Super Bowl 55: Patrick Mahomes vs. Tom Brady fuels ‘what ifs?’ for 49ers

The 49ers will watch two quarterbacking greats, Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady, battle it out in Super Bowl 55 while asking ‘what if?’

A year ago, the San Francisco 49ers watched helplessly as quarterback Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs began to celebrate their victory over the Niners in Super Bowl 54 after engineering an infamous fourth-quarter comeback.

That comeback paralleled San Francisco’s own quarterback, Jimmy Garoppolo, flaming out in the fourth quarter, which led to all kinds of speculation the 49ers would look for an offseason upgrade. And one of the potential targets was the quarterback Mahomes and the Chiefs will face in Super Bowl 55, Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, this Sunday on Feb. 7 from Raymond James Stadium.

Not long after Brady elected to leave the only team he knew at the NFL level, the New England Patriots, the Niners were rumored to be a potential suitor. General manager John Lynch later confirmed San Francisco considered signing the 42-year-old future Hall of Famer during the offseason, instead electing to stick it out with the younger Garoppolo, who despite the fourth-quarter collapse, was still instrumental in helping the 49ers get to the Super Bowl the previous February.

In hindsight, many have argued the Niners should have gone with Brady, who is now entering his 10th Super Bowl.

It’s a classic “what if?” scenario.

Sure, what-if situations are silly enough. They aren’t reality, and hindsight is something Lynch and his front office can only think about and wonder after going 6-10 with an oft-injured Garoppolo under center in 2020.

At the same time, though, there are plenty of arguments San Francisco wouldn’t have made the Super Bowl anyway with Brady at the helm last season, particularly due to the swarm of serious injuries the team had over the course of the year. Brady could have elevated the rest of the makeshift roster, but that’s merely a guess.

Still…

Yet that what-if question is only half of the storyline that’ll make headlines in the days counting down to Super Bowl 55.

All those teams, including the 49ers, passing up on Patrick Mahomes

Out of all the players currently in the league, none have as good a chance to surpass Brady’s GOAT-like status as Mahomes. With a NFL MVP award and Super Bowl MVP award to his credit, along with plenty of single-season records in hand, the Chiefs star quarterback is on a rocket-like ascent to being the league’s poster representative for the next decade-plus.

What’s going to be a hot topic, if it’s not already, is just how so many teams — nine total, in fact — passed up on the former Texas Tech signal-caller until Kansas City moved up to grab him at No. 10 overall in the 2017 NFL Draft.

The 49ers, with Lynch and head coach Kyle Shanahan engineering a complete team rebuild, elected to use their first pick, No. 3 overall, on former Stanford defensive end Solomon Thomas.

And with the classic “what if?” riding high on the minds of the Niners fanbase and possibly the front office, too, one can only wonder what could have happened if San Francisco elected to go with Mahomes instead of Thomas, who never came close to living up to a top-three drafted player.

It’s an over-discussed topic, and 49ers fans are probably going to be sick of hearing about it up to, throughout and beyond the Super Bowl regardless of what happens.

But it’s going to be discussed nonetheless, and at least Niners fans can look at eight other teams who essentially made the same gaffe by passing up on Mahomes.

Doesn’t make it much easier, though.

Super Bowl 55 kicks off on Sunday, Feb. 7 at 6:40 p.m. ET.