likely only downwards at this point. Aaron is seventh, but with most of a whole career behind him. Will Patrick fall down to Aaron over his final 12 years or so? Maybe. Maybe not, so quite frankly, I don't know who's ahead in my eyes. I'm just trying to be devil's advocate on Aaron's behalf.
As far as fourth quarter comebacks go, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Aaron had two in the same season in 2014, one of the most famous fourth quarter comeback drives of all time with his two back to back hail maries (2015 Arizona), plus a few others (2009 Arizona, 2013 San Francisco), perhaps plus some stragglers that I can't even think of right now. That's five that I thought of just off the top of my head. Perhaps you only counted the ones that ended in wins, but that's not the right way to go about it. It's not Aaron's job to keep the other team from scoring back on him.
Comebacks are overrated anyway, because they mean you were behind in the first place. There's a reason that in the best four season stretch any QB has ever had (Peyton Manning's 2004-2007) there's only seven fourth quarter comebacks over the course of four years. If you're that good, you don't get behind at all. Therefore, I think the fact that Patrick is already approaching Aaron's career mark for times having to come back helps my argument instead of yours.
You seem to really respect QBR. I do not share the same respect for that particular statistic, for reasons that'd take a whole article to explain, so I'm going to leave that there.
As for 2020, QBR isn't padded by one yard touchdowns, as it's a metric based on EPA/Play, which is not padded by one yard touchdowns. Nevertheless, in terms of results, Aaron's got Pat beat 0.362 to 0.311 in EPA/Play, and apparently two percent in terms of QBR, but this isn't even where he really shines. In terms of Completion Percentage Over Expected (CPOE), Aaron has a completion percentage 7.2 points higher than it should be, whereas Patrick could only outperform by 2.8 percent. Accuracy isn't everything, but that's a washout.
I don't have Patrick in second place in 2020 either, you can take a guess as to who that is.
In general, you're taking wins and losses so seriously man. Those are team stats. If you were trying to argue the Chiefs were better than the Packers, you'd have me six ways from Sunday. There is no doubt the Chiefs were consistently better than the Packers, which is the crux of the disconnect here. Aaron simply ended up on worse teams against better opponents because the NFC is always strong and the AFC always isn't, and as a result lost more. That's how the cookie crumbles sometimes.
The strength of their conferences is (essentially) what you're throwing at me here through the wins and losses arguments, especially in the postseason. What are the best teams Patrick has been in a conference with? Here's my ranking, in order, best to worst: 2019 Ravens (Patrick got lucky and missed), 2019 Patriots (also missed), 2021 Bills (the manner in which Patrick got this win makes it mean a lot less, but he still got it. Good for him). From here we get into the lesser teams like the 2023 Ravens (Good win, but 0 EPA as an offence means the defence gets more credit than he does), 2022 Bills (missed), 2018 Patriots (loss. A game the Patriots desperately tried to give away, but Patrick wouldn't take).
You see what I'm getting at here? Patrick has always been in a weak conference, and generally misses the top opposition in that conference. It's the Tom Brady way. As soon as the AFC stopped being thin like tissue paper, Tom stopped winning Super Bowls. When it went back, he started winning again. I think it's entirely conceivable the same thing can happen to Patrick. Once the AFC shapes up a bit, we'll see.
Aaron never got this luck, except once. In 2010, the league's three best teams were all in the AFC, and therefore Aaron won the Super Bowl out of the NFC (what a coincidence!). The 2011-2013 NFC was likely the strongest conference I've ever seen as a football watching fan. 2014 was a missed chance, but the NFC still wasn't as weak as the AFC that year (weak league in 2014). 2015 NFC was crazy, compared to the paper thin AFC. 2016 features what's likely Aaron's best playoff win against a team so much better than his, but asking that two weeks in a row is a bit much. In 2019, the NFC is really strong again, compared to Patrick's criminally easy road. 2020 is another missed chance, but in 2021 the NFC goes back to being really strong again.
Patrick has had more legitimate SB chances already than Aaron had in a whole career. That's luck and nothing more. I'm not saying it doesn't take skill to convert on these chances. It does, but I am saying if Aaron had been drafted into the paper thin AFC all those years, some narratives may look just a little bit different.
If you have Mahomes 3rd and Rodgers 7th I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about lol.
I don't disagree that Mahomes has come of age in a less competitive NFL than we're used to seeing (although he's certainly had something to do with that). I don't agree that the Chiefs had vastly superior teams to the Packers. Defense is most important when it comes to rings (like Rodgers had in 2010) and Mahomes didn't have a good defense in the postseason until last year. He also has not had elite receivers since Hill left. He's proven he can win and play at a high level in a multitude of ways and situations, and the only time I've seen him truly implode in the postseason was against the Bengals in 2021.
