Jack Brady's Transformation Into Dad Tom's Protégé

Jack Brady's August 22, 2007 arrival rocked the world of a few adults. His father's football career was on fire — Tom Brady was only 30 years old but had already won three of his seven Super Bowl rings. The quarterback had a game plan that was working, and fatherhood somewhat upended it. "I didn't want to have kids or get married until my late 30s ... I remember thinking, 'I don't want anything to get in the way,' once my football career kind of got rolling," he recalled on "The Howard Stern Show" (via Us Weekly).

Jack's mother was actor Bridget Moynahan. At the time, one of her most notable roles was playing Mr. Big's wife, Natasha, in "Sex and the City." In a plot twist that would have Carrie Bradshaw grabbing her laptop and typing furiously, Moynahan found out she was pregnant after her split from Tom — and he had already moved on with a glamorous supermodel. In a "CBS This Morning" interview, Gisele Bündchen recalled how she reacted to the baby news. "It was one of those moments of like, 'Do I just run away?'" she said. She opted to stick with Tom and weather the tabloid storm. Meanwhile, the unwanted attention made Moynahan uneasy. "I barely left my house. I became wildly private," the actor wrote in her book, "Our Shoes, Our Selves."

In the end, all the adults involved in this drama put Jack first, allowing him to develop into a hard worker, just like his dad.

While he's known as Jack Brady these days, Bridget Moynahan officially named her son John Edward Thomas Moynahan. Tom Brady didn't get to witness Jack entering the world, but he was waiting at the hospital to greet him after Bridget did all the hard work. "He certainly wasn't holding my hand while I pushed," she explained to More. Her pregnancy was a lonely affair, but the reward was a tiny being who filled her life with joy. "I have become that mother I used to dread," she told Harper's Bazaar in 2009. "Every time he does something, you think he's a genius."

Tom was also an enthusiastic new parent — he wanted to be a fun dad so badly that he ended up getting a staph infection in 2008. After undergoing knee surgery, he had started horsing around with his son. The legendary player was still recovering in the hospital room when he hoisted his son up on one shoulder and moved about, causing him to heal incorrectly and led to the staph infection.

As for Gisele Bündchen, she quickly embraced her new role as a bonus mom. "I love him the same way as if he were mine. I already feel like he's my son, from the first day," she gushed to Vanity Fair.

Gisele Bündchen told People that Jack Brady's birth inspired her and Tom Brady to have a child together far sooner than they originally planned. She explained that they thought he'd like to have a sibling in his age range. However, she and Tom decided to walk down the aisle first. Bündchen and Tom had two weddings in 2009; The first was a church ceremony in California, and the second took place at Bündchen's property in Costa Rica. The Boston Herald noted that Jack's presence there was a surprise, as rumor had it that Bridget Moynahan was against the young boy taking an international trip.

Jack's baby bro, Benjamin Rein Brady, was born a few months after the wedding in December 2009. Bündchen told People that no longer being the only child was a big adjustment for Jack, who also had to get used to having an extra shadow. "For Benjamin, his big brother is his hero," she said. "Jack comes in and Benjamin has a big smile. He wants to follow him around. Anything he does, he's just in awe of him like, 'Oh my God!'" Who needs Super Bowl rings when you've got veneration like that? Bündchen further revealed that she calls Jack "peanut," while he calls her "GG." She also shared that his love of the cartoon "Diego" inspired her to create the one-season animated series, "Gisele and the Green Team."

Gisele Bündchen and Bridget Moynahan didn't always get along. Bündchen even told Vanity Fair that Jack Brady had celebrated his first birthday before she and his mother even met. However, Moynahan insisted that there was never any bad blood between her and Bündchen, and she blamed the media for creating that narrative. Of Jack's blended fam, she told More, "My son is surrounded by love."

Proof that Jack's mom and bonus mom were getting along just fine came in June 2014 when Moynahan brought Jack to Tom Brady and Bündchen's house for a visit. She was photographed hugging Bündchen during the drop-off. A few months later, the women were spotted chatting at one of Jack's soccer matches — yup, he had already discovered his inner athlete by age 7. Jack had previously been photographed with a football in his arms at the New England Patriots' training camp, where he was adorably repping his dad in a tiny Brady jersey.

Thanks to his stepmother, Jack was learning that eating healthy is just as important as being active. When Jack celebrated his fourth birthday, Bündchen didn't grab a box of Funfetti cake mix from the pantry. She told British Vogue (via the Daily Mail) that the treat she served him contained just three ingredients: dates, coconut oil, and cocoa powder. "I put them all in the processor, and whoosh! Delicious," she said.

