The recent struggles that the Bucs have had with the Saints gives New Orleans’ safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson good reason to have no fear playing Tampa Bay.

Even with Tom Brady here for two seasons, the Bucs have yet to defeat the Saints in the regular season. In fact, their last regular season win over their NFC South rival hasn’t come since Week 1 of the 2018 season. Ryan Fitzpatrick was the quarterback.

The last time the Bucs played the Saints, it came with a 9-0 shutout loss at home in Week 15. Brady doesn’t get shutout often, and that’s partly why Gardner-Johnson believes the Saints have the best defense around.

“We got the best defense in the league,” Gardner-Johnson said at Saints’ mini-camp. “The only team that pitched a shutout on Tom Brady in the past, what? 10 years? C’mon man. People are dialed in in this locker room, people are dialed in. No disrespect to Tom, he’s a great player, y’all know that. Great player, phenomenal player. But when a lot of that gets overlooked, the defense gets overlooked because of who we’re playing, y’all know that. ‘The defense vs. Tom Brady.’ Not the Saints. That’s how I’m feeling right now.”

Bucs Take The Playoff Game

Of course when it mattered most in the 2020 Divisional round, the Bucs beat the Saints on the road with a 30-20 win. Gardner-Johnson mentioned that the Saints let that game away with costly turnovers. While he didn’t name anyone specifically, he alluded to the forced fumble by Antoine Winfield Jr. on Jared Cook that was the turning point of the game.

“Put it like this, we’re confident that we can beat them in the playoffs and the regular season. We fumbled the ball to win the game. Y’all saw it. For real, let’s call it what it is. I ain’t saying no names, but y’all know what happened. That fumble messed up, right? That fumble messed up the game and I ain’t saying no names. It’s football.

“We aint worried about none of that. We can beat the GOAT four times. Beat them consistently. Let’s take him out, we sweep our division consistently every year. What are we worried about? Let’s stop sending shots at single individuals. We singlehandedly dominate our division every year. We dominated last year and we were on the bubble.”

Gardner-Johnson isn’t 100 percent accurate about sweeping the division. The Saints went 4-2 against the NFC South last year, but they did go 6-0 the year before and 5-1 in 2019 for a combined total of 15-3 over the past three seasons.

The Bucs play the Saints on the road in Week 2. Then they’re at home in Week 13 for Monday Night Football this year in what both should be highly touted matchups.

You can watch his full interview here.