Tyreek Hill must have forgotten what position he plays. That, at least, would justify his bold claim that he is indeed a better football player than his former teammate, Patrick Mahomes.
Hill was recently voted by his peers as the NFL's best player, while Mahomes inexplicably came in at No. 4 on said list. When recently asked if he is indeed better than Mahomes, Hill appeared to take the question as an insult.
"Yeah!" he said on "Up & Adams." "Fo sho. I'm him! I'm him! My argument is ... Pat is great. He's great, obviously, for his team. They won back-to-back Super Bowls, yada yada, they did their thing.
"You look at me. Back-to-back 1,700 (yard seasons), Pro Bowl, All-Pro ... All-Decade. Consistency. All that, man. And I'm doing this at 5-8, about 190? Come on man. A lot of people said I couldn't be a receiver, and here I am doing this."
There's no denying Hill's status as one of the best wideouts -- and football players -- of his era. As he alluded to, Hill has achieved a great deal of individual success so far in his career. He has been named to the Pro Bowl in each of his first eight seasons. He also earned five All-Pro nods over that span and was a key part of the Chiefs' first Super Bowl team with Mahomes under center.
Hill has continued to produce at a high level after he was traded from Kansas City to Miami before the start of the 2022 season. During his first two years in South Beach, Hill caught 238 of 341 targets for 3,509 yards and 20 touchdowns. He paced the entire NFL last year in receiving yards (1,799) and touchdown catches (13) despite missing a game.
Hill is an elite player, and his peers voting him No. 1 only reinforces that. But for as good as Hill is, no current player is having a career like the one Mahomes is putting together in Kansas City.
Still just 28 years old, Mahomes is one of just seven players in NFL history to win league and Super Bowl MVP in the same season and the first to do so since 1999. He's one of just five starting quarterbacks all-time with at least three Super Bowl wins, and is one of only three players in NFL history who have won at least three Super Bowl MVP awards (Joe Montana and Tom Brady being the other two).
Last year, Mahomes became the eighth starting quarterback in NFL history to lead his team to back-to-back Super Bowls despite not having Hill by his side. His top wideout last year was rookie Rashee Rice. A year earlier, Mahomes' No. 1 wide receiver was JuJu Smith-Schuster, whom the Patriots recently released.
Hill is a special talent, but we've seen similar exploits in recent years from other wideouts. Antonio Brown, for example, had a record-setting six-year run that was ending at about the same time that Hill was beginning his ascension. Mahomes, however, is a unique talent whose career is already threatening Brady's as the greatest of all-time. He's the NFL's best player, regardless of what Hill or anyone else says.
