To win a Super Bowl, quarterbacks have to break through the Patrick Mahomes ceiling

From 2004 to 2019, the AFC was largely dominated — at least in the playoffs — by three quarterbacks.

In that 16-year stretch, the conference was represented in the Super Bowl by Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlisberger a combined 15 times. (The lone party crasher was Joe Flacco in 2013.)

Since 2020 however, that dominance has shifted to one person: Patrick Mahomes, who stands one win away Sunday from his fifth Super Bowl appearance in six years. And in his constant parade to Super Bowl after Super Bowl, Mahomes has left in his wake a murderer’s row of quarterbacks who may have already won — or at least appeared in — championships in a different era.

Several present-day luminaries have been drafted at quarterback since Mahomes became the Kansas City Chiefs’ full-time starter in 2018. In that year alone both Lamar Jackson (most likely on his way to a third MVP award) and Josh Allen were drafted by the Baltimore Ravens and the Buffalo Bills, respectively. Neither has defeated Mahomes in the playoffs.

The 2020 draft added the likes of Joe Burrow, Justin Herbert, Tua Tagovailoa and Jalen Hurts to Mahomes’ list of foes.

Herbert’s Los Angeles Chargers are 2-8 vs. the Chiefs since he was drafted. Burrow, Tagovailoa and Hurts, meanwhile, are a combined 1-3 against him in the playoffs. Burrow, to his credit, is the only quarterback to defeat Mahomes in a road postseason game this decade. (Mahomes’ only other pre-Super Bowl loss came against Tom Brady 2019.)

Other signal-callers who’ve had the pleasure of losing to Mahomes in the playoffs are former No. 1 picks Trevor Lawrence and Baker Mayfield and the newest addition to the list as of this year, Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud.

Similar to, say, LeBron James during his run of NBA Finals appearances from 2011 to 2018, Mahomes is the ultimate bogeyman for an AFC team trying to win a Super Bowl. He is the final boss. If a quarterback wants to win a title, there’s almost no avoiding that he’ll have to beat Mahomes in Kansas City.

No player is more acutely aware of that than Allen, whose Bills have lost to the Chiefs in the playoffs three times since 2020. That first year, the last time Kansas City and Buffalo played in the conference championship game, the Bills lost 38-24.

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The next season Buffalo lost 42-36 in one of the most famous games in NFL playoff history, when the Chiefs drove 44 yards in the final 13 seconds of regulation for a game-tying field goal before they eventually won in overtime. Last year, Buffalo lost 27-24 at home, as kicker Tyler Bass missed a potential game-tying kick with less than two minutes to go.

When Allen leads the Bills into Kansas City on Sunday, he will not only represent a franchise that knows all too well the feeling of falling as short as possible. He will also represent the current quarterback generation’s best chance at knocking off Mahomes.

Until now, the only other two quarterbacks to win Super Bowls since Mahomes became a starter are Brady (who will be calling this year’s big game for Fox) and Matthew Stafford. Brady and Stafford were drafted before 2010.

If Allen wins Sunday, he’ll ensure that a post-Mahomes quarterback will win a Super Bowl for the first time, with either the Eagles' Hurts or Washington Commanders rookie Jayden Daniels coming out of the NFC.

If Mahomes wins, however, he’ll ensure the ceiling he has placed over the majority of his competition remains intact, at least for two more weeks.