NEW ORLEANS – Winning three straight Super Bowls is something not even Tom Brady accomplished. Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs can be the first team to do so Sunday with a win in Super Bowl 59 over the Philadelphia Eagles. On the call will be Brady, the winningest player in NFL history with seven Super Bowls, as the FOX game analyst wraps up his first season in the booth. 

Of course, Brady took the easy way out when asked Wednesday during a conference call with reporters about Mahomes’ pursuit of history and how the Chiefs quarterback stacked up to “TB12.” 

“The comparisons are fun naturally for the media because it serves different kinds of perspective and context that people can write about and talk about,” Brady said, “but in terms of being a competitor, I never viewed it that way.”

Brady sat down with Mahomes on Wednesday morning for a pre-taped segment to air during Sunday’s pregame show and told him there is “nobody happier for you than me” if Mahomes and the Chiefs pulled off the historic three-peat.

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Brady’s dynasties with the New England Patriots never three-peated despite their chance to do so after the 2004 season. Additionally, had Brady’s Patriots beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl 52, New England would have won three in a row from the 2016-18 seasons. 

That people want to compare the two doesn’t surprise Brady. It’s just not the way he considered things.

“I think I approached the game in a way that was, ‘Can I be the best I can be for myself and my teammates?’” Brady said. “And, ‘What’s the best version of myself every single year?’ without comparing myself to anybody else.”

While Brady didn’t entertain comparisons at all, his praise of Mahomes was effusive. 

“I love Patrick as a player, as a person,” Brady said. “Since he came onto the scene, I couldn’t think any more highly of a player in that position, knowing all that he’s going through, gone through and will continue to go through to try to accomplish things at the highest level.”

Where that puts Mahomes in a historical context is not Brady’s forte. The five-time Super Bowl MVP does appreciate the mental and emotional aspects Mahomes brings to the game. 

“He’s a competitor. He’s driven to succeed,” Brady said. “He approaches that in practice and the offseason. as well as the games, and that’s what it takes to truly be great at what you do.” 

Whether the Chiefs have received a beneficial whistle from the officials – a theory commissioner Roger Goodell called “ridiculous” Monday – Brady said that he never made excuses as a player. 

“I understand (officials) have a difficult job to do,” Brady said. “If anything, I would love for those guys to have their jobs be a little bit easier.”

The amount refs have to dissect in one play while making split-second decisions is an arduous task. Brady noted that everyone watching on television at home has the benefit of high-definition and super slow-motion replays with various angles. 

“These officials are very talented at what they do,” Brady said. “They don’t get to this point in their careers by being less than the best. They’re not going to get every call right. I don’t get everything right in the booth. I didn’t get everything right as a quarterback.” 

NEW ORLEANS – The phrase Tom Brady repeated to describe his first season as FOX’s No. 1 game analyst: learning curve. 

“I understand I’m a long ways from being a finished product as a broadcaster,” the seven-time Super Bowl champion said during a conference call with reporters Wednesday, four days before he calls Super Bowl 59 between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs alongside Kevin Burkhardt. 

Brady called Year 1 in the booth “a very positive challenge.” 

“Because I think part of the experience of life is challenging yourself and getting outside your comfort zone to experience new things where it can be more of a transformational experience for you,” he said.

FOX announced Brady’s hiring as the No. 1 game analyst in March of 2022. But Brady – who makes $37.5 million annually over the 10-year agreement – returned for a final season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and spent the 2023 season out of the booth during a quasi-gap year.

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“I know I got another at least nine years to go,” Brady said, reiterating his commitment to the job, “and hopefully more.”

Evaluating himself in a new job is something Brady’s had to learn to do.

“There’s no scoreboard for us, other than, genuinely, did we approach the game the right way? Were we prepared?” Brady said. “And then ultimately two things: was I confident in what I said? And did I really enjoy myself? I think if those last two points are a ‘yes,’ then I think we did a good job.”  

Burkhardt gave his partner credit for taking on a role he certainly could have avoided. 

“I think there’s a reason people don’t dive into this end of the pool,” Burkhardt said. “It’s hard.”

Burkhardt said he cherishes the relationships in the job he has. Forming a friendship with Brady has been worthwhile. 

“I’m a big believer in – you don’t have to be best friends with everyone you work with in this industry … Tom and I have built a really great friendship because we’ve spent so much time together,” Burkhardt said. 

Brady has let Burkhardt in, and the play-by-play man said his broadcasting partner is a “great dude who loves football.”

“That’s been the coolest part: finding out who he really is,” Burkhardt said. 

The first live game Burkhardt and Brady called together was a United Football League contest at Ford Field about eight months ago. To Brady, however, it felt like it was 10 years ago because of the learning curve he’s endured since.

