ASSOCIATED PRESS New England Patriots chairman and CEO Robert Kraft congratulates former quarterback Tom Brady in 2023.

Professional wrestling legend Ric Flair often yelled “To be the man, you have to lose to the man! And achieve less than half of what he has!”

I kid, I kid. Actually he said, “To be the man, you have to beat the man.”

Turns out, however, that so many today believe the former. The whole Tom Brady vs. Patrick Mahomes debate proves it. Brady twice beat Mahomes in the playoffs, including 31-9 in the Super Bowl just three years ago. Mahomes has yet to achieve half of what Brady did throughout his remarkable 23-year career and yet there are delusional people out there acting like Brady vs. Mahomes for the GOAT (Greatest of All-Time) title is a real debate.

Folks, it’s not. Not yet anyway.

First, let me say this: Mahomes is an incredible player having a remarkable career. He could win his third Super Bowl ring in his six season as a starter and is playing in his fourth Super Bowl, reaching at least the AFC championship every season. Nobody, this reporter included, is debating his resume.

Despite his stats being down by his standard this season, Mahomes remains the game’s best player today. He also already has established himself as one of the top big-game quarterbacks of all-time. And if he retired today, Mahomes would be a no-doubt first ballot Hall of Famer.

In time, Mahomes may challenge and/or ascend to the throne. But he’s only six years in. Give it time and calm down.

Brady did things which simply do not make sense, including winning seven Super Bowls — two in his 40s — appearing in 10 and breaking virtually every regular season and playoff passing record there is.

Mahomes is off to a similar start and if he continues playing over the next decade the way he has the last six years, then it may become a coin toss between the two. But for now, it’s not a logical discussion.

And that’s OK

The problem is starting with ESPN taking a blowtorch to journalism and letting Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith run wild decades ago, every talk show on TV or radio is filled with blowhards offering foolish hot takes and providing click bait material, rather than actual facts.

The problem is that so many people eat it up. So much so that Fox Sports One decided to go the same route. The facts never get in the way of their lies, half-truths and bloviating, but a foolish public breathes it in like oxygen and accepts these false narratives as real. It’s a sad state on society but here we are because these national media goofballs knows it sells.

But the bottom line is Brady set a standard which rivals that of any athlete in any sport. In addition to winning seven Super Bowls and playing in 10, he led the Patriots and Buccaneers to 19 division championships in 21 years as a starter. He made the playoffs in all but one of those years, leading the Buccaneers to the Super Bowl in his first year there as a wild card team. In each of his last 16 seasons as Patriots starter, Brady guided the Patriots to division championships. During that run he also led the Patriots to eight straight AFC Championship games from 2011-2018 … after steering it to four Super Bowl appearances and three wins from 2001-2007.

Brady helped his teams win an absurd 251 wins and produce an even more impressive .754 winning percentage. He was even better in the playoffs, helping the Patriots and Buccaneers win 35 games when Joe Montana held the previous record with 16 wins.

Think about this: Before this season, only one team in NFL history had more playoff wins total in NFL history than Brady led his teams to during his career.

Brady was so good that you could break his 21 years of starting into three separate careers and all three of them would get him into the Hall of Fame. He also won three MVPs during this time, five Super Bowl MVPs, two Offensive Player of the Year Awards and a Comeback Player of the Year. That’s right, Brady won four more Super Bowls and played in six more after tearing his ACL in 2008. He also won a Super Bowl at 43 with a new team while playing on a torn MCL all year.

Now, ignorant hosts like Nick Wright and Colin Cowherd who don’t know football was played before this season, have tried using a Bill Russell argument to say that Brady was simply just a winner. The false premise is that Russell won 11 championships, but Wilt Chamberlain put up all the stats in that era. This so-called analogy is beyond laughable and can be debunked by a first grader.

Brady holds virtually every regular-season and postseason passing record there is. He was as good at 45-years-old in his final year as he was when he became a starter in 2001 at 24. Brady is the league’s all-time leader in yards and touchdowns. He led the league in touchdown passes during his second season in 2002 and Brady led the league in yards 19 years later at 44. Each year was a virtuoso performance and his numbers remained large and consistent.