One of your initial claims was that Rodgers has a higher postseason ceiling than Mahomes and I don't see what the evidence is for that.
It's very simple. Has Patrick Mahomes ever beaten a better team in an AFC playoff game? In 2023, he did this twice, which goes a long way to rectifying this argument. There is the 2021 Bills game, but that's more of a tie than anything. Nobody gets credit for winning (and nobody takes heat for losing) in a game that comes down to luck the way that one did. I'll give that a push, and that's really all. None of this is his fault. He can't pick the conference in which he plays, but he's never really had to climb a mountain in a playoff game.
Aaron Rodgers on the other hand had one team that was superior to all others (2010), and was not challenged on the way to one of the easiest Super Bowls of the modern era. 2011 saw Eli Manning put up one of the best playoff games of all time, nothing to be done about that. The Packers were hopelessly outmatched by the 49ers in both 2012 and 2013, and Aaron had those as one score games in the fourth. Patrick has never had to climb a mountain that tall, but there's more. Against the 2015 Cardinals, the Packers were prohibitive underdogs again, and Aaron leads one of the most famous drives in NFL history to force OT.
Everybody knew the 2016 NFC was a two team conference (Dallas and Atlanta). Nevertheless, Aaron humiliates Dallas for most of the game, and knocks out one of the better teams of the Dak era. From here the heroics end, but at least they happened at all. 2023 was a good start for Pat to get going on this, but he's got a long way to go to catch what Aaron has done, and because KC's front office is just so much better than GB's, he may never get the chance to climb mountains in playoff games.
Like Tom Brady, he may just end up with the better team always, and never truly get the chance to prove himself in a playoff scenario.
BTW, I think Patrick's extremely high floor is an underrated aspect of his game. He probably has the highest floor in NFL history. He never plays badly ever, but I'm just not so sure a high floor has any place in a GOAT argument.
Interesting argument you've got here man, but the one question I can't get over: How can Mahomes be above Rodgers in the GOAT debate when Rodgers was such a superior individual player?
I'll explain: When you match the two up year by year, Patrick's 2022 and Aaron's 2020 are about the same. Patrick's 2020 and Aaron's 2014 are about the same. Patrick's 2023 and Aaron's 2008 are about equal, and Patrick's 2019 about matches up with Aaron's 2012.
This leaves Patrick's best season (2018) to go against Aaron's best (2011), which is no contest in favour of Aaron, especially considering neither were able to win the SB in their best year.
In my mind, there's a Tier of modern era QB season including only 2004 Manning, 2007 Brady, and 2011 Rodgers. Until you can have a season that lands you in this Tier I can't include you in my GOAT debate, because I can't answer the question of why they never had a season this good.
Sorry this comment got a little long (I can write a whole post about this), and I understand the team accomplishments argument. I just think individual talent has to come into the GOAT argument in some capacity. Until Patrick has a season that gets into that top Tier he's just not there for me.
If he is, why hasn't he done it yet?
Ya I would argue Mahomes has Rodgers beat on talent and Brady has Rodgers beat on accomplishments. Now that Mahomes has Rodgers beat on accomplishments too (2 mvps, 3 rings > 4 mvps, 1 ring) it's kinda over for Rodgers. He is top 5 all time, surely, but just doesnt have the GOAT accolades.
Why would you argue that? I've never seen Pat do anything Aaron couldn't do. Sure, Aaron never tried any no look passes, but Patrick isn't the king of the hail Mary, so on the useless skills front we're even at best.
Also, you never answered me. If Patrick is in your GOAT conversation, how come he's never had a GOAT level season? Peyton and Aaron both had theirs at 28. Tom did it at 30, so he's running out of years to do it.
If you list each of their best seasons by QBR, you get first: Mahomes 2018 (80.3) Rodgers 2011 (83.8); second: Mahomes 2022 (79) Rodgers 2020 (79.8); third: Mahomes 2020 (78.1) Rodgers 2014 (77.8); and fourth: Mahomes 2019 (77.1) Rodgers 2021 (74.1). So I'm not sure where you're getting the argument that Rodgers was "such a superior individual player". Or that Rodgers 2011 vs Mahomes 2018 was "no contest in favor of Rodgers" (Rodgers was better, but it's not like it was by a wide margin). Not to mention, two of Rodgers' best seasons here were a decade plus into his career after a prolonged slump and a coaching change, whereas Mahomes is already matching him just seven years in. And that's without even getting into the postseason.
To me, before Patrick can pass Aaron in any kind of discussion like this, he must match Aaron's 2011. It's as simple as that. I'm a big 'peak performance' guy, and Patrick's peak season just can't match Aaron's, right down to both ending it by losing against teams they should've quite easily beaten.
