Growing up roughly 20 miles south of San Francisco in the city of San Mateo, California, Tom Brady surely holds many memories from time spent as a young spectator at 49ers games. When Brady was just four years old, he attended the 1981 NFC Championship Game with his family. He sat in the stands at Candlestick Park when while his childhood idol, Joe Montana found Dwight Clark for the winning touchdown, now widely known as, "The Catch," that sent the 49ers to the Super Bowl.
Today, like Montana, Brady has built his own NFL career of dominance and success, but there is still one experience the Patriots quarterback has yet to have had in his old hometown. That is, playing a game against the 49ers on their home field. The 49ers have traveled to Foxborough twice in Brady's career, but on the one recent occasion that the Patriots played at Candlestick Park in 2008, the quarterback was sidelined with an injury. After 17 seasons in the NFL, this week's game will mark the first time No. 12 will play the red and gold at San Francisco, creating yet another football memory to add to Brady's list in the Bay Area.
"Well, I've never had a chance to play in front of my family like this. I've never had a chance to play in front of my friends. Growing up in the Bay Area and loving football, it was a great time for me to grow up and see the success of the 49ers and the great quarterbacks, Steve [Young] and Joe [Montana] and what they were able to do. I was lucky to grow up in the Bay Area at that time and I always remember it being all the Super Bowl rallies and my mom taking me out of school and banging pots and pans on the El Camino after they would win Super Bowls. Those memories never go away," Tom Brady.
