There are countless posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, that have aged poorly, but former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman may have one of the most-infamous ones, at least in the sports world.
In September of 2019, The Athletic Kansas City posted that Kansas City Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes had thrown 36 percent of Aikman’s career touchdown passes in just eight percent of the games. The post in question came just after Mahomes threw three touchdowns in a win over the Baltimore Ravens, giving him 60 touchdowns early in his second season as a starter.
Aikman did not seem to take kindly to that, as he boldly responded with “Talk to me when when he has 33% of my Super Bowl Titles”
Almost five years later, and that post has aged like milk in the desert.
Mahomes and the Chiefs just toppled the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl LVIII on Sunday, giving him his third ring in five years to match Aikman’s career total. With the Internet always keeping receipts, it didn’t take long for Aikman’s response to become a popular talking point once more.
After receiving countless response to that old tweet, Aikman finally cleared up what he truly meant at the time.
“It wasn’t about Patrick, and that’s the interesting part of it,” Aikman said Wednesday on Sportsradio 96.7 FM/1310 The Ticket (KTCK-AM).
“It rubbed me the wrong way just because, you know, we’re at a time where we point to players’ greatness by numbers. We’ll see, hey, this guy has scored a touchdown in each of the last 12 teams and you know, who cares?”
Furthermore, Aikman said that his tweet has aged well, for a different reason than many assume.
“Well, yes, it has,” Aikman said. “It’s aged very well that now we’re talking about winning championships and it doesn’t matter [solely about] yards.
“I mean, there’s a lot of quarterbacks in this league that put up good yards this year that didn’t win a championship, but nobody cares. And that was really my point. And Patrick, he would agree with all of that.”
With three Super Bowls at just 28 years old, Mahomes will surely go down as one of the greatest quarterbacks ever when he eventually hangs up his cleats. Unlike many may assume, though, Aikman would be more than happy to see the Chiefs star continue to thrive.