Brady is Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. For a more modern analogy, Brady is Michael Jordan and Lebron James. He has all the wins, all the trophies and all the impressive numbers/records.

Remember this, too. Brady led the Patriots and Buccaneers to five Super Bowl appearances and four Super Bowl wins after turning 37. That is mind-blowing. Consider that when Joe Montana retired in 1994 at 38, most thought it was incredible that he was still playing well at that age.

Before Brady, quarterbacks never did the the things he did in his 40s. Brady led the greatest Super Bowl comeback ever, bringing the Patriots back from down 28-3 late in the third quarter to beat the Falcons, 34-28, in overtime at 39. A year later, Brady won the MVP at 40 and the following year won his sixth Super Bowl at 41.

But Brady absolutely dropped the mic on the GOAT conversation — for now — after he left the Patriots in 2020 and signed with the Buccaneers at 43. At that time, the Buccaneers had the worst overall winning percentage in NFL history. They were coming off a 7-9 season, had not made the playoffs since 2007 and had not won a playoff game since 2002.

That also was the year of the COVID-19 pandemic, so Brady had no offseason to work with his new teammates, nor any preseason games to get acclimated. And yet, he put together a fabulous season, throwing for 4,633 yards and 40 touchdowns.

Again, Brady upped his game in the playoffs, helping the Buccaneers become the first team in NFL history to top 30 points in all four postseason games. Along the way, he slayed Drew Brees and the Saints and Aaron Rodgers and the Packers on their home fields. Brady capped that master quarterbacking class by leading the Buccaneers to a 31-9 trouncing of, that’s right, Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in the Super Bowl.

Brady was 43 at this point. A year later as the Patriots floundered without him, Brady led the league in passing yards with 5,316 and 43 more touchdowns at 44. Remember that before Brady, no quarterback ever had sustained success in his 40s.

Heck, Warren Moon and Steve Deberg were the only players to start games in the previous 20 years in their 40s and Deberg did so once as a backup and Moon’s prime was long gone.

Here’s something else to think about. Mahomes walked into a near perfect situation in Kansas City, taking over after Andy Reid already had established the Chiefs as perennial winners after becoming coach in 2013. The Chiefs had reached the playoffs four of the past five seasons, posted winning records in all five and were coming off consecutive division championships when Mahomes became the starter in 2018.

That Chiefs team also already had two Hall of Fame receivers at Mahomes’s disposal in Tyreek Hill and tight end Travis Kelce. Give Mahomes a ton of credit, though, because he took the Chiefs to another level and has continued dazzling the league since that time.

However, Brady walked into what Bill Belichick himself admitted in 2001 was a border line dumpster fire. Belichick confided to a source following an 0-2 start in 2001 that he would soon be fired. His team was 5-13 in two years since he became the coach and was 9-21 over its last 30 games.

Speaking of Belichick, he is 81-104 without Brady as his quarterback, no division titles and one wildcard playoff win (with the Browns in 1994) and no NFL team despite being a free agent. Reid won big with the Eagles, taking it to the Super Bowl in 2004 and five NFC Championship appearances from 2001-12. During that time, he won divisions with Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick before doing so with Alex Smith twice in Kansas City, but I digress.

Following Belichick’s horrible start in New England, Brady became the starter after a Drew Bledsoe injury. Suddenly, a moribund franchise went 15-3 the rest of the way and won the Super Bowl, with Brady leading the first of his double-digit fourth quarter/overtime game-winning drives as the Patriots stunned the heavily favored Rams, 20-17.

And while Mahomes had Hill and Kelce, Brady had such receivers as Troy Brown and David Patten. It was a similar story in the next two Patriots Super Bowl wins. And while Brady won three of his last four Super Bowl rings with future Hall of Fame tight end Rob Gronkowski, he also did so with the likes of 5-foot-9 converted quarterback Julian Edelman, Rams cast-off Danny Amendola and former Penn State lacrosse standout Chris Hogan as his receivers. Like nearly every receiver during Brady’s Patriot career, none of those players achieved any steady success before or after playing with Brady.

Another myth is that Brady somehow went to a loaded Buccaneers team even though, again, they were coming off a 7-9 season. Some will tell you that the Buccaneers defense was amazing and yet that defense allowed 23 points per game during the three NFC playoff games. And others will say that Brady joined a super team, even though Gronkowski, Antonio Brown and Leonard Fournette came after Brady signed.

