Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen meet again on Thanksgiving night, November 26, when the Chiefs visit Buffalo for NBC's late game.1 Their record splits by month. Going into their 2025 regular-season game, NFL Research had Allen 4-1 against Mahomes in regular-season games and Mahomes 4-0 against Allen in the playoffs.2
Fourteen rankings on YouPickBest include Mahomes, Allen or both. Most are quarterback lists where the two face each other directly; four admit only one of the pair, and three are lists nobody wants to be on.
January belongs to Mahomes and nearly every other column of the stat sheet leans toward Allen, so each list below turns on which of those two ledgers it chooses to read.
Mahomes vs Allen: the best quarterback of the 2020s
The 2020s quarterback ranking is the plainest version of the question. Its field covers Tom Brady's final seasons and rookies such as Drake Maye, and Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen are both on it.
Mahomes brings the hardware. Kansas City reached five Super Bowls with him as the starter and won three of them.
Allen brings the volume. NFL Research counted him second only to Mahomes in wins, passing touchdowns, total yards and total touchdowns since he entered the league in 2018.
Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow and Jalen Hurts each hold a genuine claim on the decade too. Jackson won the 2023 MVP, Burrow reached Super Bowl LVI in only his second year, and Hurts beat Mahomes for a ring in February 2025.
Brady vs Manning, Mahomes vs Allen: the great QB rivalries
This ranking lists the NFL's quarterback rivalries, and Patrick Mahomes vs. Josh Allen is one option among them, next to Brady against Manning, Aikman against Young and Elway against Marino.
Postseason history has few rematches like it. NFL Research found only one quarterback pairing that met more often in the playoffs: Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, five times, with Manning taking three. Mahomes has beaten Allen in all four of theirs, the most playoff wins by one quarterback over another.
The game people still replay is January 23, 2022. Allen put Buffalo ahead 36-33 with 13 seconds left in regulation, Mahomes used those 13 seconds to reach field-goal range, and Kansas City won 42-36 in overtime without Allen touching the ball again.3
The split has one historical parallel. Allen's .800 regular-season record against Mahomes is the second-best by any quarterback against an opponent he has never beaten in the playoffs; only Billy Kilmer, 6-1 against Fran Tarkenton in the regular season and 0-2 in January, did better.2
Brady and Manning remain the standard: seventeen meetings across fifteen seasons, four of them for the AFC title.
Peyton Manning's five MVPs, Mahomes's two, Allen's one
The MVP ranking holds every kind of winner, from Jim Brown and Johnny Unitas to Peyton Manning's record five, and both Chiefs and Bills quarterbacks qualify.
Mahomes won it in 2018, his first season as a starter, and again in 2022.
Allen has the 2024 award, decided 383 points to 362 over Lamar Jackson in the Associated Press count, with 27 first-place ballots.4
Two against one settles little when the same ranking includes Manning, Aaron Rodgers with four and Brett Favre with three. Running backs complicate it further: Barry Sanders, Terrell Davis and Adrian Peterson each won with a 2,000-yard season, a kind of year no quarterback can imitate.
Arm talent: Josh Allen, Patrick Mahomes and Dan Marino
This ranking is about raw throwing ability, and it puts Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes beside Dan Marino, John Elway, Brett Favre and Jeff George.
Allen's arm is why Buffalo traded up for a Wyoming quarterback whose college completion rate worried scouts. The bet looked shaky for two seasons, then paid off from 2020.
Mahomes throws from angles the other names here rarely tried: sidearm, off one foot, across his body on the run.
Marino is the counterweight. His 48 touchdown passes in 1984 stood as the single-season record for twenty years, thrown with a release scouts still use as the benchmark.
Deep ball: Mahomes, Allen and the vertical passers
The deep-ball ranking reaches back to Daryle Lamonica, Joe Namath and Sonny Jurgensen, the vertical passers of the AFL and 1960s NFL, and runs forward to Mahomes and Allen.
Mahomes earned his place in his first year as the Chiefs' starter, when he threw 50 touchdown passes, many of them to Tyreek Hill on the run.
Allen's deep game arrived with Stefon Diggs, whom Buffalo acquired in 2020. Diggs set the franchise records for catches and receiving yards that season.
