Tom Brady on FOX Broadcast, Digi Mart USA News (Foxborough, Massachusetts): Tom Brady has spent decades facing every kind of surprise on a football field, but one he did not see coming Sunday was in the stands at Gillette Stadium.
Brady, who was calling his first game back in Foxborough for FOX alongside Kevin Burkhardt, learned that Packers safety Evan Williams’ mother, Dani Williams, had been his babysitter when he was 5 years old. Williams made the connection known to the booth before the game, and Brady shared it on the air after Williams made a tipped interception in the second quarter.
Brady said he does not get surprised very often, but he made clear this one had gotten to him.
“I was shocked,” Brady said. “Evan Williams grew up in the Bay Area, and his mom babysat me when I was five.”
Brady grew up in San Mateo, California, and Williams attended high school at St. Francis in Mountain View.
“We got your mom on the camera today. It was really sweet,” Brady told Williams on the broadcast after the game.
“I’m gonna get ahold of you, and I’m gonna figure out if I was a good kid or not.”
Brady later said he hoped he had behaved while she watched him and joked that maybe he should give her a tip for being a bad boy. Williams said he had never been sure the story was true, since his mother had mentioned it casually years earlier while he was in high school.
“I remember her telling me when I was growing up, I was probably starting high school or something, and she just tossed it out, ‘Oh yeah, I babysat Tom Brady, by the way,’ and then continues another conversation. I’m like, ‘Woah, woah, woah, we gotta go back!’ I never was really too sure, but apparently it’s true,” Williams said.
Williams also had a tie to Brady through his family, as his grandfather and Brady’s father apparently played together.
Brady named him his LFG Player of the Game after he finished with five tackles and his third interception of the season, a toe-tapping grab that kept Green Bay’s lead at 17-0. Brady joked with Williams on the broadcast about the turnovers Drake Maye gave away, calling them “deli meat,” and asked him to send the game ball his way so the two could autograph it for his mother.
The Packers rolled to a 45-27 victory, their fifth win in six games. Jordan Love threw for 372 yards and three touchdowns and ran for another score, and Green Bay scored 21 points off four Patriots turnovers.
Xavier McKinney had two interceptions, and Williams added one, which gave Green Bay 13 interceptions on the season, the most in the league.
Maye finished with 299 yards and three touchdowns but threw three first-half interceptions.