And come on. Gronkowski was on his last legs when he retired in 2018. He did not play in 2019 and was hardly in peak form during 2020. Brown was past his prime and, as he showed a year later, remained a team cancer, and Fournette was cut by the Jaguars in the preseason and not signed by anyone.

Some have offered the question, “If you had one game to win, would you take Brady or Mahomes?” If only we had a way to answer that. Oh wait, we do. They played twice in the playoffs and Brady prevailed each time. The first was in an epic 2018 AFC championship in which both legends shined with Brady leading the game-winning touchdown drive in a 37-31 overtime win at Arrowhead Stadium.

That one we can call a draw because both quarterbacks were amazing. But Brady landed an Ivan Drago-like knockout two years later in the Super Bowl. He threw three first-half touchdown passes and the Buccaneers essentially had victory secured against the favored Chiefs by the third quarter, allowing Brady to mostly hand off in the second half following his dominant first half.

You know how many touchdowns the Chiefs scored that day? Zero. Again, the national media/social media spin a myth that Mahomes only struggled because the Chiefs were missing two starters up front. And yet, he was sacked fewer times than Brady was against the Falcons in the Super Bowl and hit fewer times as well.

The difference was Brady stayed in the pocket and made quick throws which eventually wore down the Falcons defense. Mahomes often left the pocket early and created pressure on his own before trying to hit home run plays. He did not reach 100 yards until the game was out of reach in the fourth quarter and threw two interceptions.

I don’t want people to think I’m dogging Mahomes. The problem in sports debates, with the Jordan/Lebron one highlighting it, is that to make the case for one, people feel the need to trash the other and act like that athlete also is not great.

Make no mistake, Mahomes is fabulous. While the defense is stout and the running game productive, Mahomes is the primary reason the Chiefs are playing in their fourth Super Bowl in five years. Minus Super Bowl LV, he has been tremendous in big games, has two Super Bowl MVPs and also has led several comebacks from double-digit deficits in the playoffs.

Like Brady, Mahomes has great regular season numbers and then has upped his play even more come the postseason. Brady literally is the only other player with a six-year run like the one Mahomes is on. And if people want to say it is the best six-year run period, that is fine.

But six years is not a career. And Mahomes is not the GOAT. If he continues this torrid pace, there is a good chance he could become that, but there is a long way to go.

Sports in general, football especially, can be totally unpredictable and injuries are a constant concern. Nothing in sports; nothing in life is guaranteed.

Yes, Mahomes could take the throne eventually, but he has not even done half of what Brady did yet.

Which brings me to this: Why do so many in the media say, “Mahomes is doing things we’ve never seen before?” False. Obviously, I have proven that Brady won at an unheard level as Mahomes is doing now.

While Mahomes makes some ridiculously athletic throws/plays, so too have players like Fran Tarketon, Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers, Michael Vick, John Elway, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson…

Honestly, I think a lot of it is Brady Fatigue Syndrome. A lot of those in the media today are ex-players who Brady and his team’s repeatedly trashed during their careers. Fans in general get tired of seeing the same player and/or team dominate for so long. Mahomes and the Chiefs already are starting to experience that, so I think many in the media simply are bitter about Brady and/or tired of rehashing how amazing he was.

Just use some common sense, take a breath and appreciate what Brady did, too, before crowning someone else the GOAT. In this day and age, everyone seemingly wants to say whatever happens right now is the best ever.

That’s not true. One can appreciate Mahomes without glossing over other legends. Brady is in a league of his own for now. Let Mahomes get by Joe Montana, Peyton Manning, Johnny Unitas and Otto Graham first.

Nobody was talking about Jerry Rice being the GOAT receiver six years into his career even though he was on his way to doing so. Same thing at running back with Eric Dickerson setting the single-season rushing record in his second year or Emmitt Smith and Barry Sanders lighting it up early in their careers.

So why is it different at quarterback?

If Mahomes continues doing what he has over the next decade, then we can have an educated GOAT debate. For now, Brady is the King of the Mountain.

Chris Masse is a sports reporter at the Sun-Gazette. He can be reached at cmasse@sungazette.com.