Super Bowl

Who would President Biden rather catch passes from? He picks Patrick Mahomes over Tom Brady.

Evan Vucci
Joe Biden sat for an interview during the Super Bowl pregame show.

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President Biden, in an interview with Norah O’Donnell during the Super Bowl pregame show, said he’d rather catch a pass from Patrick Mahomes over Tom Brady.

“Obviously Brady is a great quarterback,” he said. “Mahomes seems like he’s got a lot of potential so I’d probably take a shot with the young guy [we] don’t expect as much from.”

But that’s not to say Biden is predicting the Kansas City Chiefs to beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when the game kicks off at 6:30 p.m. on CBS.

“I don’t know who is going to win,” he said. “I think they’re both great quarterbacks — one is just a younger version, potentially, of a great old quarterback.”

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Then he had to clarify. “Not old,” he said with a laugh. “In NFL terms, old.”

Brady, 43, is indeed old in NFL terms. Just by playing in Sunday’s game, he’ll become the oldest player to appear in a Super Bowl.

And if he can lead the Bucs to just their second Lombardi Trophy in franchise history, Brady will extend his own streak as the oldest player to win a Super Bowl while picking up a seventh ring.

Biden himself was a football player, he said. His “wild dreams,” when they weren’t about becoming president, involved making it to the NFL.

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Instead, he’s leading the country through a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic and grappling with a rocky rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, among other issues.

“One of the disappointments when we came to office is the circumstance relating to how the administration was handling COVID. [It] was even more dire than we thought,” he said.

“We thought it indicated there was at least more vaccine available, and that didn’t turn out to be the case.”

In the interview, Biden said he hopes that his administration can “make up for all the lost time fighting COVID” quickly enough to allow for the usual Super Bowl festivities in 2022.

“God willing, we’re going to be able to celebrate it all as usual a year from now,” he told O’Donnell.

Only 22,000 fans will be in attendance at Sunday’s game at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, a far cry from the nearly 66,000 the stadium can hold.

But Biden had a word of caution for folks as they celebrate Super Bowl Sunday.

“I know it’s hard, I know it was a hard Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year’s,” Biden said. “I hope, people, if you’re watching, be careful. Be careful.”

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