Terry Bradshaw and Dan Fouts are the reminder that throwing deep used to be the whole offense, in an era when defenders could hit receivers far downfield.
Improvisers: Mahomes after the knee, Allen through contact
Improvisation is the skill both men are known for outside the pocket, and this ranking puts them with Fran Tarkenton, Steve Young, Michael Vick and Russell Wilson.
In December 2025 Mahomes suffered torn ACL and LCL ligaments in his left knee. Nine months later he had no injury designation and started the Chiefs' Monday night opener against Denver.5
Allen's version runs through defenders. His scrambles end in a hurdle or a lowered shoulder more often than a slide, which is why he scores near the goal line like a fullback.
Tarkenton is the original. He retired in 1978 holding the career records for passing yards and touchdown passes, built on plays nobody had designed.
AFC Championship Game: Mahomes, Allen, Brady and Elway
The AFC title game is where the rivalry has been settled twice. Josh Allen reached two AFC Championship Games, after the 2020 and 2024 seasons, and both were in Kansas City against Patrick Mahomes.
Mahomes owns the round in a way no active quarterback does. Kansas City played seven AFC Championship Games in a row with him as the starter, from the 2018 season through 2024.
Buffalo's defense shares the blame for the Bills' side of it: NFL Research found it allowed 19.5 points a game in four regular-season wins over Kansas City and 34.8 in four playoff losses.2
Tom Brady won the AFC title nine times and John Elway five, so the ranking still has two names Mahomes has to catch. Jim Kelly, Buffalo's own, won four straight in the early 1990s and then lost all four Super Bowls.
For Allen, the list is a map of where his seasons have ended. Kelly is the Bills precedent for getting to the round again and again; the next step is the part Buffalo has not managed since 1993.
The 2017 trade: Buffalo's pick became Mahomes
The first-round quarterbacks of the 2010s run from Sam Bradford in 2010 to Kyler Murray in 2019, and Mahomes and Allen were drafted a year apart near the middle of it.
Kansas City took Mahomes 10th overall in 2017 with a pick it bought from Buffalo, sending the Bills the 27th pick, a third-rounder and its 2018 first-round selection.6
A year later the Bills traded up themselves, giving Tampa Bay the 12th, 53rd and 56th picks to take Allen seventh.7 Baker Mayfield went first and Sam Darnold third in that class, and Lamar Jackson went 32nd.
Andrew Luck is the third name, the 2012 first overall pick whose retirement at 29 left the decade's biggest what-if.
Josh Allen vs Jim Kelly: the best Buffalo Bills player
The Bills ranking is the first list here Patrick Mahomes cannot enter. Josh Allen is the only modern quarterback on it, and his competition is the early-1990s core: Jim Kelly, Bruce Smith, Thurman Thomas and Andre Reed.
Allen's numbers already reach past the franchise. His 76th rushing touchdown, against Pittsburgh in November 2025, broke Cam Newton's record for a quarterback.8
Kelly's case is four straight Super Bowl trips. Smith's is 200 career sacks, the NFL record, most of them in a Bills uniform.
O. J. Simpson's 2,000-yard season in 1973 and the AFL titles of 1964 and 1965 give the list an older layer that Allen's generation never saw.
Patrick Mahomes and Ken Griffey Jr.: sons of big leaguers
Second-generation athletes make a cross-sport ranking: Kobe Bryant, Stephen Curry, Ken Griffey Jr., Peyton Manning, Max Verstappen and Paolo Maldini, all children of professionals.
Patrick Mahomes belongs because of baseball. His father, Pat Mahomes, pitched in the major leagues, and Patrick was born in 1995 while his dad was completing his fourth season with the Minnesota Twins.9
Josh Allen is not on this one. He came out of Firebaugh, California, and a junior college before Wyoming offered him a scholarship.
Griffey is the natural comparison: a son who outgrew a famous father and once played beside him in the Seattle outfield.
Madden covers: Mahomes, Allen and Michael Vick
The Madden ranking holds the cover athletes of EA's football series, and both quarterbacks have been on the box.
Mahomes fronted Madden NFL 20 and shared Madden NFL 22 with Tom Brady.
