Patrick Mahomes And Josh Allen Have A Rivalry To Savor

Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs and Josh Allen of the Buffalo Bills are the new Tom Brady and Peyton Manning. They are two quarterbacks who are the unquestioned field leaders of their respective teams and improve each other every time they meet.

Their record against one another, alone, proves the point: prior to Sunday’s game, the quarterbacks faced each other six times, splitting those games 3-3 and scoring close to the same number of points as each over the course of rivalry. Sunday marked the seventh time they’ve played against each other and the third time in the playoffs. Mahomes’ Chiefs won all three playoff games, so Mahomes would arguably be considered the more successful of the two, yet nobody could deny they demonstrate a model rivalry.

Several years ago, a study based at New York University described the three conditions needed for a true rivalry. The conditions included similarity, repeated competition and competitiveness. If all three factors were operable in a relationship — as they are in the case of Mahomes and Allen, whose personal stats are nearly interchangeable — then a rivalry can be declared. The NYU researcher argued further that a “motivation to win” will become the dominant driver in the rivals’ relationship.

Nobody can argue that Mahomes and Allen not only want to win, but also see in their rival a mirror image of that fierce determination. For example, Mahomes, who threw 23 passes for 215 yards and two touchdowns on Sunday, once told ESPN analyst Chris Berman that what he liked about Allen was that, “He’s one of the guys who likes to go out and compete with his guys. He likes to compete.” But liking to compete isn’t enough to forge a rivalry; you have to share an equal distaste for losing, a point Mahomes emphasized when he told Berman, “I always remember a loss. It sticks with me more than the wins I had. That’s my mindset. I never leave anything on the field.”

Well, if hating to lose more than loving to win is one of Mahomes’ key attributes, he has found a worthy rival in Allen, who answered the first batch of post-game press conference questions about losing 27-24 to the Chiefs by repeating, “It sucks. Losing sucks. Losing to them, losing to anybody, at home, sucks.” When pressed further on Bills kicker Tyler Bass missing a 44-yard field goal wide right with 1:43 remaining in the game that would have tied it, Allen demonstrated another way in which he is similar to Mahomes by taking responsibility for the outcome of the game.

“I wish [Bass] wouldn't have been put in that situation,” Allen told the reporters. “You win as a team. You lose as a team. One play doesn't define a game. It doesn't define a season. I know people are going to be out there saying that. We got to be there for him because again, we execute a couple of plays prior, probably singing a different tune right now.”

So, while Allen threw for a touchdown and ran for two more, he was enough of a true leader to take the blame for being part of some botched plays that might have spared Bass the necessity of trying to save Buffalo’s bacon.

But I would like to suggest that another driver be added to the traditional formula for a rivalry: affection. This is the emotion that sent Mahomes in search of vanquished rival at the end of Sunday’s game to tell him how much he admired Allen and the Bills. Mahomes had behaved poorly after losing at the last meeting in December, when the Bills edged out the Chiefs 20-17 in Kansas City. As we wrote here, after that losing effort, Mahomes lost his head and blamed the referees for his team’s loss — a sour grapes emotion he shared with Allen when they met for the ceremonial post-game handshake.

Mahomes apologized privately and publicly to Allen and made sure he doubled down on good sportsmanship as the victor this time around. It’s a question of empathy and learning: if you hate to lose as much Mahomes obviously does, then you should appreciate how much your rival is hurting after losing.

It’s a good lesson for all of us who vie with one another each and every day to be at our best: the person who pushes us the most and “against” whom we define our quest for greatness can be both our most infuriating opponent and also our greatest teacher. That’s when our relationship with our rival becomes something to savor rather than sleight.

When was the last time you thought about the person who really riled up your competitive nature and said, “You know, Self, perhaps … just maybe, that relationship is the best thing that could be happening to me in my professional life? Let’s get after this!”