Tom Brady still has battle scars when thinking about facing the vaunted Giants pass rush.
Those defenses were led by coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, who is now in the same role with the Chiefs, and watching the Chiefs slow down 49ers on Sunday brought up bad memories for Brady of their battles.
“There’s Steve Spagnuolo,” Brady said while in the booth Sunday for Kansas City’s 28-18 win. “He’s been the bane of my existence. I still have PTSD from some of those blitzes in the 2007 Super Bowl. I know my friend Michael Strahan says he is the greatest guy in the room. But I don’t want to hear that. I do not want to hear that. He’s been the bane of my existence. What a coach he is.”
Spagnuolo served in his first year as the Giants’ defensive coordinator during the 2007 season, transforming the unit into one of the best in the sport by the end of the season and arguably the main reason why the franchise authored one of the greatest upsets in Super Bowl history.
Led by Strahan, Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck, the Giants hurried Brady on 16 of his 54 dropbacks and sacked him five times in a 17-14 win in Super Bowl XLII.
The Giants were 13.5-point underdogs against an 18-0 Patriots team that had overwhelmed the NFL on offense that season.
After becoming a hot commodity due to his Super bowl run, Spagnuolo stayed with the Giants for one more season before he departed to be the head coach of the St. Louis Rams.
Spagnuolo and the Rams — led by quarterback Marc Bulger and running back Stephen Jackson — went 1-15 in the coach’s first season before drafting Oklahoma star Sam Bradford with the No. 1 pick in the NFL draft.
Spagnuolo was fired after going 10-38 in three seasons and after stints on the Saints and Ravens’ staffs, he returned to the Giants in 2015 as defensive coordinator and stayed through the 2017 season.
He became the defensive coordinator of the Chiefs in 2019.
Brady was just 1-3 against Spagnuolo while he was paired with Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes, but that one win was a Super Bowl LV victory when the seven-time Lombardi Trophy winner had jettisoned the Patriots to join the Buccaneers.
Spagnuolo, though, has four Super Bowl rings between his time with the Chiefs and Giants.