PostScript Sports

With NBA offseason slowing down and the MLB season midway through its long regular season it feels about the time to start thinking about the upcoming NFL season. With less than 2 months left and training camp right around the corner, the biggest theme of this season I keep coming back to is the Four Horseman group of elite quarterbacks in the NFL.

Since the retirement of Tom Brady, it feels like we’ve had very clear top-4 quarterbacks in the NFL. Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson and Joe Burrow. All showcasing different skill sets, different accomplishments and post season success. Going into this season, even after a 15-2 season and another Super Bowl appearance, it feels as though the clear number one spot Mahomes had for himself has dwindled. 

It’s impossible to argue Mahomes hasn’t accomplished the most and has had the best career of the four. But, after putting up back-to-back seasons of lower counting stats and winning games by the slimmest of margins (often because of the defense, special teams or a little help from the men in black and white), the narrative of Mahomes being the best quarterback in the league has become up for debate.

Going into 2025, the thing I want to see is what the Kansas City offense looks like with a healthy receiving core. Rashee Rice looked like a top-10 Receiver in football before he went down with a knee injury for the season. Though it’s likely he will serve a suspension to start the season, a healthy Rice clearly changes what this offense has available to them. Along with a healthy Rice is a healthy Marquise Brown. Brown was able to return towards the end of last season. His impact this season with a full training camp would help make him look a little more like the Brown we saw in years past and a great second, third or maybe even fourth receiving option for the Chiefs.

The reason Brown could be a fourth option is because of the big play capability and the steady improvement for second year receiver Xavier Worthy. His speed is undeniable, even in his rookie campaign there were flashes and moments where you can see the potential and big play capability. With a full season under his belt and another off season to work him into the offense, Worthy has the potential to have a huge second year.

Lastly, what do the Chiefs get from Travis Kelce in 2025? Last season was clearly a down year for Kelce. Now the questions are: Is that the start of the end for Kelce as a top-tight end in the league? Does a stronger receiving core and more down field threats open things up for him underneath?

In any of these situations, Mahomes has still been the one to lead his team to victory over his AFC compadres in the playoffs. For Mahomes and any of these four, they’d all rather have diminished numbers if it meant they were the ones playing in February. For Mahomes to clearly hold that number one spot it may take some big numbers and a more explosive offense.

Coming off of his first MVP season, Josh Allen and the Bills look poised to win another AFC East title and make a deep playoff run. Allen, maybe the most talented player of the four. His arm is second to none in this league. Though his speed and elusiveness don’t match that of Lamar, his brute force and size make him a special threat on the run. He has all the tools, what he’s missing now is a win over Mahomes in the post season.

Going into 2025 not much else will matter for Allen. There is a clear elephant in the room and that elephant is Kansas City. Devastating playoff loss after devastating playoff loss loom over the Bills and Allen’s legacy currently.

We see this in sports so often. The getting over the hump. We’ve seen the successes: LeBron winning his first ring after 7 years, John Elway winning at the end of his career, Rory winning the Master’s. But we’ve also seen the failures: Charles Barkley never getting a ring, Mike Trout never winning a playoff series, Dan Marino never getting back to the Super Bowl after his second year. The list goes on and on for many great athletes in all sports. 

The thoughts of Allen and Mahomes brings me back to when I first fell in love with watching the NFL, watching Brady and Manning. Brady, with the early team success, an all-time great coach and defense and this ability at the end of games to just get a win no matter how ugly it would look. Manning, the uber talented leader with a high powered offense, that just couldn’t get past his adversary.

For Manning, his time eventually came in 2006 and after the defeat of Brady and the Patriots he was able to hoist the Lombardi on a very rainy night in Miami over the Bears. Allen, like these other three, has a long time left to play in this league. Time will only tell if we end up looking at his career like we do with Manning’s or Marino’s.

As I compare Josh Allen to Dan Marino and Peyton Manning, I keep coming back to the comparison and question for Lamar Jackson: Is he going to be Nikola Jokic or Joel Embiid?

After losing to Allen for the league MVP in a year where by the numbers Lamar had a great case for MVP, I keep thinking about the past few seasons in the NBA with the Jokic vs. Embiid debate. 

Like Jokic in a lot of ways, when I see Lamar on the field, it feels like he’s figured the game out and that the game just moves slower for him. Unlike Jokic, the field is actually slower for Jackson. He is clearly the most elusive runner we have in the game and his end to end speed is unlike any other quarterback we’ve seen. But like Jokic, it feels like he is just always making the right read. Instead of a pick and roll, or a back door lob in basketball, it’s reading the defensive end on an option or getting to his second and third reads quickly.

The parallels to Embiid are the ridiculous regular seasons and the undeniable havoc he puts on defenses, but the lack of post season success. Like Josh Allen, Lamar hasn’t been able to defeat Mahomes and the Chiefs in the post season. But unlike Allen, a lot of the losses come from the play of Lamar and not defensive failures or strings of bad luck.

The big question and what I think most NFL followers want to see for Lamar and the Ravens is: When and if the team gets down in a game can they play from behind? The Raven’s have the luxury of not only the running ability of Lamar but also the future Hall-of-Famer Derrick Henry in the backfield. With a lead, it’s hard to stop this Ravens team and offense, when behind and when the team has to primarily go through the air, the Ravens and Lamar seem to have difficulties.

Much like Allen, the regular season means little to the legacy of Lamar. He has the MVP’s, he has the rushing records, the counting stats and the regular season wins. It comes down to can he push his team over the top and make a Super Bowl run. Does he get over the hump like Nikola Jokic and win a ring or does his legacy seem to fall short like we see with Joel Embiid currently?

I have Burrow last because of the four he feels like he’s in fourth right now. But is that all on Burrow? Burrow has the luxury of having two dynamic receivers: Jamar Chase and Tee Higgins. But outside of that, Burrow always feels like he’s in an uphill battle.

Burrow has played essentially his entire career with either a below average offensive line or like last year, one of the worst offensive lines in football. To pair with a bad offensive line is a defense that has had its fair share of struggles after the Bengals Super Bowl run a few years ago.

Burrow has also had his battle with injuries, hard to not obtain when you’re running for your life and playing in a division where you line up against Myles Garrett and TJ Watt four times a year. For 2025, the numbers and health matter for Burrow, but the expectations of the Bengals are lower than his three other counter parts.

Burrow is the only other QB in the AFC outside of Tom Brady to beat the Chiefs in the playoffs. He’s clearly in the class of these guys but to jump up from that fourth spot he has the most to overcome. In an article full of comparisons I keep seeing the career of Brees with Burrow. Early injuries, super accurate, so talented but in a situation where if not for him, the organization is going to be selecting very high in the draft. The other three seem like they will never wear another uniform. The mismanagement and poor ownership of the Bengals does make me wonder, does Burrow ever leave for greener pastures? It won’t happen this year, but how long does he put up with organizational failure?

These four have gracefully taken the reigns from the quarterback generation before of Brady, Manning, Rodgers, Brees and more. The ability to argue and think about these four in this context is what makes the sport fun. Can guys like Jayden Daniels, CJ Stroud, Justin Herbert break into the elite company of these guys? Like the guys before them, are these the guys who will dominate the narrative of the league for another decade? When it’s all said and done, where do we land?