Joe Montana is opening up to ET about his scary incident in September, when he saved his baby grandchild from being kidnapped at his home in Malibu, California, by a female intruder. ET's Rachel Smith spoke to the legendary NFL quarterback on Thursday about his new Guinness Super Bowl ad, and he also talked about the frightening moment.
The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department released a statement about the incident in September, when Montana told police that a woman entered his and wife Jennifer Montana's home through an unlocked door, and took his grandchild from a playpen where she was sleeping. According to the LASD, as the woman tried to walk away with the child, they "confronted the female, attempted to de-escalate the situation, and asked for the suspect to give back their grandchild. A tussle ensued and Mrs. Montana was able to safely pry the child out of the suspect's arms."
Montana told ET the situation definitely caught him off guard.
"She came into the room and, you know, just total shock when somebody was standing there with the baby and I tried to grab the baby, she moved away from me, and Jennifer just came from the other side and just snatched her away out of her arms and then chased her down the beach and off," he recalls. "Luckily there were police right, like, 30 yards down the beach handling something else and they came and got her."
"You know, it's just that, you see things that happen and you think, 'Oh, that only happens to somebody else,'" he also tells ET. "I mean, we're all in the house and you think, 'Who would expect someone to walk in the house and pick up the baby?' We're extremely, extremely lucky that things didn't happen a little bit differently, that she didn't walk out that door with the baby."
Montana says his granddaughter is now doing well and is still a happy and social baby.
"But everybody's good, everybody’s, you know, here on our toes a little more nowadays and it's fun because you want to try and let people say she's very, very social at a young age and a very happy baby and so you don't want to curb her from that, but you also want to teach her a little bit about, you know, letting people get close and we're a lot more guarded I should say," he shares.
On a lighter note, Montana teamed up with Guinness for a new Super Bowl commercial and the four-time Super Bowl champion joked that being present at this year's big game through a commercial instead of actually playing was much more to his liking. The partnership also comes naturally to him given that he "fell in love" with the beer more than a decade ago when he visited Dublin, Ireland, and Guinness is the official beer of Montana's alma mater, the University of Notre Dame. The thoughtful commercial is about what it means to be the GOAT -- or "greatest of all time" -- and that the best is yet to come, despite the tough times we've all been living through.
"This message in here is about finding the GOAT in all of us ... there's something in there, somewhere," he shares. "We've all had a rough year but there's GOATs in there. Some people are going to struggle more and we're hoping that those people can find themselves and reach out and help those other people because that's what is part of being a GOAT. It's not just about how many touchdowns or whatever, it's, 'Can you make people around you better?' And you've got to be resilient, you've got to be willing to fight and come back, because that's what we have to do."
As for who he's rooting for on Sunday, he notes that it's the Kansas City Chiefs given that he played for the team before retiring in 1995. He also commented on the highly anticipated battle between quarterbacks Tom Brady and Patrick Mahomes.
"I think if anybody has an opportunity to, you know, catch up to the things that Tom has done, it's Mahomes," he says of Brady often being referred to as the GOAT. "And, you know, [Mahomes] is young, he's in his second Super Bowl, and if they come out of here with a victory, he's well on his way to getting that, making that happen. He's got a good team and he's got a great coach and there's much to say about that organization and the fans. When they get the fans back in the stadium, look out, it's going to be total insanity."
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