Tom Brady reveals ‘most memorable’ touchdown pass of his NFL career

In a sense, comedic timing prevailed Monday on Tom Brady’s weekly podcast.

While helping momentarily uplift the Bucs quarterback from the nadir of this middling 6-7 season, three A-listers in the stand-up world — Adam Sandler, Tracy Morgan and Bill Burr — got Brady to bite on a question that has aroused curiosity from New England to New Tampa.

What is the greatest touchdown you ever threw? Morgan asked during the trio’s appearance on the “Let’s Go!” podcast, and Brady obliged.

“I tell you, the most memorable one was ‘07 at the Meadowlands, Giants, Week 16,” said Brady, who has 727 (including playoffs) from which to choose.

Specifically, it was a go-ahead 65-yard throw to Randy Moss in the fourth quarter of the Patriots’ 38-35 triumph, capping the first (and only) 16-0 season in NFL history. We’ll let Brady take it from here:

“He gets behind the defense on like, first down. I throw it, it comes up 5 yards short,” Brady recalled.

“It would’ve been an easy touchdown. We get to third down, different play call but Randy runs behind the defense, and I threw it about as far as I could. As Brett Favre says, I dropped it in there like a butterfly with sore legs.

“It literally just (sailed) right into Randy’s hands, and he ran into the end zone for the 50th touchdown pass I threw, which at the time was a (single-season) record.”

Indeed, the play simultaneously broke two NFL marks. The pass eclipsed Peyton Manning’s NFL single-season record, and gave Moss his 23rd touchdown catch of the year, breaking Jerry Rice’s single-season mark. Manning reset the passing record with 55 in 2013; Moss’ mark still stands.

“It was a deep pass, it was a meaningful game, it was a fourth quarter, it broke records,” said Brady, whose team, of course, ultimately fell to the Giants five weeks later in Super Bowl 42. “It kind of had everything.”

The digression provided Monday by Sandler, Morgan and Burr arrived in the immediate wake of Brady’s second-worst loss in a Bucs uniform, in his de facto homecoming, no less. A 49ers fan growing up, Brady was raised in San Mateo, California, not far north of Levi’s Stadium, where San Francisco rookie Brock Purdy thoroughly outperformed him Sunday in a 35-7 49ers romp.

“It’s kind of a long walk from the (Levi’s Stadium) locker room to the bus, probably 500 yards or so,” Brady told the comedians. “And just as I got to the bus, the woman who I was with said, ‘Hey, didn’t you want to see your family?” I said, ‘They stayed?!’

“So I turned around and walked back. And at least after the game, I got to see my sisters, my nieces and some cousins. My parents left in the third quarter, to get home.”

Contact Joey Knight at jknight@tampabay.com. Follow @TBTimes_Bulls

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