Photo: Jamie Squire
Jason Smith: "Patrick Mahomes was a superstar in the sport. But now you're talking about 3 Super Bowls and 3 Super Bowl MVPs. After what he did yesterday, he became an icon. He is up in that rarefied air where we compare him to Tom Brady, we pay attention to everything he does, his wife has become a big deal... He became an icon yesterday, and that's a really difficult thing to do. There's a lot of superstars. The Hall of Fame is filled with superstars. There's very few icons. You think about where Brady is and why we talk about him so much, because that's the level he reached even before the Bucaneers went to the Super Bowl. He's the icon, he's the GOAT, Brady, Brady, Brady... We talk about his divorce because he's an icon. He's a celebrity. He's bigger than being a star. That's what Mahomes did yesterday. Now he's an icon and things will be different for him. Things will be better with more relevancy and more money, but he's also going to get more scrutiny. It will be the same thing as Brady with the scrutiny he gets about how great he was. This is what happens when you are an icon, and that's what Mahomes became yesterday."
Mike Harmon: "In my estimation, nothing has changed. We were already putting him there. It's still a long way to go before getting to the numbers of Brady, but I thought we've already hit that point of 'icon' between the 'Quarterback' show, the number of commercials he's on, and the scrutiny of his family members. For Mahomes the player, we're just pushing the same lazy narratives that we always did for LeBron and Michael. In terms of Mahomes' overall status, I think we all recognized how good he was, this is just another notch in the victory column."
Jason Smith and Mike Harmon react to the Kansas City Chiefs winning Super Bowl 58. Jason believes Patrick Mahomes' Super Bowl MVP-winning performance to go with his third career championship ring causes him to transcend superstar status and become a true icon in the sports world and beyond.