For years, the tier of quarterback rivalry that Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen has now crossed into remained reserved for Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.

For those Patriots and Colts — and then Patriots and Broncos — showdowns.

For the six-game streak by Brady to start their head-to-head, the comeback in January 2007 that changed everything and all of the unpredictable duels that followed. 

Allen and Mahomes slowly crept toward that point with three postseason meetings and five regular-season clashes.

They aren’t the only superstar quarterbacks in the NFL, but each matchup carried a certain weight, a certain aura, a certain expectation for unexpected chaos that others haven’t matched.

The pair will collide in the AFC Championship game at Arrowhead Stadium, with Kansas City needing a win to keep its bid for a three-peat alive and Buffalo needing a victory to get back to the Super Bowl for the first time since the 1993 season in search of its first тιтle. 

But really, this is just Part IV of Allen-Patrick Mahomes in the playoffs. This is just Part IX of Allen-Mahomes since 2020. This is the latest chapter in what has become Brady-Manning 2.0. 

In the eyes of Allen, the stacking of showdowns with the Chiefs turned an instance such as Sunday into a glorified “division game.”

With their fourth playoff meeting, Allen and Mahomes will sit just one shy of matching the record held by Brady and Manning.

At 29 and 28 years old, respectively, they only need eight more matchups across the rest of their career to hit the frequency of the Brady-Manning rivalry. 

“I feel like we’ve played them just as much as we’ve played the guys in our division, and with that comes familiarity,” Allen told reporters this week. “New wrinkles here and there throughout the game. But they know who we are. We know who they are.” 

Even with Allen (2,063 yards, 17 pᴀssing touchdowns, four interceptions) and Mahomes (2,220 yards, 18 touchdowns, seven interceptions) possessing near-identical stats against each other, there are some distinctions between the rivalries.

It took Manning six tries before he eventually defeated Brady and the Patriots in any setting.

It took until the AFC Championship game during the 2006 season — five years after their first matchup — for Manning to earn his first postseason win against New England. 

Allen hasn’t defeated Mahomes in the playoffs, but he has gone 4-1 during the regular season, including a Week 11 win this season punctuated by an acrobatic 26-yard touchdown run in the fourth quarter.

But Mahomes has triumphed on the biggest stages and dished out plenty of heartbreak, starting in 2021 when he orchestrated a masterful outing with 325 yards and three touchdowns as the Chiefs defeated the Bills, 38-24, in the conference тιтle game. 

One year later in the divisional round, Allen and Mahomes produced one of the best games in playoff history.

They combined for 707 pᴀssing yards, seven touchdowns and zero interceptions.

Twenty-four points were scored after the two-minute warning, with the final three following a three-play, 44-yard drive by the Chiefs that forced overtime and led to the “13-second” label.

And when Mahomes connected with Travis Kelce on the game-winning touchdown in the extra frame and the Bills lost without even touching the ball, it directly led to the league revisiting its overtime rules. 

Then, a season pᴀssed without Allen and Mahomes overlapping in the playoffs.

The Bills defeated the Chiefs during the 2022 regular season but then lost against the Bengals before what would’ve been a rematch in the AFC Championship game.

Instead, the latest postseason chapter of the rivalry needed to wait until January 2024, when Allen only managed to throw for 186 yards and the Bills failed to force overtime when Tyler Bᴀss’ late field goal sailed right. 

“You just have to know you’re gonna have to play your best football,” Mahomes told reporters this week. “I mean, I’ve played against Josh enough times to know that he’s gonna come out there and play great football, especially in those big moments. … And when you go up against a great quarterback, it takes your best as well.” 

Mahomes has inherited Brady’s role amid his chase for Super Bowl history.

Allen is still waiting for his version of Manning’s comeback game to break through in the playoffs.

For the first playoff matchup or two, the rivalry was budding. A work in progress.

Then, after the Chiefs’ 13-second comeback, there was no question one existed — and no question there’d be plenty of future matchups on these stages, too. 

Sunday, nine years after Manning escaped against Brady in what turned out to be their final meeting, will just mark the latest.