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How a high school team ended up on FaceTime with Tom Brady

It started with a wrong number that ended with smiles from Buccaneers players and some high schoolers from Michigan.
Credit: AP
Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady (12) points toward the sidelines prior to an NFL football game between the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021, in Foxborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

PONTIAC, Mich. — It's not every day a wrong number text message ends up being worth a reply. But, a group of high school basketball players got the correct wrong number this time around when they sent a group text to a Buccaneers player.

About a week ago, the freshman basketball team at Notre Dame Preparatory School and Marist Academy in Pontiac, Michigan, started a group text but entered in the wrong digit for one of their teammates, Today reports.

They got the right teammate, all right. The wrong number just so happened to belong to Tampa Bay Buccaneers cornerback Sean Murphy-Bunting.

After an exchange of "did you mean to add me to this group?" and more replies, the school counselor who is also one of the dads of the kids in the group said his son and his teammates thought their teammate was messing with them.

P. Jason Whalen tells the tale in a series of tweets saying Murphy-Bunting replied to the freshman high schoolers group text saying "This is Sean Murphy-Bunting" and sent a selfie from the Buccaneers locker room. 

It was, in fact, a Tampa Bay Buccaneers player, Murphy-Bunting, a Michigan native whose number is one digit off from a high schooler at Notre Dame Preparatory School in Pontiac, Michigan. 

Whalen tweeted that some of the boys in the group text still thought it was their friend joking around so that's when Murphy-Bunting Facetimed the group. 

"All I hear is my son laughing his [explicit] off, in total disbelief at what is going on," Whalen said in a tweet

Whalen said the phone was handed around the Buccaneers locker room landing in the hands of Leonard Fournette who then introduced the kids to Mike Evans, Rob Gronkowski, Richard Sherman and more. 

The Facetime conversation turned up a notch when Fournette handed the phone to Tom Brady.

In an interview with ESPN, Brady said it was sweet meeting the high school basketball team.

"I didn't know who it was. [Leonard] said, 'Here's my boy' or whatever he said. It was nice. It would have been nice for me when I had been in high school too," Brady said.

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