'Great Father' Tom Brady Admits His Son Had Falcons Running Back Devonta Freeman on His Fantasy Team

Tom Brady talks son Jack's decision to put Falcons running back Devonta Freeman on his fantasy football team: "He knows how good he is"

Photo: Barry Chin/The Boston Globe/Getty

With top athletes from the New England Patriots taking on the Atlanta Falcons in Sunday’s Super Bowl LI, the game is shaping up to be a battle of NFL’s best — but even Tom Brady‘s 9-year-old son could tell you that!

The 39-year-old Patriots quarterback says his son with Bridget Moynahan, John “Jack” Edward Thomas, picked the Falcons’ running back to be on his fantasy football team this year — proof that Brady’s own family knows how tough the Super Bowl competition is.

“My oldest son, he really knows the game. He had Devonta Freeman on his fantasy team, so he knows how good he is,” Brady told ESPN.

Want all the latest pregnancy and birth announcements, plus celebrity mom blogs? Click here to get those and more in the PEOPLE Babies newsletter.

The father of three — Brady also has daughter Vivian Lake, 4, and son Benjamin Rein, 7, with supermodel wife Gisele Bündchen —says all of his kids are starting to get into the sport.

“Benny is getting there, and my daughter wants to go to the games,” he explains. “They’re such a main focus now. It’s been great to be able to share it with them.”

The four-time Super Bowl champion is described by his fellow teammates as “a great father.”

“Tom has been one of the guys around here, when I had my son, who shared a lot about his experience with his kids, and I could really tell he is a great father, the way he interacts with his children and how they love their dad,” Patriots wide receiver and special teams player Matthew Slater told ESPN.

“To see his family grow the way it has, it’s such a loving family, you see a different side of him around his kids,” Slater adds. “He’s such a competitor on the field, so to see that side of him, it’s great.”

“I know that being a father is something he takes very seriously. I know it gives him, as it does many of us, a different purpose and drive out there on the football field.”

Patriots running back Brandon Bolden, a father to a 5-year-old, says he talks with Brady about their kids. “It’s kind of cool to hear stories from him about it and see his kids take that journey with him,” he told ESPN.

RELATED VIDEO: Tom Brady: I Let My Daughter Get Away with “Everything”

Brady, known to post some seriously cute snaps with his kids on Instagram, previously told PEOPLE that hanging out with his children is “such precious time.”

“[The kids] always get a book before bed, sometimes two if they’re nice to me!” Brady said in May. “You don’t want to rush those things!”

Brady also says his wife of almost eight years, 36, will lie down with their kids “for hours” before bedtime, reading them stories and snuggling with them. But when it’s his turn to tuck the kiddos in, Brady prefers to read to them from a comfy chair in the room.

And it’s those moments that mean the most to the sports star, who admits it’s “pretty tough” balancing his NFL career with family time.

“[Sometimes] it’s like, when did you learn that?” he said. “Where and when did that happen and how can I freeze you in this moment right now so you don’t get any older?!”