All I know is that Tom Brady would NEVER!

Down 34-0 near the end of the third? And 40-6 halfway through the fourth? A MAJOR factor in his team’s Super Bowl disintegration with the planet watching?

Tom Brady dealt with diabolical four-man rush defenses in Super Bowls. Twice.

He got the snot beat out of him in the 2007 Super Bowl by the Giants and Steve Spagnuolo’s front. He still put the Patriots ahead 14-10 with 2:45 left in the fourth and hit Randy Moss in the hands from 70 yards away on a third-and-20 from his own 16-yard line with 19 seconds remaining, one play after getting SAWED IN HALF by Jay Alford.

Less snot was beaten from him in 2011 when, with a lesser supporting cast than 2007, he hit Wes Welker in the hands with a would-be game sealer that was dropped. On the final play of the game with the Patriots trailing 21-17, he hit Aaron Hernandez in the hands with a Hail Mary that was tipped and fell just short of a diving Rob Gronkowski.

He got smacked up by the Eagles in 2017 — nine quarterback hits compared to one for Nick Foles — and still threw for a Super Bowl-record 505 yards.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more merciless beating than Brady took in the 2015 AFC Championship Game against Denver, but there he was hitting Gronk on fourth-and-10 from the 50-yard line for 40 yards with 1:34 left to set up a touchdown on fourth-and-4 with 17 seconds left that made it 20-18. The two-point conversion failed.

And those are the losses!

At halftime Sunday night, the stage was set for Patrick Mahomes to win his third in a row AND erase a massive deficit like Brady did against the Falcons in 2016. It only got worse.

There was a point you knew Mahomes was dead. Brady never died. I’m not here to bury Mahomes. He belongs in the top-five conversation. Even the top three. But you can’t put a lesser god up on the same mountaintop with Zeus.

I mentioned last week that the Brady-Mahomes GOAT debate is great fodder, but Mahomes is barely halfway up Everest.

Julian Edelman joins Tom Curran on the Patriots Talk podcast and shares his thoughts on the Tom Brady-Patrick Mahomes debate and why the former Patriots QB still holds the edge in the ‘GOAT’ QB debate.

Brady didn’t just win seven Super Bowls. He woulda-shoulda-coulda won them in 2006 (gag job in Indy), 2007 (helmet catch), 2011 (aforementioned missed connection with Welker), 2015 (embarrassing OL and skill position performance, plus Jamie Collins getting got twice by Owen Daniels) and 2017 (Malcolm Butler sits; Foles goes off).

It’s like the Jack Nicklaus-Tiger Woods debate. Nicklaus won 18 majors. Woods won 15. Nicklaus was runner-up in a major 19 times! Woods has seven.

Tom Brady was a long way from infallible in Super Bowls or elimination games. The guy took a friggin’ unforced SAFETY on the first drive of Super Bowl XLVI against the Giants. He threw a dumbass red-zone pick against the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl XXXVIII.

He threw an almost-pick-6 to Denver’s Champ Bailey in 2005 which killed the Patriots’ chances for a three-peat and handed Brady his first playoff loss after a still-record 10-0 start to his playoff career. His pick ended the final drive in the 2006 AFCCG. And so on.

But nobody — perhaps in American pro sports history — could ever do the Lazarus act like Brady. Even when he didn’t rise fully from the dead, you had to pry games from his cold, dead hands.

He never got his face blown off like Peyton Manning did by Seattle in 2012. Like Mahomes did Sunday. Like Joe Montana did in 1986 when his Niners lost 49-3 to the Giants, or when he got benched in 1987 in the Divisional Round against the Vikings. Like John Elway when he lost by a combined 96 points in his first three trips to the Super Bowl.

That’s pretty much my top five quarterbacks in NFL history. Brady, Mahomes, Montana, Elway, Manning.

Do you understand what I’m saying here? And that’s not even getting to 41-year-old Tom Brady tearing the Chiefs’ heart out in the 2018 AFC Championship Game or 43-year-old Brady beating Mahomes and the Chiefs by 22 in the 2020 Super Bowl.

You can “Yeah, but …” all you want. Bring up the greatness of Bill Belichick and say that’s points-against for Brady to have had the best coach ever. Fine. What’s Andy Reid? What was Bill Walsh?

Brady had too many weapons with Gronk and Moss? Moss was given up on by the time he got to New England. And still wasn’t as great as Jerry Rice. And haven’t we been hearing about the brilliance of Travis Kelce non-stop for four years?

I did not — I swear — go into Sunday’s game wanting to see Mahomes fall apart limb-by-limb and the Chiefs’ pursuit of history thwarted.

I like having covered the greatest dynasty in NFL history and being fortunate enough to have had the greatest opportunity any reporter ever had over a 25-year stretch. But I don’t think another team elevating diminishes that. And I also didn’t think the Chiefs or Mahomes were truly close to what the Patriots accomplished.

As I’ve said before, they are about halfway home. Mahomes is 3-2 in Super Bowls after five of them, just like Brady was. Just like the Patriots were from 2001 to 2011.

The man’s got time. But he’s still only halfway up the mountain.