He’s injured and has a lot of teammates banged up. It’s fair to say we haven’t seen that “willing team to a victory” magic quite yet, but small sample size and still very young. But this is the one thing skeptics have pointed to...you can’t assume a guy can win when all the chips are down, as great as his talent is. I think he will ultimately prove to be that guy, but the last two games have been unimpressive when he’s needed to dig deep into his bag of tricks when the going got really rough. Arguably that’s what Rodgers lacks that Brady has, and Manning had in the regular season.
Brady - 70 losses, 57 game winning drives (postseason 10 losses, 13 game winning drives)
Rodgers - 67 losses, 22 game winning drives
Tell me that massive difference in results can be explained by any other factor than the intangibles we observe and refer to with words like clutch, heart, or gutsy.
@BaconGrundleCandy are some QBs better than others in grind it out games where they need to scratch and claw for wins against tough matchups, with receivers being blanketed by good defenses, or are other factors at play? You seem to be the QB guru here, and I’m always interested in hearing thoughts about these intangibles. I am personally skeptical of “clutch play” in sports for the most part, but I’ve noted that some quarterbacks seem to will victories more than others. Is it coaching? Defense? Supporting casts? Or what it appears to be...just the QB himself in a way that can’t really be measured statistically (besides wins, such as winning pct in close games, road wins against quality teams, etc.)?
My post is not a shot at Mahomes. It’s just pointing out that he may not be at another level of mastery quite yet, or guaranteed to get there (see Rodgers.). On the other end of the spectrum Stafford is like 2-35 or something against quality teams on the road, and plenty of those games have gone down to the wire. Obviously I’m not saying Mahomes is that but pointing out there can be very stark splits when it comes to QBs when the going gets tough.