Patriots quarterback Tom Brady is one of the most storied players in the history of the game.
The 41-year-old athlete boasts a whopping eight Super Bowl appearances with the New England Patriots and has five Super Bowl championship rings tied to his name. In addition, Brady has been the game’s MVP four times – at Super Bowl XXXVI, XXXVIII, XLIX, and LI – and has been honored with three league MVP awards — in 2007, 2010, and 2017.
As USA Today points out, some of the NFL’s younger players – including Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield and Houston Texans quarterback Deshaun Watson – were still “practicing their ABCs” when Brady won his first Super Bowl in 2002.
Today, Brady will be attempting to score his sixth Super Bowl ring in Atlanta’s Mercedes Benz Arena. In just a few hours, the New England Patriots will go head to head with the Los Angeles Rams on the championship field in a high-octane match that will keep America on the edge of its seat.
While Super Bowl LIII promises to be a pulse-pounding event, football fans will remember that this is not Brady’s first championship game against the Rams. As the Inquisitr previously reported, the Patriots and the Rams first played each other in Super Bowl XXXVI. The match took place exactly 17 years ago – on February 3, 2002 – and marked Brady’s first participation at the Super Bowl.
In fact, Super Bowl XXXVI was the first one to be played in February. The game was originally scheduled for January 27, 2002, but got postponed after the NFL moved back the league’s playoff schedule following the September 11 attacks. Super Bowl XXXVI was played at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans and saw the halftime show being headlined by U2.
The match pitted the New England Patriots against the then-St. Louis Rams, led by quarterback Kurt Warner. Despite being a first-year starting quarterback at the time, Brady led the Patriots to victory against the Rams and beat the St. Louis favorites 20-17.
Seventeen years later, the Pats and the Rams have now returned to the Super Bowl for a rematch. While the Patriots are back with the same quarterback and are still coached by Bill Belichick, the Rams have completely reinvented themselves.
For one thing, they are no longer the St. Louis Rams. The team became the Los Angeles Rams in 2016, after players filed for relocation to move to the Los Angeles area for the 2016 NFL season. The Rams are now led by 24-year-old quarterback Jared Goff — although Goff is not the youngest player in Super Bowl LIII, as reported by the Inquisitr earlier today.
If history should repeat itself and the Patriots should win the Super Bowl against the Rams, Tom Brady would become the oldest quarterback to snag the title.
