When your beloved franchise quarterback reaches All-Time Top X lists so early on in their careers, it makes the legacy blows/misses that might follow all the more painful. NFL playoff losses are the worst, but with a franchise quarterback playing legacy-games, it adds a thick layer of pain most fan bases aren’t fortunate enough to understand.
Nobody can empathize with you like New England.
Fortunately, it isn’t how you start, it’s how you finish. Mahomes could come screaming back two seasons from now with a fully healed ACL/whatever else, defeat someone in a Classic for a 4th Super Bowl ring, and near universally be considered the 3rd best QB of all time, and widely considered the 2nd best QB of all time.
When the Patriots lost the 2nd time to the Giants, it stung arguably more than losing the undefeated season, because if that’s how it ended, with two losses to Eli, that would have been a huge legacy blow for Brady in comparison to his legacy potential. At the time it was our football world imploding into a Black Hole.
Then he had an epic comeback against an All-Time Legion of Boom defense, won arguably the most epic NFL game of all time down 28-3 against the Falcons, beat the Rams, then won a 7th with a new fucking team his first year.
I don’t even think or care about those Giant losses anymore.