Rings are the thing that define legacies.
Across the sports landscape worldwide, fans and athletes themselves tend to put entirely too much emphasis on a player’s greatness based on how many rings or championships they’ve won. It’s not so simple you see, because so many circumstances go into a singular player winning a ring, such as, you know, all the other people involved — both on their team and the other teams, the coaching staff, owners, trainers, and so much more.
Yet, here we are, so we might as well go on then and answer this question. Who has won the most NFL Super Bowl rings? The top answer is probably a bit obvious, but the rest might not be.
Seven Super Bowl rings — Tom Brady
Tom Brady sure has a bunch of rings. The current and all-time leader in Super Bowl victories, the now-45-year-old quarterback, who has played a whopping 22 seasons (and counting), won six Super Bowl titles with his former club, the New England Patriots, and another one recently in 2021 with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Brady, as you may have read, retired this past offseason, only to return to the game and to the Bucs less than two months later. We won’t dig into his personal life here, but his retirement and unretirement may have come at a considerable cost, as it was recently revealed that he and super-famous supermodel Giselle Bündchen and might be going through divorce proceedings. Maybe his return to the NFL triggered that, or maybe things were already rocky, so he ran back to the game. Either way, Brady obviously came back to keep adding to his league-leading rings collection this season, though he’s well on his way to the Hall of Fame already, not to mention he’s widely considered not just the greatest quarterback of all time, but perhaps the greatest of all time (GOAT) in the history of the game.
Five Super Bowl rings — Charles Haley
Haley probably isn’t as prominent as he should be, although in the 1990s, everyone knew Haley’s name. He was feared by offensive players everywhere, as the defensive stalwart won multiple Super Bowl rings with two of the most prominent, famous, and popular NFL franchises in the league’s history — first winning two consecutive Super Bowls with the San Francisco 49ers, then piling up another three championship rings in four seasons with the Dallas Cowboys.
Haley played in 169 total games in his career before being named to the Hall of Fame after retiring. Haley shares something in common with Brady as well, as players who retired then could not stay away from the game. Though Brady came right back, Haley retired once after the 1996 season and did not play the entire 1997 season, then returned to play for the 49ers for two more years from 1998-99 before retiring for good.
Four Super Bowl Rings — 34 players
OK, so we might have fibbed a little bit at the beginning, when we said there were “quite a few” players after the top two on this list — there is a slew of them in actuality.
A staggering 34 players have four Super Bowl rings, but only two have a legit chance to earn a fifth ring and join Haley with the second-most all-time. You could count even more than that, but we’re sticking strictly to players who won a Super Bowl championship, not another football league title before the NFL or in another era.
Even though every single player with four rings is retired, the two we alluded to above only recently retired — Adam Vinatieri and Rob Gronkowski. Both of those guys won their rings, as you might know by now, playing on the same teams as the leader on this list, Brady.
Vinatieri won three of his rings with the Patriots, and also snagged one as a member of the Indianapolis Colts playing with Peyton Manning as well. He’s the NFL all-time leader in points scored, is also the league record-holder for most field goals made in a career, postseason points, and overtime field goals made. Though he’s been retired a few years now, having called it quits after the 2019 season with the Colts, the now 49-year-old isn’t out of the realm of being able to play due to his position.
However, he only retired in 2021 because he suffered a season-ending injury and had to have knee surgery at the end of the 2019 season, and was unable to make a successful comeback into the league in the years to follow, leading to his retirement announcement, so a comeback isn’t likely in the cards.
Gronkowski, however, has followed Brady — literally — everywhere he’s gone in the NFL. The man known as Gronk also followed Brady in another way, as the legendary tight end has retired not just once, but twice now.
As he’s dealt with a ton of injuries in his career, serious ones with his back at that, he retired after the 2018 season after having earned three rings. Then, once Brady went to Tampa Bay, Gronkowski came out of retirement to win his fourth Super Bowl ring alongside Brady with the Bucs in 2020. He played through the 2021 season as well, a disappointing one for the Bucs, and decided to retire once again.
As long as Brady is in the league, though, rumors of his return late in the season to help the team in the playoffs will linger. And that puts him in play to up his total to five rings, something he surely is aware of, so we can put that in the realm of possibility.
After that, the rest of the 32 players with four Super Bowl rings are all well into retirement and won’t be coming back to play for the chance at a fifth.
So, let’s look at who has three rings right now, and also, who is currently playing and could at least make an effort to crack into the four-ring club.
Three Super Bowl rings — A whole bunch of New England Patriots basically
Well, then. This list goes nowhere for these purposes, as the players who have three Super Bowl rings are mostly New England Patriots players who won alongside Brady at some point in their career. Players such as Tedy Bruschi, Mike Vrabel, James White, Julian Edelman, Ty Law, Richard Seymour, Troy Brown, and Willie McGinest, among several others.
So, that doesn’t really leave anyone that could come in and grab a fourth ring right now, as all those players have retired or aren’t actively in a situation to win another ring.
Two Super Bowl rings — quite a few active players
There are a handful of players right now who could add to their ring total that already have won two in their career. Some of whom have at least a legit shot to collect a ring, if not this year, then perhaps in the coming years.
The first is all-world defensive ace Von Miller, who won one with the Denver Broncos, and then just last year won a second ring with the Los Angeles Rams after a mid-season trade to the West Cost.
Entering this season, Miller was a free agent and could have resigned with the Rams for a real chance at ring number three (and maybe even more depending on how long he wants to play), but he decided to go cross-country and sign with the rising Buffalo Bills.
The Bills have been picked by many to win the Super Bowl this year (and were even favored to make it to the big game last year), and they have arguably the best team in 2022 and are built for the future behind young stud quarterback Josh Allen. It could be a great bet by Miller because the Bills are set up for future success, while the Rams are aging and have traded away a lot of their future hopes in terms of draft assets. Meaning, Miller could win one, two, who knows, maybe even three rings with the Bills if all went perfectly. That’s a stretch, especially since he’s already 33 years old, but you can never say never (especially as Brady and others play into older and older ages).
Another player still at it on a winning club with two rings, running back Sony Michel, collected both his pieces of hardware along with others we’ve mentioned — one with Brady and the Patriots in 2018, and another last year with Miller and the Rams.
This year he’s playing for another L.A. team, the Los Angeles Chargers, who have high hopes and a lot of hype behind another young stud quarterback, Justin Herbert. Though the Chargers aren’t as favored to win it all this year as the Bills, Michel is only 27 years old, and only in his fifth season playing due in part to injury, meaning he doesn’t have a ton of mileage on his body, and could theoretically end up on a few more Super Bowl-winning teams in his career.
The next guy we would list here is Joe Thuney, who is on the always-favored Kansas City Chiefs with Patrick Maholmes. Thuney won one with the Pats and Brady, and another with the Chiefs, and could add to that total this year, too.
There are a few other players with two rings still playing to consider here who are on winning teams — Kyle Van Noy, also on the Chargers; Shaq Mason, Logan Ryan, and Shaq Barrett, all of whom play with Brady on the Bucs; Ted Karras of the Cincinnati Bengals, who made the Super Bowl and lost last year; then a bunch of guys who aren’t on teams we’d consider contenders at this point.
Guess we’ll have to watch, wait, and see who climbs the list next.