Allen fronted Madden NFL 24, the first Buffalo player chosen for the cover.10
Michael Vick is the name gamers bring up first. His Madden NFL 2004 version outran most of the league's defenders and became the series' shorthand for an unfair player.
Josh Allen, Dan Marino and Jim Kelly: no Super Bowl ring
This ranking collects great players who never won a Super Bowl, and Josh Allen is the active quarterback on it, next to Dan Marino, Barry Sanders, Jim Kelly and Calvin Johnson.
The number behind his place is seven: NFL Research counted seven playoff wins for Allen, the most by any quarterback who has never started a Super Bowl. Philip Rivers is the only other with even five.
Patrick Mahomes is the main reason. Kansas City eliminated Buffalo in four of five postseasons through the 2024 season.
Marino and Sanders are the warning. Marino reached one Super Bowl, in his second season, and never returned in the fifteen that followed; Sanders retired on the eve of the 1999 season.
Super Bowl LIX: Mahomes, the Eagles and the three-peat
The worst Super Bowls by great quarterbacks make an uncomfortable list, and Patrick Mahomes is on it for February 2025.
Philadelphia beat Kansas City 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX. The Eagles sacked Mahomes six times and intercepted him twice in the first half, once for a Cooper DeJean touchdown, and ended the Chiefs' bid to become the first team to win three straight titles.11
The company is distinguished: Peyton Manning's 43-8 loss to Seattle, John Elway's 55-10 defeat by San Francisco, Jim Kelly's four interceptions against Washington.
Josh Allen does not appear, because he has not reached the game. In Buffalo that absence counts as its own entry.
Most overrated quarterback: Mahomes and Allen on trial
The overrated ranking is the one place both men stand accused rather than considered, alongside Tom Brady, Eli Manning, Joe Flacco and Tony Romo.
The case against Mahomes is the supporting cast: Andy Reid's play design and Travis Kelce's hands on third down.
The case against Allen is the playoff exits in Kansas City.
Brady's presence explains the rest. Whoever wins most gets doubted most, and both of these quarterbacks have won enough to qualify.
Thanksgiving in Orchard Park, January in Kansas City
Across all fourteen rankings the pattern holds. The ones that count trophies and title games lean to Kansas City, the ones that count throws, runs and regular-season results lean to Buffalo, and the lists about absence hold one name each.
That is why a single head-to-head question never settles this pairing, and why the site breaks it into single head-to-head picks.
If you have a rivalry of your own that keeps changing shape, put both names into a ranking and see which questions flip it.
More rankings, more angles
- Tom Brady vs Patrick Mahomes: 7 Rings, 3 Rings, 15 Lists — Mahomes against the quarterback he chases
- Tom Brady: 199th Pick, 7 Rings, 15 Different Lists — the sixth-round pick behind both comparisons
- Ovechkin vs Gretzky: The Record Fell, the Argument Didn't — a current star measured against a closed career
Sources
- NBC — 2026 NFL Thanksgiving schedule, Chiefs at Bills, 8:20 p.m. ET: nbcnewyork.com (checked 2026-10-28)
- NFL.com, NFL Research — Mahomes vs Allen head-to-head records, AFC Championship Games, playoff wins: nfl.com (checked 2026-10-28)
- NFL.com — Chiefs 42, Bills 36 (OT), 2021 Divisional Round: nfl.com (checked 2026-10-28)
- NFL.com — Josh Allen wins 2024 AP NFL Most Valuable Player award: nfl.com (checked 2026-10-28)
- NFL.com — Mahomes cleared for the 2026 opener after ACL and LCL tear: nfl.com (checked 2026-10-28)
- NFL.com — Chiefs trade up with the Bills for Mahomes at No. 10: nfl.com (checked 2026-10-28)
- NFL.com — Bills trade up to draft Josh Allen at No. 7: nfl.com (checked 2026-10-28)
- NFL.com — Allen's 76th rushing touchdown breaks the quarterback record: nfl.com (checked 2026-10-28)
- MLB.com — Patrick Mahomes' baseball past and his father's Twins career: mlb.com (checked 2026-10-28)
- NFL.com — Josh Allen named Madden NFL 24 cover athlete: nfl.com (checked 2026-10-28)
- NFL.com — Eagles beat Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX: nfl.com (checked 2026-10-28)