The GOAT played against plenty of great defenders in his 10 Super Bowl appearances, but one player stood out from the rest.
Mike Kadlick | Feb 6, 2025
In this story:
- New England Patriots
- Los Angeles Rams
Former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady played in 10 Super Bowls in throughout his 20+ year NFL career, and is now getting ready to call his first as Fox's lead color commentator on Sunday.
Ahead of the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, the GOAT took to a mailbag segment on the 'NFL on FOX' YouTube channel—and answered who the best defender he ever played against in a Super Bowl was:
"This is an easy one," relayed Brady. "There's one guy, late in my career, who I went against who every time we played him he was an absolute nuisance—and I didn't get him very often—in fact he got me a lot. He beat me a lot. But in the Super Bowl in 2018 against the Rams, we faced Aaron Donald."
"We actually limited his ability to make a lot of plays in that game because we had a lot of double teams," he continued. "Every single play: run, pass—including pass protection—was designed to keep him out of the backfield and to keep him from making negative plays. Now he didn't make negative plays, and at the same time we only scored 13 points the entire game."
"It was one of the hardest games and one of the biggest challenges I ever faced," Brady said. "Because he forced us to do so many things that we didn't necessarily wanna do from a gameplan standpoint. And even though we eliminated his ability to impact the game on the stat sheet, it affected our ability to score points. And thank God for our defense played so great, or we wouldn't have won that game."
Donald ended up with just five tackles over the contest, while Brady hoisted his sixth Lombardi Trophy.
He'll be on the call for his first ever Super Bowl as a broadcaster as the Kansas City Chiefs face off against the Philadelphia Eagles this coming Sunday. Kickoff is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. from New Orleans' Caesars Superdome.