“It’s just been an awesome journey for me,” Brady said, “being with the best teammates in the world. To showcase this great game and to offer really unique insight is kind of a dream come true for me. So I’m very excited for what’s ahead.”

How Tom Brady dealt with criticism in first year as FOX broadcaster

Friends will give him briefings occasionally on the reaction from social media or other corners of the sports-media universe. But Brady’s main goal is to serve the fans at home. 

“You’re never going to please everybody,” Brady said. 

Brady admitted to making mistakes – “I’ve made plenty,” he said – but that, like when he was a player, learning from them was key.

“You just have to give it your best and you have to believe in yourself and have confidence with what you’re saying,” Brady said. “I love the ability to take the viewers inside of the way I see things.”

Using one’s voice on live television induces an adrenaline rush, Brady said. Mispronunciations or forgetting a stat will happen. 

“I want to get it right the next time,” he said, adding: “You just have to give it your best and you have to believe in yourself and have confidence with what you’re saying. I love the ability to take the viewers inside of the way I see things.”

There is a complexity of football he wants to simplify for viewers concisely, and that is his ultimate goal. Brady noted “long-form” mediums, such as his radio show, that allow him to expand. On television, he knows the need to “make them more like soundbites.”

Brady said he doesn’t want to be overly critical because it’s not fun for the viewer. 

“You’re never insulting the player,” Brady said. “You’re insulting the play or the decision.

“You just have to always tread lightly a little bit in terms of ‘What really was going on?’”

How Raiders ownership role impacted Brady’s broadcasting

On Monday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell revealed Brady kept in touch with the league office throughout the season to ensure he was copacetic with the guardrails in place to prevent conflict of interest between his minority ownership stake in the Las Vegas Raiders and his broadcasting job. 

The main parameter was Brady not being allowed in production meetings, although the Chiefs granted him access for Super Bowl week. 

What Brady misses most about being in production meetings is the relationships that get built up over time – both with the subjects he covers and the time spent with his FOX teammates. He listens to news conferences all week and gains perspective from publicly available media sessions. 

“In terms of my research I don’t think it has much effect at all,” Brady said. 

 Brady described his ownership with the Raiders as “a long-term, kind of behind-the-scenes type of role.” The responsibilities between the two jobs are “very different,” Brady said. He is fully committed to broadcasting when he’s on the clock, “trying to be the best I can be for FOX Sports.”

“This approach as a broadcaster has been all-encompassing this year,” Brady said. “And the reality is, Mark Davis is the owner of the Raiders and I play a supportive, complementary role to the vision that he sets.

“I love football so much and the fact I get to be in it for the rest of my life … not just as a broadcaster, which is obviously one way, but in a limited partner role with an organization, it’s something I hope a lot of other players get the opportunity to do.”

Six years ago, it felt like the Kansas City Chiefs had America on their side. When they faced the New England Patriots in the 2019 AFC championship game, neutral NFL fans hailed them as the exciting up-and-comers that would finally end the Patriots’ dynasty − a run so dominant that it led some fans to dub them ‘The Evil Empire.’

Now, the Patriots are in the league’s proverbial basement. And many of those same neutral fans have instead come to loathe the Chiefs.

In other words, the ‘Evil Empire’ moniker has changed hands.

‘That’s natural,’ Chiefs safety Justin Reid told reporters Monday night, ahead of their Super Bowl matchup with the Philadelphia Eagles. ‘We were the Cinderella story, and now we’re the villain.’

It’s an all-too-common transformation in the world of professional sports, where neutral fans always seem eager to cheer for greatness … until the team in question becomes too good or wins for too long.

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Before the Chiefs’ current reign, which could see them become the first team in NFL history to win three consecutive Super Bowl titles, it was New England that drew eye rolls (and/or expletives) from casual NFL fans after emerging as one of the league’s dominant forces for the better part of two decades. The Golden State Warriors, New York Yankees and, perhaps most recently, the Los Angeles Dodgers are among the juggernaut teams in other sports whose reputations have taken a villainous turn.

The question isn’t so much whether this phenomenon exists in sports fandom, particularly in the United States, but why. And while psychologists have a few theories, they say research doesn’t provide a clear answer.

‘We like underdogs. We like novelty. We like things that are unexpected,’ said Tufts University psychology professor Sam Sommers, who co-authored a 2016 book on fandom titled ‘This is Your Brain on Sports.‘ ‘I think that’s my best sort of hypothesis for why it is: That it gets old quickly. We want to move on to something new and be surprised.’

According to survey data published Tuesday by data and technology company Numerator, 46% of the people who plan to watch Sunday’s game will be cheering for the Eagles, compared to 39% supporting the Chiefs. Yet among the Eagles supporters, more than 1 in 4 said they were only cheering for Philadelphia because they want to see the Chiefs lose.