In addition, Aaron was the best QB in the league three times (2011, 2014, 2020). Patrick has done this only twice (2018, 2022). I'm not saying Patrick can't catch and pass Aaron in this regard, but this article was claiming he'd passed Aaron in this argument already, so this also goes against Patrick for the moment.
It's also quite bold of you to assume Patrick is so much better of a playoff player than Aaron. He is, but Patrick's 0.291 EPA/Play in playoff games is not that far above Aaron's 0.251. These are without doubt the best two playoff QBs of the 2008-2023 era, both head and shoulders over third place Drew Brees and his 0.192. Being generous with Patrick, I'll say the 2019 playoff run can tie with Aaron's 2010, or his best playoff run wouldn't be able to match Aaron's either, and then where would we be?
In sum, on average Patrick can probably win this argument, and being prohibitive favourites all the time in the weak AFC he's always played in (except for 2020. Well earned respect for winning that conference, but notice KC was entirely out of gas by SB time) this is probably what you want, but in the murderers' row that was the 2010s NFC, having to try to win as underdogs all the time, I want Aaron Rodgers. Aaron's ceiling was higher. Patrick's ceiling cannot compare with Aaron's, in the regular season or playoffs, and I like my GOAT candidates to have higher ceilings.
Just a matter of preference really.
Yea, I'm not really sure what justifies saying that, "Patrick's ceiling cannot compete with Aaron's, in the regular season or the playoffs". It is true that Rodgers' 2011 regular season is better than any Mahomes regular season. Statistically, it's probably the best regular season of all time. But I'm not sure why this in and of itself should tilt the needle in favor of Rodgers career wise. Mahomes threw 50 Touchdowns in 2018, it's not like he has a bad peak lol. As for the postseason, Rodgers QBRs have been 87.8, 85.2 (ring), 65.4, 76.6, 66.9, 67.8, 74.6, 83.2, 63.1, 75.2, and 22.6. Mahomes has been 67.3, 89.1 (ring), 75.3, 82.6, 84 (ring), and 86.6 (ring). Mahomes already has 2/3 as many regular season 4th quarter comebacks as Rodgers had his entire career, and he has 5 4th quarter comebacks in the postseason to 1 for Rodgers. I don't buy that Rodgers was better than Mahomes in 2020 either. The Chiefs only lost one regular season game that Mahomes started that year (Rodgers bombed in Tampa early that year), and despite having a far superior running game and padding his stats with 1 yard TDs, Rodgers QBR wasn't even 2 points higher than Mahomes'.
At the end of the day I feel like we're just splitting hairs over the regular season (both are good) when at the end of the day Mahomes is 3/4 in Super Bowls and Rodgers is 1/1, and Mahomes has played less than half as many years as Aaron. If Mahomes was a bus driver for some D/ST juggernaut like Brady was in 01-05 then there might be an argument here, but he's not. He's been instrumental in every one.
You can quit responding whenever you'd like, but I'm entertained, so I'm going to keep arguing this:
To be clear, on my tier list of all-time QBs, Patrick is third (behind only Peyton Manning and Dan Marino), but with a bunch of room to move, likely only downwards at this point. Aaron is seventh, but with most of a whole career behind him. Will Patrick fall down to Aaron over his final 12 years or so? Maybe. Maybe not, so quite frankly, I don't know who's ahead in my eyes. I'm just trying to be devil's advocate on Aaron's behalf.
As far as fourth quarter comebacks go, I'm not sure what you're getting at. Aaron had two in the same season in 2014, one of the most famous fourth quarter comeback drives of all time with his two back to back hail maries (2015 Arizona), plus a few others (2009 Arizona, 2013 San Francisco), perhaps plus some stragglers that I can't even think of right now. That's five that I thought of just off the top of my head. Perhaps you only counted the ones that ended in wins, but that's not the right way to go about it. It's not Aaron's job to keep the other team from scoring back on him.
Comebacks are overrated anyway, because they mean you were behind in the first place. There's a reason that in the best four season stretch any QB has ever had (Peyton Manning's 2004-2007) there's only seven fourth quarter comebacks over the course of four years. If you're that good, you don't get behind at all. Therefore, I think the fact that Patrick is already approaching Aaron's career mark for times having to come back helps my argument instead of yours.
You seem to really respect QBR. I do not share the same respect for that particular statistic, for reasons that'd take a whole article to explain, so I'm going to leave that there.
As for 2020, QBR isn't padded by one yard touchdowns, as it's a metric based on EPA/Play, which is not padded by one yard touchdowns. Nevertheless, in terms of results, Aaron's got Pat beat 0.362 to 0.311 in EPA/Play, and apparently two percent in terms of QBR, but this isn't even where he really shines. In terms of Completion Percentage Over Expected (CPOE), Aaron has a completion percentage 7.2 points higher than it should be, whereas Patrick could only outperform by 2.8 percent. Accuracy isn't everything, but that's a washout.
