A red-letter chance
We spoke Tuesday about who has the most at stake in this Super Bowl, and the easy and correct choice is clearly Andy Reid.
But what about Patrick Mahomes?
I ask because of the locale of this Super Bowl and the chance to use every writer’s friend, alliteration.
Mahomes has lit the league on fire in his first two years as a starter. Total fire.
Check the stats: He has 31 starts (24-7 record), completed 65.9 percent of his passes for 76 TDs and 18 picks and 9,412 yards. That’s a smidge less that two seasons.
He’s been as magical throwing it as any young player ever, including a star with a very similarly sizzling start to a iconic career. That cat’s numbers through his first two seasons: 25 starts (21-4 record), completed 62.2 percent of his passes for 68 TDs and 23 picks and 7,294 yards.
Beyond the stats symmetry comes the alliteration fun.
Those second set of numbers? Yep, as Mahomes makes moves in Miami, math shows a match with Marino.
And making matters more meaningful, Mahomes is headed to a Super shot in year two as a starter. Like Marino.
But Marino never returned to the big game after year two, a fact that has been mentioned more than once, and Marino’s lack of a title is a bigger albatross on his career than it is Reid’s.
So will Mahomes be the Marino – or, in the M-based name game – the Montana of his generation?
Is this the first step or his only shot?
Because as much as we’d all like to believe that Mahomes will get a career filled with Super Bowl bids, we assuredly thought the same thing about ole Danny Boy back in the day.
College hoops craziness
What just happened?
OK, before we get rolling, let’s remind everyone about our process. You know the rules, when TFP ace columnist Mark Wiedmer writes college hoops, we read and link Weeds’ views on college hoops. Dude is a guru, bonafide and certified. As they say in “O Brother Where art Thou?,” “He’s a suitor.”
Here’s Mark’s view on the Vols debacle, and we’ll get to that, but now is the perfect time to remind everyone what Mark – remember a college hoops Goo-RU – wrote Tuesday about how SEC teams need to start building on success.