Brady, Belichick, Mahomes, Reid

If you search "deserves more credit brady belichick" you find an endless source of debate. It's a sign of our time that we have too many sports debate shows and too many writers who just need to produce content on a schedule.

It also misses the point completely. Brady and Belichick together is what makes them great.

I of course, have been thinking about this through a Chiefs lens. Andy Reid is now a lock to make the Hall of Fame.

We got to see what Andy Reid is capable of without Mahomes for 19 seasons.
With McNabb, Reid got to 5 Conference Championships, 1 Super Bowl. 0 titles.
With Alex Smith, Reid got to 2 Divisional Rounds.

With Mahomes, Reid got to 2 Conference Championships, 1 Super Bowl, 1 title. In just two seasons.

15 out of 21 seasons Andy Reid took your team to the playoffs. So Reid has always been good. To get to the divisional round, he needed an Alex Smith level QB. To make it to the Super Bowl, he needed a Donovan McNabb level QB. But to win it he needed Mahomes.

(Obviously there are 53 players on the roster and there's more to playoff success than just your QB. But Reid is an offensive coach and we're trying to talk about Brady/Belichick, Mahomes/Reid. So I know I'm oversimplifying by focusing only on the QB.)

So we've seen Reid without Mahomes. But what about Mahomes without Reid? What if he had been drafted by the Bears or Texans, or Browns or Bills or Bengals, etc.

Well if you go back to the 2017 Draft, before Mahomes joined forces with Reid, the answer becomes clear. Mahomes would be Deshaun Watson.

He'd be great. He'd be an MVP candidate at points. He'd make the playoffs. But he wouldn't have the team playoff success that he's already achieved.

This is not a knock on Deshaun Watson. In fact, it's the opposite. I think Mahomes and Watson were comparable coming out of college and in the ideal systems they could be Super Bowl Champions already and in typical situations they'd be Wild-Card/Divisional round players and in bad situations they'd be making highlight reel plays on 5-11 teams.

The whole point is that to win the Super Bowl you have to have both excellent coaching and excellent players. Sometimes those excellent players form a dominant defense. But usually in this era, it's been an excellent QB holding the Lombardi.