I don't have Patrick in second place in 2020 either, you can take a guess as to who that is.
In general, you're taking wins and losses so seriously man. Those are team stats. If you were trying to argue the Chiefs were better than the Packers, you'd have me six ways from Sunday. There is no doubt the Chiefs were consistently better than the Packers, which is the crux of the disconnect here. Aaron simply ended up on worse teams against better opponents because the NFC is always strong and the AFC always isn't, and as a result lost more. That's how the cookie crumbles sometimes.
The strength of their conferences is (essentially) what you're throwing at me here through the wins and losses arguments, especially in the postseason. What are the best teams Patrick has been in a conference with? Here's my ranking, in order, best to worst: 2019 Ravens (Patrick got lucky and missed), 2019 Patriots (also missed), 2021 Bills (the manner in which Patrick got this win makes it mean a lot less, but he still got it. Good for him). From here we get into the lesser teams like the 2023 Ravens (Good win, but 0 EPA as an offence means the defence gets more credit than he does), 2022 Bills (missed), 2018 Patriots (loss. A game the Patriots desperately tried to give away, but Patrick wouldn't take).
You see what I'm getting at here? Patrick has always been in a weak conference, and generally misses the top opposition in that conference. It's the Tom Brady way. As soon as the AFC stopped being thin like tissue paper, Tom stopped winning Super Bowls. When it went back, he started winning again. I think it's entirely conceivable the same thing can happen to Patrick. Once the AFC shapes up a bit, we'll see.
Aaron never got this luck, except once. In 2010, the league's three best teams were all in the AFC, and therefore Aaron won the Super Bowl out of the NFC (what a coincidence!). The 2011-2013 NFC was likely the strongest conference I've ever seen as a football watching fan. 2014 was a missed chance, but the NFC still wasn't as weak as the AFC that year (weak league in 2014). 2015 NFC was crazy, compared to the paper thin AFC. 2016 features what's likely Aaron's best playoff win against a team so much better than his, but asking that two weeks in a row is a bit much. In 2019, the NFC is really strong again, compared to Patrick's criminally easy road. 2020 is another missed chance, but in 2021 the NFC goes back to being really strong again.
Patrick has had more legitimate SB chances already than Aaron had in a whole career. That's luck and nothing more. I'm not saying it doesn't take skill to convert on these chances. It does, but I am saying if Aaron had been drafted into the paper thin AFC all those years, some narratives may look just a little bit different.
If you have Mahomes 3rd and Rodgers 7th I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about lol.
I don't disagree that Mahomes has come of age in a less competitive NFL than we're used to seeing (although he's certainly had something to do with that). I don't agree that the Chiefs had vastly superior teams to the Packers. Defense is most important when it comes to rings (like Rodgers had in 2010) and Mahomes didn't have a good defense in the postseason until last year. He also has not had elite receivers since Hill left. He's proven he can win and play at a high level in a multitude of ways and situations, and the only time I've seen him truly implode in the postseason was against the Bengals in 2021.
One of your initial claims was that Rodgers has a higher postseason ceiling than Mahomes and I don't see what the evidence is for that.
It's very simple. Has Patrick Mahomes ever beaten a better team in an AFC playoff game? In 2023, he did this twice, which goes a long way to rectifying this argument. There is the 2021 Bills game, but that's more of a tie than anything. Nobody gets credit for winning (and nobody takes heat for losing) in a game that comes down to luck the way that one did. I'll give that a push, and that's really all. None of this is his fault. He can't pick the conference in which he plays, but he's never really had to climb a mountain in a playoff game.
Aaron Rodgers on the other hand had one team that was superior to all others (2010), and was not challenged on the way to one of the easiest Super Bowls of the modern era. 2011 saw Eli Manning put up one of the best playoff games of all time, nothing to be done about that. The Packers were hopelessly outmatched by the 49ers in both 2012 and 2013, and Aaron had those as one score games in the fourth. Patrick has never had to climb a mountain that tall, but there's more. Against the 2015 Cardinals, the Packers were prohibitive underdogs again, and Aaron leads one of the most famous drives in NFL history to force OT.
Everybody knew the 2016 NFC was a two team conference (Dallas and Atlanta). Nevertheless, Aaron humiliates Dallas for most of the game, and knocks out one of the better teams of the Dak era. From here the heroics end, but at least they happened at all. 2023 was a good start for Pat to get going on this, but he's got a long way to go to catch what Aaron has done, and because KC's front office is just so much better than GB's, he may never get the chance to climb mountains in playoff games.
Like Tom Brady, he may just end up with the better team always, and never truly get the chance to prove himself in a playoff scenario.
BTW, I think Patrick's extremely high floor is an underrated aspect of his game. He probably has the highest floor in NFL history. He never plays badly ever, but I'm just not so sure a high floor has any place in a GOAT argument.