Jack Brady and Tom Brady enjoyed some unforgettable father-son bonding moments during their 2017 tour of Asia (sponsored by Under Armor), and a few of them involved footballs. On Father's Day, Tom shared an Instagram photo that was snapped during a visit to the Great Wall of China. As Jack looked on, Tom was preparing to pass a football to a lucky fan.

It was Jack who was photographed preparing to sling some pigskin during a stop in Tokyo. His dad was hosting a football clinic, and instead of standing on the sidelines, Jack decided to participate in it. The intrepid 9-year-old also tried a totally new sport during the Japan leg of the trip: sumo wrestling.

Weeks before they left the States, Tom and Jack had played in a charity football game for Best Buddies International. Jack earned at least one celebratory hug from his father, who revealed that Jack was their team's long snapper. In a Facebook post, Tom expressed pride in how well his son played. It seems that Jack wasn't quite as impressed with his dad's performances in NFL matchups. In a 2018 interview with NBC's Dan Patrick (via Carolina Blitz), Tom revealed that Jack had started playing fantasy football — and left his father off of his team. According to Tom, Jack drafted Cam Newton as his quarterback. "I'm like, 'I don't blame you, I'd pick Cam Newton, too,'" he quipped.

Europeans earned bragging rights in 2018 when the son of America's best quarterback fell in love with their most popular sport. On "Live with Kelly," Bridget Moynahan revealed that Jack Brady wasn't interested in following in his father's nimble footsteps. "I think right now he wants to be a professional soccer player," she said. However, she noted that Jack had also expressed an interest in swimming after watching Michael Phelps rack up gold medals at the Olympics. "So, I think he just likes awards," she theorized.

As for Tom Brady, he believed that Jack was truly interested in a career playing the wrong kind of football — and the then-10-year-old also had aspirations of earning some Olympic hardware of his own. "My oldest son Jack really loves soccer," Tom told People. "He wants to be an Olympics soccer goalie."

Pursuing a soccer career was one way for Jack to put some distance between himself and his dad, which is possibly something the tween wanted in 2018. A video clip of Tom kissing Jack on the lips in his "Tom vs. Time" docuseries had gone viral, sparking debates over whether the affectionate smooch was inappropriate. TMZ Sports even asked a pre-Taylor Swift Travis Kelce to weigh in on the matter. "Shout to the family, man. Probably a lot of love over there, for sure," he said. Tom addressed the uproar over the kiss in a "Today" interview, saying, "Unfortunately it had more of an effect on [Jack] because he got grief."

While American football had been supplanted by the other kind in Jack Brady's heart, this didn't mean that he wasn't worried about whether or not he was making his father proud each time he stepped on the field. "Jack loves sports. He wants to try hard, and he never wants to disappoint his dad. That was me," Tom Brady told Men's Health in 2019. He also revealed that his son had developed one of his personality traits: "Jack is just like me — he holds a lot in," he said.

Jack wasn't just learning how to be a dedicated athlete and bottle things up from his dear ol' dad. He got a lesson in how to unwind in 2019 when Tom took him to a late-night Super Bowl party Snoop Dogg was hosting, complete with pole dancers. When Tom recounted the wild night out with his then-11-year-old on his "Let's Go!" podcast, he made sure to add, "They were clothed." Still, he felt that it was necessary to tell his son, "Cover your eyes." Jack's response? "Dad, I'm good. I'm good."

Tom suspected that someone who wouldn't be "good" with the situation was Jack's mom. "It's two in the morning. And we are having the time of our life and I'm like, 'Holy cow. If he tells his mother, I ain't going to see this kid for a long time,'" Tom quipped.

In 2019, Tom Brady revealed that Jack Brady was still very much into American football. However, he was starting to sound more like a coach than a player. Instead of working to improve his own performance, Jack was analyzing his father's games and giving him feedback. "He'll be like, 'Dad, what were you doing on this play? Why didn't you just do this?'" Tom recalled during a press conference (via Yahoo! Sports). "He watches football and his buddies talk about football." The criticism didn't bother Tom Terrific — he was just thrilled that his son cared about his profession so much.

After Tom left the New England Patriots in 2020, Jack snapped a photo of him signing his new contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Tom got his son even more involved in the next chapter of his football career after the family got settled into their new Florida home. Jack scored a job as a ball boy for the Buccaneers, placing him down where the action was — and giving him plenty of opportunity to give his dad real-time evaluations of his plays.

