Brees and Brady Stare Down Athlete Mortality, and Mahomes Gets a Glimpse of It

When you interview a former athlete about their career, their final game often comes up. Because the end of an athlete’s career is a lot like death—it’s the point when the singular pursuit they have dedicated every waking minute of their life toward since they were a child is taken away from them, for good—that final game is like witnessing your own funeral. It’s the moment when an athlete’s life ends, and they have to start becoming whatever it is they’re supposed to become next.

Special attention is paid to the final games of superstars, because no matter what you’ve done in your career, even if you’re a top-shelf Hall of Famer, if your final game is a disaster, there’s always going to be a tiny voice in the back of your head that makes you feel like a little bit of a loser. The worst-case example was Dan Marino, famously the best quarterback to never win a Super Bowl; his last game, back in 2000, was a disastrous 62-7 loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars. Afterward he sat at his locker and stared at the floor; "I've never experienced a game like this in my life," he said. "Even as a kid, I've never had a game like this." Brett Favre’s final playoff game featured an interception so horrific that he played one more ill-advised season just so he wouldn’t have to scream at himself in the mirror every time he thought about it. It’s a dangerous game: Everyone wants to keep playing, but play too long, and you increase the odds that it’s going to end extremely badly.

That’s the reality for future Hall of Famer Drew Brees, the generally beloved (eventually) Saints quarterback who is widely thought to be retiring this year at the age of 42. He may be considering a Favre-esque reversal after his nightmare game Sunday, in which he threw three interceptions, including two in the fourth quarter, in a 30-20 loss to the Buccaneers. Brees looked like what he was: A 42-year-old man playing a sport populated with the greatest athletes on the planet; fast, massive monsters half his age. (Just a year after suffering 11 broken ribs and a collapsed lung, no less.) An achievement that should be remarkable—Brees became the third oldest quarterback in NFL history to throw a touchdown pass in a playoff game Sunday—ended up just being sad. The Sunday debacle won’t be the first thing you think of when you look back at Brees’ career: His Super Bowl win for the Saints in 2010, his inspirational work on behalf of the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. But I couldn’t help but wonder, when Brees is an old man looking back at his life, how often he’ll be thinking about this game.

This particular affliction does not end with him, of course. The man Brees lost to on Sunday was Tom Brady, who, at 43, is the actual oldest man to throw a touchdown pass in a playoff game and, not for nothing, probably the greatest quarterback to ever play. Brady, who has been noticeably looser and lighter on his feet since leaving Boston for Tampa Bay in the offseason, had considerable fun in the lead-up with the notion of these two Old Farts facing off in a playoff game.

But as great a quarterback as Brees has been, Brady is better, and certainly better known (and more disliked) and thus has more to lose in a potential final-game disaster than Brees does. Brady didn’t throw three interceptions like Brees did, but he wasn’t particularly sharp Sunday either, and if he plays like that against 37-year-old spring chicken Aaron Rodgers and Green Bay in the NFC Championship Game next week, he will lose. And Brady, more than anyone, would suffer the most from having his final game (which it is far from certain Sunday will be, even if he loses; he’s signed with the Bucs for one more year) go down in flames. Brady has won six Super Bowls, more than any other quarterback, and the only thing his career is missing is a John Elway-esque jog off the field in his final game as Super Bowl champion.

In the eyes of many, not least of all himself, Brady is the ultimate football winner. But if his last game is a loss, like Brees’ was, he may remember that game more than any of those Super Bowls. That’s just the way an athlete’s brain is wired. It almost makes you feel bad for them.

If you needed a reminder of why the long careers of Brady and Brees are so remarkable, how their run of success is so unprecedented, you need look no further than Patrick Mahomes. The Chiefs quarterback is the defending Super Bowl champion and clear heir apparent to Brady, but the thing about being a football player is that you are always one hit away from just being a guy who can’t play anymore.

Mahomes suffered a concussion in the Chiefs’ narrow win over the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, and it was as obvious a concussion as you will ever witness: To watch his eyes cross and go glassy as he stumbled into the arms of his teammates was to be reminded just how brutal and violent this sport really is. Mahomes is the new face of the league, the star of all the commercials and the centerpiece of every ad campaign, and seeing him so confused and shaken couldn’t help but feel like a mask being lifted: This is what football really looks like.

The Chiefs were fortunate enough to hang on to win after he left, and now Mahomes enters the NFL’s famed Concussion Protocol. There is a five-step process players must go through to return to the field after a concussion, but, conveniently, that process can be completed in seven days. (The NFL has decided that the act of your brain colliding with your skull at extreme velocity is something that can be overcome in the exact amount of time there is between scheduled games. It’s quite handy!) Mahomes is currently listed as “questionable” for the AFC Championship Game against the Bills, but it would be a legitimate shock if he didn’t suit up. That will then lead to the Bills’ strategy for victory switching to “try to smash Patrick Mahomes’ brain against his skull another time so the Bills can go to the Super Bowl.” No pandemic will ever stop the NFL from being the NFL.

*Will Leitch will be writing weekly for GQ during the NFL playoffs. He is a contributing editor at New York Magazine, national columnist for MLB, a writer for Medium and the founder of Deadspin. Subscribe to his free weekly newsletter and buy his upcoming novel “How Lucky,”out from Harper Books this May.

Originally Appeared on GQ