Ben Affleck’s ‘Greatest Day’ with Tom Brady Second Only to His Kids’ Births

Ben Affleck makes no secret of how much he adores his children. But spending a day with seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady almost beats out fatherhood when it comes to recalling the best day of his life.

While speaking with Jason and Travis Kelce on their New Heights podcast, the brothers remarked that they had heard he had “run routes” with Brady. “What was it like? How many completions did we get? What were you running? What kind of routes are you running?” Jason asked him curiously. Affleck admitted that he wasn’t confident in the technical terms.

“I won’t lie to you. I don’t know if they have a name. I’m sure I disgraced every receiver that’s ever run around,” he admitted. “But to this day, aside from the birth of my children, that was the greatest day.”

Brady Told Him to Pretend He Was Playing in the 4th Quarter of the Super Bowl

Affleck happened to be on vacation in the same place Brady was. “He was like, ‘I need someone to play catch with.’ He was like, ‘You want to come down?'” Affleck recalled. After throwing the ball for a while, Brady gave him a scenario to get him motivated.

“He’s like, ‘It’s the Super Bowl fourth quarter, we got 23 seconds, it’s Fourth and 18.’ He was amazing!” Affleck told them, mimicking the exhilaration that he’d felt in that moment. Brady told him to keep running and not to turn around, and that he’d throw him the ball in the end zone.

“So he’s like, ‘look, look,’ calls it out. I start running, I don’t look back,” he said. While Affleck was “going as fast as you can go,” he imagined Brady watching him, thinking, “‘I’ve never seen somebody run in slow-motion.'”

“And I’m like wondering when’s this ball going to show up?” Affleck said. “And I look, I just feel like right out in front of me, and it was a little far for me. I think he probably adjusted back, and I reach out and I have to go all out, extend [and] I [explicit] catch it.”

Ben Affleck Called the Experience Living ‘A Life Full of Dreams’

For The Accountant 2 actor, the experience was momentous. “I turned around like I won the {explicit} Super Bowl,” he recalled. Then, of course, Affleck spent the next two days calling everyone he knew to tell them what had happened.

“It was like the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me, and I lived a full life of dreams, right in that — whatever — hour of playing catch,” he said, smiling. “You had a real-life Sandlot moment,” Jason said, referring to the cult favorite 1993 film. “You were Smalls.”

Affleck has been a fan of Brady the football player for years, telling ESPN, “He’s as close to a human being that I worship on this world.” When Brady became a free agent, he and Matt Damon even reached out to him to find out if he was staying with the New England Patriots — their home team — or leaving. “Me and Matt texted him. ‘What’s the deal? Are you going or are you staying?'” he recalled. The answer? 🤷