Tom loved having Jack with him during training camp. "He thinks it's fun but it's probably way better for me having him out here. It's really, really cool," he said, per CBS Sports. His main concern about Jack's ball-boy performance was that he wasn't staying hydrated. "[He] probably hears a lot of words that he doesn't typically hear at his school but that's being on a football field," he added.

Tom Brady was flying high when he led the Buccaneers to a Super Bowl victory in 2021, which scored him his seventh — and final — championship ring. After the game, Jack Brady was photographed embracing his father as confetti rained down around them. Being the devoted dad that he is, it's easy to imagine Tom wanting his kids to experience the thrill of victory on that scale someday. He had even started mapping out a future for Jack that mirrored his own.

On "Let's Go!," Tom recounted a conversation he had with Jack after the two of them watched Tom's old alma mater, the University of Michigan, win a game. "As I was jumping around and we were wrestling on the bed, I said, 'That's where you're gonna be! You're gonna be in the Big House someday,'" Tom recalled telling his son. "'You're gonna be the starting quarterback for Michigan.'" He was all caught up in the euphoric moment — but Gisele Bündchen stepped in to put a stop to her then-husband building a fantasy future for her stepson. Tom recalled her saying, "'Just let [Jack] be what he wants to be, for God's sake."

There was possibly a lot of pressure on Jack to follow in his dad's footsteps because Benjamin Brady hadn't expressed any interest in football at that point, making Jack the only son who could potentially carry on Tom's legacy.

Tom Brady couldn't hide his excitement when Jack Brady started playing football as a quarterback in high school. "I think one of the great highlights of my life is watching him play and him grow and develop," he said on "Let's Go!" in 2022. He also highlighted some of his son's biggest strengths, saying, "[He has] great hand-eye coordination. He actually moves better than I did at his age."

While he saw a lot that he liked, Tom stressed that what matters most to him is not Jack's stats – he believes that the real winning is the unique bond that players develop when they learn to work as a team. "He has meals on Friday nights with his teammates, and it brings out the best parts of us," said the proud papa.

While Jack gave Tom something to feel good about in 2022, it was a tumultuous year for their family. Amid rumors that his marriage to Gisele Bündchen was on the rocks, Tom took time off from training camp to celebrate Jack's birthday with him in the Hamptons. He later flew to New York to watch Jack play in a scrimmage. "Tom was in great spirits and chatted to all the parents," a source told People. A few weeks after Tom and Gisele filed for divorce, Jack worked out with his dad at a Buccaneer's practice. Tom seemed grateful for the moral support. "As much as I can be around him, the better it is," he told the media, per TMZ.

In her 2023 Vanity Fair interview, Gisele Bündchen revealed that she had maintained a relationship with Jack Brady after her divorce from his father, and she had some inside info about his future. She said that her stepson planned on following Tom Brady's blueprint for him by playing football at the University of Michigan.

According to the former WAG, Jack had started practicing ju-jitsu, just like her and his siblings. "Jack loves it too, but he doesn't do it as much because he's not with us as much," she said. Tom also told People that singing and playing piano are other pastimes Jack and his siblings enjoy.

While Tom doesn't share Jack's musical ability, the father and son do apparently have a similar taste in fashion. "He's starting to wear my shoes," Tom said on "Let's Go!" At least the then-15-year-old was polite enough to ask his dad for permission to raid his closet when he needed a going-out outfit. According to Tom, he also borrowed his father's clothes as a teen. "Maybe that's a little bit of a young man's right of passage, going to dad's closet and start using his stuff," he joked.

When the topic of Jack Brady's future with football came up in 2023, Tom Brady no longer seemed as enthusiastic about his son pursuing an NFL career. By then, he'd had a lot of time to think about the insane amount of pressure Jack would be under as the progeny of an all-time great. "A lot of it I wouldn't choose for him to do that because there's too many crazy expectations that people would put on him," Tom told ESPN. "Most of them probably very unfair actually."

On "Live with Kelly and Mark," Bridget Moynahan revealed that her son was more into basketball and lacrosse than football. Tom said the same in a June 2023 interview with People, adding that Jack was considering giving up football altogether. "Basketball's probably his favorite sport, but he's a very good student," he shared.

When Jack turned 17 in 2024, Tom's birthday tribute on Instagram included an admission that his son was beating him in one-on-one matchups on the court. Tom also wrote, "Your love of family, friends, school, athletics, hard work and dedication to everything you put your energy into are just some of your amazing qualities." Apparently, Jack's game had improved a lot in a year. In a June 2023 post on his Instagram Story, Tom taunted his son by writing, "Still looking for the first [basketball emoji] win against me," (via People). Well, Jack found that victory — and potentially proved that he doesn't need to play the same sport as his pops to become another GOAT.