Super Bowl: NY Giants’ legend Phenom Osi Umenyiora gives blueprint to stopping Tom Brady

Osi Umenyiora knows a thing or two about stopping Tom Brady, who’s on his way to an already record 10th Super Bowl appearance.

NY Giants legendary pass-rusher Osi Umenyiora is one of the best people to ask on how to stop the near-immortal Tom Brady, ahead of Super Bowl LV.

Umenyiora is a part of a rare NY Giants group that holds the distinction of being the only team to beat Tom Brady in a Super Bowl twice.

In two appearances, Umenyiora and the Giants’ front seven harassed Brady all night long with constant sacks, pressures, QB hits, and forced fumbles. Umenyiora himself recovered a timely fumble in Super Bowl XLII just before halftime as Brady was driving the Patriots downfield.

Osi spoke to FanSided NFL insider Matt Lombardo, and offered the Kansas City Chiefs some advice on how to stop Brady and why the Chiefs have the ability to do so.

The answer? Enter ex-Giants and current Chiefs Defensive Coordinator, Steve Spagnuolo.

Umenyiora told FanSided, “Spags is unique in that he knows exactly what he’s doing, and he can make adjustments very, very quickly, that’s the one thing I saw from him that I never saw from any other coordinators before or after.”

Osi also added,

"“I saw this man literally on the sideline see what their offense was doing, call us all together on the sideline, draw up something on the chalkboard and say ‘now we’re going to run this,’ even though we hadn’t practiced it, hadn’t ran it ever before, but we’d go out there and it would work. It would work because [Spagnuolo] was able to identify what we were doing, what they were doing, and be able to adjust right there on the sideline. It was really incredible.”"

Spags’ legendary defensive gameplan in Super Bowl 42 was executed as brilliantly as any NFL defense in history could’ve performed.

Using a flurry of different guys rushing from the edge, the inside of the line, and blitzes from the lineabckers both disguised and announced, the Patriots had no answers for the NY Giants’ unstoppable pass rush that night on February 3rd, 2008.

Umenioyra when speaking about his former teammates said: “Michael Strahan was a Hall of Fame player, and Justin Tuck was really coming into his own in the middle of the field,” Umenyiora said. “That’s something that really impacts Brady when you’re able to get pressure up the middle. I was an All-Pro player coming off the edge, so there really was nowhere for Brady to go. There was nowhere for Brady to go. I know he’s the greatest quarterback ever, but when you’re facing a front-seven like that, it wasn’t going to be any different for him.”

Heading into the game, Umenyiora and his fellow front-seven buddies felt that, “We knew that we were going to be able to overwhelm their offensive line. It was the Super Bowl, there was a lot of pressure on them because they were undefeated, but from the time the game started, we were right up in his face. We knew early on in the game that we were imposing our will on that offensive line and that Brady was going to have a long game.”

The one thing Umenyiora emphasized greatly, was Spagnuolo’s unselfish attitude and mindset to tailor his defensive scheme and strategy towards the strengths of his players, not the other way around.

"“You have to know your personnel,” Umenyiora says. “A lot of times you see coaches who try to make players fit into their scheme, then you have coaches who make the scheme fit their players, and Spagnuolo is definitely the latter."

Although Umenioyra doesn’t believe this Chiefs’ front seven is as talented or capable as his 2007 team, he knows that Spags is going to cook up a great strategy to put his players in the best position to succeed and stop Tom Brady. Umenyiora brought up the Chiefs’ versatility and ability to line up in a variety of ways defensively to confuse Tom and give him different looks all game.

“They have some good players on the defensive line; Frank Clark and Chris Jones, but they aren’t the type of players that we had when we had four or five guys that could rush the passer. In this Super Bowl, he’s going to be multiple in his blitz schemes, he’s going to be multiple in his defenses, and he’s not just going to rely on his guys upfront to get there and play coverage in the back.”

Stopping Tom Brady is much easier said than done.

There’s a reason only two teams have ever stopped TB12 in the Super Bowl, and two of his three losses have come directly against Osi Umenyiora and his Giants in a four-year span. The Chiefs will rely heavily on Steve Spagnuolo’s brilliance to keep the Lombardi trophy in Kansas City.