GREEN BAY – He's the reigning NFL MVP, a two-time winner of the award in fact, and a two-time Super Bowl MVP to boot, but he's never played at Lambeau Field.
Green Bay, say hello to Patrick Mahomes.
The Kansas City Chiefs quarterback will make his career debut at Lambeau on Sunday Night Football against the Packers, and he's certainly looking forward to it.
"I'm extremely excited for it. I mean, I've watched it my whole life," Mahomes told reporters in Kansas City this week. "I know it's gonna be a hostile environment, and the fans are gonna be loud. It's gonna be a lot like Arrowhead is to other teams but I'm excited.
"If you love football, you love Lambeau Field."
Last season, Mahomes became the 10th player since the inception of the Associated Press NFL MVP award in 1957 to win it multiple times. His first MVP was in 2018, just his second season in the league and first as a full-time starter.
How have history's multiple MVP winners fared in their first performances at Lambeau Field? Taking out former Packers Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers, the other seven have produced a mixed bag with some interesting footnotes.
Sometimes, the Packers first hosted them before they won their MVPs, other times not until after (like Mahomes). And due to the Packers playing a portion of their home games in Milwaukee through 1994, some faced the Packers there initially and waited a while before they actually appeared at Lambeau.
So here's the historical rundown, in chronological order (preseason games not included), of the league's multiple MVP winners and their Lambeau Field debuts.
Johnny Unitas (MVP years: 1959, '64, '67)
Oct. 9, 1960: Packers 35, Colts 21
Unitas beat the Packers three straight times in Milwaukee, in '57, '58 and '59, in going 6-1 in his first seven starts against Green Bay.
But when he finally came to Lambeau the Packers beat him, intercepting him four times and sacking him four others as he went 16-of-31 for 216 yards with a TD. Jim Taylor pounded out three rushing touchdowns and Green Bay QB Lamar McHan had a very nondescript passing day (6-of-14, 86 yards, TD) before running for a 35-yard TD to close out the scoring.
Jim Brown (1957, '58, '65)
Jan. 2, 1966: Packers 23, Browns 12
Brown only faced the Packers three times in his career, and his first game in Wisconsin was in Milwaukee in 1964. His first appearance at Lambeau was the 1965 NFL title game, and it turned out to be the final game of his Hall of Fame career.
The Packers held Brown to just 50 rushing yards on 12 carries, a far cry from his league-leading 1,544 yards on the season, though he did add 44 receiving yards on three catches. He was outperformed by the Packers' dynamic duo of Paul Hornung (18 carries, 105 yards, TD) and Taylor (27-96), who combined for 201 rushing yards on soft, snowed-upon field as the Packers won their third of five titles in the Vince Lombardi era, and the first of three straight that ended Lombardi's tenure.
Steve Young ('92, '94)
Dec. 1, 1985: Packers 21, Buccaneers 0
Young's Lambeau debut, while with Tampa Bay, came seven years before he won the first of his two MVPs with the 49ers, and he'd just as soon forget it. A blinding snowstorm dumped nearly a foot of snow on Green Bay that day, preventing almost two-thirds of the ticketholders from making it to the game.
Known as the "Snow Bowl" in front of an official attendance of 19,856 (with 36,586 no-shows), the Packers absolutely dominated the Buccaneers, who were literally and figuratively out of their element. The final stats read as follows: 31 to 5 in first downs, 512 to 65 in total yards, 38:26 to 21:34 in time of possession.
Young was 8-of-17 for 53 yards with one interception, and he was sacked five times for losses of 42 yards, meaning the Bucs (who finished the season 2-14) produced just 11 net passing yards. Other than Al Del Greco missing a couple of short field goals, the conditions didn't affect the Packers much, as Eddie Lee Ivery (13 carries, 109 yards), Gerry Ellis (9-101) and James Lofton (six catches, 106 yards) all had 100-yard days and QB Lynn Dickey came up just one yard shy of a 300-yard passing effort.
Joe Montana ('89, '90)
Dec. 6, 1987: 49ers 23, Packers 12
In his first year as San Francisco's full-time starter in 1981, during the 49ers' first Super Bowl season, Montana beat the Packers in Milwaukee, 13-3. He beat them again when he came to Lambeau six years later with an efficient and productive outing (26-of-35, 308 yards, two TDs, one INT, 107.8 passer rating, plus one rushing TD) while San Francisco's defense intercepted Packers QB Randy Wright three times and sacked him four times.
The 49ers were the NFL's best team in the regular season that year, going 13-2 (including 3-0 in the replacement games due to the players' strike), but were upset at home during the divisional round of the playoffs by the Minnesota Vikings.
Peyton Manning ('03, '04, '08, '09, '13)
Nov. 19, 2000: Packers 26, Colts 24
On the very first snap Manning took at Lambeau Field, he was sacked for a safety by Russell Maryland. That helped catapult the Packers to a 19-0 lead, but the Colts rallied.
Manning (25-of-44, 294 yards, one INT) threw three TD passes in the fourth quarter, the last two coming in the game's final five minutes and pulling the Colts within two points each time. But Allen Rossum's 92-yard kickoff return for a TD in between those two Indy scores proved to be the difference. Ahman Green (24 carries, 153 yards) and Bill Schroeder (eight catches, 155 yards) had big days, accounting for 308 of Green Bay's 432 total yards.
Kurt Warner ('99, '01)
Oct. 3, 2004: Giants 14, Packers 7
Warner won his two MVPs with the Rams but never faced the Packers at Lambeau while quarterbacking them. He did with the Giants in '04, going 20-of-26 for 187 yards with one TD and one INT in a game that was scoreless at halftime.
A concussed Favre threw a 28-yard TD pass to Javon Walker to give the Packers a short-lived 7-0 lead in the third quarter before being replaced by Doug Pederson. Less than a minute later, Tiki Barber's 52-yard TD run re-tied the game as part of his 23-carry, 182-yard day, and Warner's 4-yard TD pass to Jeremy Shockey early in the fourth became the game-winner.
Tom Brady ('07, '10, '17)
Nov. 19, 2006: Patriots 35, Packers 0
Brady had won three Super Bowls but no MVPs yet when he came to Lambeau Field and threw four TD passes (20-of-31, 244 yards, 128.2 rating) in a blowout of the Packers that served as one of several low points in Mike McCarthy's first season as Green Bay's head coach.
In mop-up duty behind Favre after the game got out of hand, Rodgers broke his foot and was subsequently placed on injured reserve for the first of only two times during his Packers career.