Some NFL fans would chalk this up to simple ‘Chiefs fatigue.’ Since its first Super Bowl win of this run, in the 2019 season, the team has constantly been in the limelight − and two of its key players, quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce, have blossomed into all-around celebrities even outside the world of sports. (Kelce’s relationship with pop star Taylor Swift has only added to the perceived over-saturation.)

This year, in particular, there’s also been a growing sense of injustice about how the Chiefs are performing − with unfounded cries of an officiating fix after Kansas City benefited from close calls in key situations. (‘A ridiculous theory,’ commissioner Roger Goodell said Monday.)

Psychologists said there could be a few different phenomena at play here, including schadenfreude − the notion of deriving pleasure from the misfortune or failure of another person or, in this case, another team.

‘I live in Boston and there used to be ‘Yankee Hater’ hats that people would wear around,’ Sommers said. ‘Sports may be one of the last bastions where hate is somewhat OK. You’re not allowed to be hateful towards other people in the stands, but you’re sort of allowed to wear on your sleeves that you don’t like (rival teams) − like overt prejudice.’

Mercer University psychology professor Keegan Greenier, who studies schadenfreude, wrote in an email that the feeling is often triggered by one of a handful of circumstances. He said people might experience it if they believe the other party deserved the negative outcome − a speeding car getting pulled over by police, for instance − or if they view them as undeserving of a positive outcome. This would apply to perceived cheaters or those benefitting from nepotism.

Schadenfreude is often rooted in a dislike of the other party, but that is where Greenier said the Chiefs application becomes a bit muddled. For neutral fans, he said, schadenfreude would not explain the inherent distaste of the Chiefs.

‘Perhaps one could argue that the fatigue of seeing the same team win repeatedly could induce disliking to some degree,’ Greenier wrote.

The hate toward sports dynasties like the Chiefs could also be a reflection of an inverse idea: that Americans love underdogs.

‘We find quite comprehensively, consistently, that people who are unaffiliated initially gravitate towards the underdog versus a favorite,’ University of San Diego professor Nadav Goldschmied said.

In studies about the perceptions of underdogs, Goldschmied has informed participants that a team has a 30% chance of winning or 30% of the financial resources of their opponents, and then asked them to watch clips of a game. His research found that about two-thirds of unaffiliated viewers gravitated toward the underdog − and that, in some cases, people see the underdog as displaying more effort or working harder.

‘It’s really counterintuitive why we support the underdog, because we love winning,’ Goldschmied said. ‘And at the core, underdogs are not likely to win.’

Goldschmied said support of underdogs could hinge on the emotional payoff − the notion that, for neutral fans, cheering for an underdog offers a significant emotional reward with little risk. If the favorite wins, neutrals can just shrug and move on.

He also noted that most people perceive themselves as underdogs in life. ‘Even if they’re successful or rich, they’ll find a hardship that they experienced and say this qualifies them as an underdog,’ Goldschmied explained.

All of this raises questions about whether the Eagles, who have won 76% of their games over the past three seasons, should even qualify as an underdog in the first place.

It also does not explain the leap from supporting the underdog to hating the favorite − or why people seem more likely to boo team dynasties while gawking at individual greatness in sports like tennis and golf.

‘I know people who are blown away by the domination of Tiger Woods or Serena Williams or Olympic swimmers and boxers, (Rafael) Nadal and (Roger) Federer. They’ll tune in and watch them win over and over again and they don’t mind,’ Sommers said.

‘I guess maybe in team sports, we just expect a certain amount of parity and spreading of the wealth.’

The Chiefs, of course, are not so much interested in understanding the newfound hate surrounding them ahead of Super Bowl 59 as they are in utilizing it. Mahomes told reporters at Super Bowl Opening Night that he thinks the outside negativity around the team has brought players closer together.

“I don’t even think it’s embracing being the villains. We embrace who we are,’ Mahomes said.

‘If winning football games makes you a villain, we’re going to keep going out there and doing it.”

Contact Tom Schad at tschad@usatoday.com or on social media @tomschad.bsky.social.

The Golden State Warriors have reached an agreement to acquire Jimmy Butler in a trade with the Miami Heat in a multi-team swap, a person with knowledge of the deal confirmed to USA TODAY Sports.

The person requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the deal until it is officially announced.

Butler plans to sign a two-year, $121 million extension that will have him under contract through 2026-27.

Andrew Wiggins, Dennis Schröder, Kyle Anderson and a first-round draft pick are on the move in a deal that also involves Golden State’s Lindy Waters III and Miami’s Josh Richardson.

