sport news Super Bowl: Patrick Mahomes vs. Jalen Hurts in the battle of the quarterbacks trends now

Patrick Mahomes was already a household name. Jalen Hurts has become one in his third NFL season. Both quarterbacks want to go down in history at Super Bowl LVII next Sunday. Only one can. 

Hurts launched the Eagles from preseason 30-1 odds to win the Super Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, to staking them as the one-and-a-half point favorite against Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs in the showpiece.

'This is the Jalen Hurts Show at the end of the day,' Chiefs defensive end Frank Clark said ahead of the big one, as he insists that Kansas City will be prepared to deal with Hurts at full speed. 

'If you can stop what he's doing, you can possibly slow them down. But he's playing some great football.'

Hurts seems to be embracing and appreciative of the magnitude of the moment. Both himself and Mahomes are Texas natives, after all. They are both NFL MVP finalists. And they will be the first black quarterbacks to face off in a Super Bowl. 

'I think it's history. I think it's something that's worthy of being noted,' Hurts said, also mentioning that, to him, it's an honor to be facing a familiar face in Mahomes, his counterpart. 

The Chiefs beat the Eagles in October 2021 when Hurts threw for 387 yards and two touchdowns. Mahomes? Well, he threw for five. 

But the game was one of the earliest signs that Hurts would grow into the main man in Philly, as he has shown fans and doubters ever since. 

The 24-year-old will surely be given a significant raise to move him closer to his much more-experienced rival, whether he wins or loses at The University of Phoenix Stadium. 

And what can we anticipate from a one-time Super Bowl champion who's dying to prove himself as the next face of the league? 

Now that Tom Brady's retired from football 'for good', Mahomes is suddenly under pressure to show that he'll be the one taking the torch passed on by the 45-year-old quarterback legend, as many have projected.

Dailymail.com takes a look at the battle of the quarterbacks... 

Who are the people behind the NFL armor?

Once named among Time 100's list of most influential people of 2020 shortly after winning the first Super Bowl championship of his career against the 49ers, Mahomes breathes Kansas City sports, along with his wife, Brittany, ever since he found a home in the Missouri-based franchise as the 10th overall pick of the 2017 NFL Draft.

Godson of former MLB pitcher LaTroy Hawkins, a teammate of his father's, Patrick Mahomes Sr., on the Minnesota Twins, the 27-year-old and Brittany (née Matthews) are part of the ownership team of the Kansas City Current, a team amongst 11 others in the National Women's Soccer League. Mahomes is also a minority stakeholder in Sporting Club, the ownership group of MLS franchise Sporting Kansas City.  

The quarterback also got down on one knee to propose to his then-high school sweetheart at Arrowhead Stadium on the same day he received his Super Bowl LIV ring in 2020.

Mahomes' wife, Brittany once had a brief professional soccer career playing for UMF Afturelding in Iceland before eventually becoming a certified personal trainer.

The couple currently live in Kansas City and married in March, a little less than a year after welcoming their first-born and daughter, Sterling Skye, in February 2021. They also have a son, Patrick Lavon Mahomes III, who was born in November. 

Mahomes and Hurts are both Christian and the Chiefs quarterback got closer to his faith while involved in a youth group in middle school. 

'Faith is huge for me. … Before every game, I walk the field and I do a prayer at the goalpost,' Mahomes told Sports Spectrum in 2020. 'I just thank God for those opportunities and I thank God for letting me be on a stage where I can glorify Him. The biggest thing that I pray for is that whatever happens, win or lose, success or failure, that I'm glorifying Him.' 

On the role of religion in his life, Hurts once told GOD TV: 'I keep God at the center of everything. I give Him all the praise, I lean on Him all the time. And I know that everything unfolds the way it's supposed to.' 

Mahomes also has a younger brother, Jackson, 22 - an internet celebrity who often  records TikTok videos from the sidelines of Arrowhead Stadium while his brother dictates play from under center. 

In contrast, not much of Hurts' personal life has been revealed. The Eagles quarterback prefers to live his life out of the limelight, as many within his entourage have previously told the press. 

The 24-year-old is the son of a Texas-based football head coach from Channelview, 16 miles east of Houston. Hurts has two siblings: a younger sister, Kynnedy, and an older brother, Averion, named after his father.  

Jalen's brother, Averion, played college football for Texas Southern University, as the team's starting quarterback. He's now a college football coach at the University of Alabama, where Hurts, himself, first played football after high school in 2016 before transferring to The University of Oklahoma in 2019. 

During his high school days, only one of Hurts' parents would attend his weekly football games, as the other would watch Averion's games.

Hurts has recently gone public with his girlfriend, Bryonna Burrows, following the Eagles' NFC Championship title on January 29. The couple were pictured side-by-side after the Eagles defeated the 49ers. 

They met at the University of Alabama, where Burrows graduated from in 2017 with a bachelor's degree in Spanish and political science, according to People. She is now a senior client experience consultant for IBM in Dallas.

Different paths to the NFL pinnacle

In 2020, at only 24, Mahomes became the youngest player to have won both a Super Bowl ring and the game's MVP award, having been chosen by The Associated Press in only his second season and first as a starter after being the backup to Alex Smith in 2019. 

But, the 27-year-old's path to the top of the NFL wasn't an easy one by any means. 

Coming out of high school, Mahomes was only rated as a three-star recruit by college football scouts and was ranked as the 12th best dual-threat quarterback in the 2014 class.  

The NFL's 2018 Offensive Player of the Year also came close to choosing baseball over football before going to college. 

He was an exciting prospect in the 2014 MLB Draft, though he wasn't expected to be ranked highly due to his commitment to playing football at Texas Tech. The Detroit Tigers did select the Super Bowl LIV champion, nonetheless, but the player, himself, didn't sign a contract with the team.

In Lubbock, Mahomes split his time with the Red Raiders' baseball team, where he was a relief pitcher, and even received an offer from The Oakland Athletics though he turned it down to keep playing football. 

Texas Tech got the best out of Mahomes his junior year in 2016, when the team narrowly finished outside bowl eligibility with a 5-7 record. That season, the then-21-year-old quarterback broke several NCAA records in a 66-59 loss to Oklahoma at home, including for single game passing yards with 734. 

He also holds the college record for most combined yards of total offense in a game with 1,708 combined passing yards, and total offense by two players, as the other was Baker Mayfield, the Sooners' starting quarterback.

Announcing that he would forgo

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