Trash-talk heats up for Mahomes, Brady, Rodgers, Allen ahead of ‘The Match’ in Vegas
The Match, the charity golf event featuring four star NFL quarterbacks, will be a battle for the ages.
Emphasis on ages, as Patrick Mahomes said playfully on Thursday.
Mahomes and Buffalo Bills QB Josh Allen will team up to take on Tom Brady of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers on Wednesday at Wynn Las Vegas. The 12-hole, match-play event for charity begins at 5:30 p.m. Central Time on TNT.
Mahomes and Allen are each 26 with a combined nine years of NFL experience between them. Brady is 44, Rodgers 38, and they’ve combined to play a whopping 39 NFL seasons.
“It’s going to be really cool to get out there with those guys, and me and Josh get a dub (win) against the old guys,” Mahomes said. “They’ve been trying to talk trash, but you could tell it’s either scripted or old jokes they found on Twitter.”
Rodgers got the trash-talk rolling earlier in the week.
“When we started, definitely when (Brady) started and when I started playing, there was actual, real trash-talk,” Rodgers said in a story on ESPN. “Like, guys trash-talked each other ... and we knew who they were around the league.
“And now, it’s more buddy-buddy, you know, social-media following each other, memes, this emoji (stuff), and it’s not the same. So, when you talk about Kermit the Frog (a reference to Mahomes) and Josh (Allen) trying to (trash)-talk me and Tom, a couple old-school, grizzled vets ... Come on.”
Allen and Brady shot arrows at each other, too.
Allen: “I think once Tom’s script from his team runs out of jokes, I don’t think he’s going to be able to really think on his feet like that. I feel like I’ve got a lot of practice and just kind of wit and off-the-cuff stuff. I think Aaron’s a little better in that aspect, but yeah, Tom is going to have his little note card out there and he’s going to run out eventually, and I don’t think he’s going to know what to do.”
Brady fired back, and got a piece of Mahomes in the process:
“I will come prepared like I always do to everything, and you know, it’s different. Golf (trash)-talk’s a little different than pro football (trash)-talk. Usually, pro football (trash)-talk is, you usually have to back that up. Josh really hasn’t backed up much on the football field in his career, let’s be honest, especially playing against me.
“I would just say it’s going to look like what it’s looked like for a long time against him. And Patrick, although he’s played a lot of great games, he didn’t really win the important ones. He has won a few of the other ones, but not the really important ones.”
This story was originally published May 27, 2022 at 5:00 AM.