KANSAS CITY, MO – As the Kansas City Chiefs are set to defend their Super Bowl crown—and their kingdom against the visiting Houston Texans, it will not only mark the official start of the NFL’s 101st season, but also the berth of it’s hottest new quarterback rivalry in Deshaun Watson vs. Patrick Mahomes.
For over the last two decades, we had Tom Brady vs. Peyton Manning and their classic head-to-head matchups in both the regular season and in the playoffs, and now with Manning retired and Brady set to start a new chapter down in Tampa Bay as QB of the Buccaneers, that rivalry is offically etch in the histroy books.
With Watson vs. Mahomes, the league and fans get two young and handsome African-American quarterbacks both freshly signed to record-breaking deals of $174 million extension over four years for Watson and the ground-breaking 12-year, $503 million contract for Mahomes, the NFL is going to get a treat of seeing—and scheduling these two—as much as possible and hoping that they meet as frequently late in the year, as in a few AFC title games.
How many total points scored in Texans vs. Chiefs?
Over 52.5
Under 52.5
A big favor to ask the football gods for, but if their two games in Arrowhead where Watson won the first meeting, 31-24 last October, and had Mahomes’ Chiefs on the ropes in the AFC Divisional Playoff game before seeing his Texans blow a 24-point lead and lose 51-31 en route to the Chiefs’ second Super Bowl title in the franchise’s history.
If that wasn’t enough to rub salt in the growing rivalry between the two superstars, then seeing Mahomes ink the largest-ever sports contract in American sports certainly raised the stakes, as Watson’s deal gave him the second-richest right after the ‘Ketchup Kid’.
While their journeys are both parallel and eerily similar, as they are both 24, both taken two sports apart from each other with Mahomes going to the Chiefs at 10th and Watson going 12th by the Texans.
In a year of things being anything but normal and different, one thing that may come out of football during COVID-19, the rise of the the NFL’s next great QB rivalry in Mahomes-Watson will be as exciting and thrilling as the last one.