Detroit will receive Richardson from Miami and Waters from Golden State; Utah will acquire Schröder from Golden State and Utah will trade P.J. Tucker to Miami, which also gets Wiggins, Anderson and a protected 2025 first-round pick from Golden State. And the deal could expand further still.

A Butler trade has been brewing, and it became apparent that Miami needed to make a deal when it suspended him seven games for “multiple instances of conduct detrimental to the team over the course of the season and particularly the last several weeks.’

‘Through his actions and statements, he has shown he no longer wants to be part of this team. Jimmy Butler and his representative have indicated that they wish to be traded, therefore, we will listen to offers,” the Heat said in a news release Jan. 3.

The Heat suspended Butler for two games Jan. 22 and suspended him indefinitely Jan. 27 ‘due to a continued pattern of disregard of team rules, engaging in conduct detrimental to the team and intentionally withholding services. This includes walking out of practice earlier (Jan. 27).’

Butler wasn’t happy with a diminished role and was seeking another lucrative deal that likely wasn’t coming from the Heat. The distraction became too much for the relationship between the two sides to continue. A once fruitful relationship is over after five-plus seasons and two NBA Finals appearances. His final game with the Heat was Jan. 21.

(This story was updated with new information.)

Follow NBA reporter Jeff Zillgitt on social media @JeffZillgitt

The last and only time Patrick Mahomes lost a Super Bowl, Tom Brady was on the other sideline in Super Bowl 55. Will that game ultimately tip the ‘greatest of all time’ conversation in Brady’s favor?

Clearly only time will tell, but the statistical similarities of two of the NFL’s greatest quarterbacks is striking. But should the Kansas City Chiefs win their third-consecutive Super Bowl, Mahomes will have more Super Bowl wins than Brady did after his first eight seasons.

Brady and Mahomes will be back together at Super Bowl 59 this year at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, but Mahomes won’t need worry about Brady ruining his evening this time because he’ll be in the broadcast booth calling his first Super Bowl game for FOX.

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How do Brady’s and Mahomes’ records compare?

After eight seasons at quarterback, Mahomes’ and Brady’s records are remarkably similar. Both played just a game in their first season and then took over starting duties during the next seven. The Chiefs made the playoffs during the past seven years, while the Patriots missed the playoffs once in Brady’s second full season.

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How many Super Bowls have Brady and Mahomes played in?

Mahomes already has a strong resume in his first eight NFL seasons. At just 29 and entering his fifth Super Bowl, Mahomes already has joined a club occupied by a select few over lengthy careers.

Who has won the most Super Bowls in NFL history?

Brady won his first Super Bowl ring in 2002 inside the Superdome where this year’s game will be played. The Patriots defeated the St. Louis Rams’ high-flying offense in a 20-17 defensive battle. He won his seventh and final ring for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl 55, routing Mahomes and the Chiefs 31-9.

After Brady won Super Bowl 55, some questioned if anyone could ever match or even approach his two decades of dominance. Just four years later, should Mahomes win Super Bowl 59, he would be ahead of Brady’s pace and become one of three NFL quarterbacks with four rings.

How Brady’s and Mahomes’ passing stats match up

Brady holds multiple career passing records – for the regular season and playoffs. In the two most prominent, he’s 78 touchdowns and almost 9,000 yards ahead of second-place Drew Brees. Two active players are in the top 10 in both categories: Aaron Rodgers and Matthew Stafford. How their regular-season, career trajectories compare to Brady’s and Mahomes’.

How Brady and Mahomes match up in two NFL eras

As the chart above suggests, should Mahomes’ productivity follow the same trajectory, he might not need 23 years to surpass Brady in both categories.

But there’s an interesting twist here: Unlike most comparisons of generational talents, Brady played long enough that his era overlapped with Mahomes’ era. For example, trying to compare, say, Michael Jordan with LeBron James who played in different NBA eras becomes difficult if not impossible with traditional metrics.

So it’s striking to see, below, how Brady’s statistics evolved with the NFL’s increased emphasis on passing and how much more closely his numbers in his final five seasons aligned with Mahomes’.

Other categories where Brady’s and Mahomes’ statics are similar

Mahomes ranks second to Rodgers with a 102.1 passer rating, well ahead of Brady, who is fittingly No. 12 (97.2). But there are still other statistical similarities between their career statistics, according to Pro Football Reference:

Completion percentage: Mahomes has the slight edge 66.6% to Brady’s 64.3% in more than two decades. It’s worth noting, Brady’s percentage in his three years with the Buccaneers was 66.7%.

Interception percentage: Both threw 1.8 interceptions for every 100 throws.

Yards gained per pass attempt: Mahomes also has the slight edge here: 7.8 yards to Brady’s 7.4 yards.